> In Japan, it sold for 2.6 million yen, but in the United States, it retailed for $40,000, a significant markup. To be fair, shipping them across the Atlantic and then throughout the United States must have been expensive.
Yes, I imagine the cost of shipping something from Japan to the States across the Atlantic would be nothing to sniff at.
I think we had one of those in the Remote Sensing Lab at my university. You could fit an entire Civilisation 1 map on screen without having to scroll vertically (you still had to scroll horizontally - natch).
I had a 21” Viewsonic in the late 90s, with an enormous (for the time) 1600x1200 resolution. It weighed around 60 pounds. My desk sagged in the middle from the weight of the monitor.
I had something similar, though it was maybe a Trinitron? The glass was also flat. It was a long, long time until it felt worth it to “upgrade” to an LCD screen.
I had that model too, acquired back when university classrooms were ditching them in favor of their first slimmer LCDs. I let it go during a move, and have missed it ever since.
In fact I'm pretty sure that Sun, SGI and HP all used the same OEM. They were really nice Trinitron displays though and this meant they were well interchangeable too. Which was great because by PC standard they used a weird DB25 with 3 composite RGB connector and sync on green iirc.
I had three of them on a cheap plywood desk - that I had just picked up for nothing from the kerb outside a brokerage who were switching to LCDs. They were great, and I loved them.
The desk, not so much, it ended up, uh, ergonomic.
This was my last CRT too. I bought mine from the local university's sale of scrap goods, a few months after spending $350 on a 19" LCD which paled in comparison.
Yeah same here, bought cheap used 21" from some design studio around 2002 i think. Barely fit keyboard on campus desk in front of it, but Counter strike while smoking some weed was very absorbing.
One of benefits of CRT was they flawlessly handled lower resolutions in a way impossible for LCDs. Very much required for the hardware of that era.
that looks a heck of a lot like a rebranded Trinitron. (I bought a super nice Sony Trinitron from BestBuy in fall 1994 to get a better screen for a second hand Sparcstation 1+ i had.)
SGI also used rebranded Trinitrons. My first job out of college I had an Indy with a giant (for the time) Trinitron on top of it. Don't remember the exact size except that it was bigger than 17", so probably 19" or 21".
Yeah the 21" sun monitors we had in school were trinitron. I remember they were heavy for a 21" monitor (shielding?) and the degaussing on startup would induct into an adjacent monitor. (I was a sysadmin for a Sun heavy CS department in the 90's.)
My parents had a Sony KV-40XBR700, the 40in 300lb CRT. I thought it was the largest you could buy until learning about the even larger one in TFA.
The picture quality on the KV-40XBR700 was amazing for the era (~2003). My Dad cleverly cut a hole into the wall up high and stuck the TV into it, then put a picture frame around it giving us one of the first "high definition flat screens" even if it was an illusion.
Of course these days our 43in TV weighs less than 20lbs and is mounted with a couple small wall anchors.
I worked at "The Only Sony Only" store in St. Louis when this TV came out. I delivered and installed equipment among other responsibilities. I might have delivered two of these particular units. I believe it was actually like 305 pounds.
This television had a couple of interesting traits. Sony flat Trinitrons were apparently the only true flat CRT televisions where both the outside AND inside of the tube were flat. This is why they were so heavy - the flat glass had to be thicker to withstand the vacuum inside.
It was a high definition television, but it was 4:3 aspect ratio. They sold a 34 inch CRT that was the only 16:9 CRT they offered at the time.
Additionally, the size of the 40 inch tube apparently left it extra vulnerable to stray magnetic fields. CRT screens all respond to magnets by producing rainbow colored distortions, but the 40 inch was extra sensitive. We delivered one to a house and turned it on only to find that the screen colors were distorted. I'm not sure how we figured it out, but we realized it was the proximity to the metal floor beam, so we moved the TV to another spot in the room and the color distortion went away.
For context, you could get an HD 65 inch rear projection wide screen television at the time that only weighed 265 pounds. I delivered both the 40 inch and the 65 inch up a flight of stairs. Those moving straps that hang from your forearms were not yet popular.
I remember the KV-40XBR700. Those suckers were heavy. I worked at Circuit City in 2003 delivering those behemoths to customers until I dropped two in a single day (the handholds on the side weren't very good) and got moved to the warehouse.
Seems like every time I've bought one "standard" has moved up a size. My current is a 65", the one before that a 55", a 47" before that, and I think a 43 or 44 before that.
I actively waited for 47ish OLEDs to come out and drop in price before upgrading my tv as didn’t want or need anything bigger but definitely wanted OLED.
Here I am worried that my cat is going to knock my flat lightweight TV over one of these days, and you had a 300 lb TV? That sounds like what I need now!
I'm kinda curious if CRT technology advanced to the point where a TV like that would've been possible at a better weight and price tag? I assume that CRT technology development stopped decades ago, but could we have e.g., replaced the heavy glass with some plastic-like material to save weight without compromising the picture? And are there any heavy components in the mechanism itself (Coils, Magnets?) that would have had alternatives?
I know it's just theorycrafting, but I do wonder what kind of CRT someone could've created if it wasn't for market economy forces.
Here's the last gasp of thinner, bigger CRTs, in 2005.[1]
"Today, CRT markets are being threatened by flat-panel displays (FPDs) even though the screen quality of the CRT is one of the best of existing display devices. The depth of CRTs is one of its most important design factors to maintain its dominant position in the display market. Thus, a 32-in.-wide deflection-angle 125° CRT (tube length of 360 mm) has been developed, and mass production began in January 2005."
That was the Samsung Vixlim.[2] Apparently worked OK, but obsolete at launch.
Goes down in history as another last and greatest achievement of the wrong technology, along with the Doble steam car, the SS United States, 3-projector Cinerama, quadrophonic phonograph records, and the Olivetti Divisumma 24 mechanical four-function calculator.
"These wide-deflection CRTs attracted an extraordinary amount of attention even from end users in a variety of display shows last year and will help maintain the solid positions of CRTs in the coming era."
On top of the mechanical issues, CRT glass also functions as x-ray shielding, for which reason it is leaded (Pb). You can't really make that part lighter.
The next big thing was supposed to be Field Emission Displays. Microscopic electron guns directly behind each phosphor. The big manufacturers experimented and tried getting it commercialized for decades, then pretty much gave up in the 2000s when LCDs got stupid cheap.
I imagine much of the weight is for the tube to be strong enough to hold the vacuum without shattering. As the screen area increases, you need stronger electron sources, and higher HT to get the electrons to the phosphor. I think small 14 inch trinitrons are already using 20-30kV so I imagine the power supply and associated HT stuff will be quite scary in these larger sets.
There are all sorts of complex magnet arrangements to tune the beam to stay in focus across the image area, i don't know how that will scale with size, but it's probably more of a complexity when assembling the sets to calibrate the tubes.
You’d be surprised how little glass is needed to be strong enough to withstand a near perfect vacuum.
I worked in a lab where we routinely held a few micro-torr of vacuum, which is about the limit for mechanical pumps. Cathode ray tubes are typically thousands or tens of thousands higher pressure.
We ran 1/4” wall thickness glass even in large flat stretches without issue.
I’m guessing the weight of large cathode ray tubes are more for durability than need for the vacuum inside.
I assume that CRT technology development stopped decades ago, but could we have e.g., replaced the heavy glass with some plastic-like material to save weight without compromising the picture?
Metal-cone CRTs were common in the early decades, and had a flatter screen than typical all-glass construction; here's the largest of those, a 30":
I think metal-cone CRTs became unpopular due to the glass-to-metal seal not being as reliable, and difficulties with insulation (the whole cone is at the final accelerating voltage.)
I remember reading somewhere that there was this wild prototype flat CRT where the electron gun was at the top, shooting down, and the beam did a 180 degree turn at the bottom before being deflected into the surface of the screen.
Gorilla glass or sapphire glass might have enabled lighter tubes at a higher price, had CRTs retained popularity, but from what I can see, Corning never even considered it as a use case for Gorilla glass in their original 1960s attempt at development.
Sony had all the coolest TVs in that era—one of the last great ones, which I've only seen in person _once_ at a broadcast TV tower site (it's still there today, and works!) was the KD-34XBR970[1]. It was 'only' 34", but it weighed nearly 200 lbs.
I believe my friend still has our 32" 1080i tube TV kicking around. All 180lbs of it. has HDMI and everything if I recall. Old consoles look awesome on it and if you can get your PC drivers to play ball games on that also look stellar, but text looks like trash.
I had one of these. Somehow got it on clearance at Circuit City when it was being EOL'd. I must have hit that window just right, because I got it for something like $450?
Managed to sell it about five years back for $200, and someone picked it up from my house and carried it out of my basement. It was a win all around. They got an amazing display for their old consoles, and despite my fondness for the same, I just wanted to be rid of the thing because I was prepping to move and wanted to rid the house of CRTs.
I really do miss my RCA mm36100. 190 pounds. 2 VGA inputs. It could do 800x600 progressive scan. The Dreamcast with a VGA adapter really did look incredible on it!
Great TV. Iirc the last Triniton tube produced. After moving it 3 times over 15 years I sold mine to a guy during covid for $20 so he could play Time Crisis.
Ugh, reminds me of my parent's 35" Sony CRT. The picture was wonderful for its day, but my brother and I almost killed ourselves trying to carry it down the stairs. It was kind of brilliant by Sony in a way since it was so deep, there weren't any TV stands that could properly hold it so you had to buy a TV stand from Sony as well.
A friend in Bulgaria had a similar size CRT in his house when it got burglarized. The burglars drugged the dog, disabled the alarm system and stole all the things, except for the giant TV (they couldn’t lift it).
My family had one about the same size as well, and it was setup in the basement. When my parents sold the house the contract stated that the TV in the basement would not be removed and it was the buyers problem now.
We rented one of these for a trade show (MacWorld), at the time there were reputedly 3 in the US, was brought in on a forklift, had to build a specially strong bench to put it on - people would come around just to see it (and the digital video hardware we were showing off)
I had a 27" view sonic with something like 2500 4:3 resolution. One went out and I got a replacement that lasted till the 2010s. Also had a Sony vega 37" that was amazing. I was gonna get the 41 and probably should have because even though it was heavier it had handled. I used trucks to move both. I am sad I had to get rid of the vega as it was an amazing image and great for retro gaming, probably one of the best TVs ever made in the crt era. But just no where to keep the monstrosity. I dropped it at goodwill the month before they stopped taking carts and I knew I'd want it and my old 19" uncaged someday. Still don't have room for them.
Side note at the time I had a 144" projector as well and the 37 was the pip on the side. My cleaning lady (I traveled a lot) kept rearranging the room around the TV because she couldn't grok the projector. I had to turn it on for her one day before she stopped moving things. The big o on her face was priceless. Also the big o on that screen was also priceless as was ssx3
I found a brand new one from someone's house where the person had died a long time ago and three of us lugged it back to my house (three people can barely lift it). I grabbed it for light gun games, but it uses some sort of digital filtering on all the inputs which stops gun games from detecting the scan. I was going to take it apart and figure out how to bypass it, but I lost it in my divorce lol.
I was seriously considering Sony’s 32” CRT for my first HDTV around 2006 or so. It must have been right about the tail end.
It may have had a better picture, at least for analog stuff which was most all of it at the time. But the biggest factor was size. At ~150-200 lbs I couldn’t move it and would need new furniture to hold it.
The LCD I bought probably weighed 40 pounds, was easy to move, and my existing furniture was fine. It was 720p only though.
Be aware that this is not a TV. The PVM Series of monitors are professional video monitors that are not offered for sale to mere consumers. This is the kind of thing that would be installed in the control room of a TV station to display the station's final output.
20 years ago the small video company I worked for had a $30K Sony PVM monitor that was probably only 30-35 inches. So the $40K price in 1990 doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
The only thing interesting about this is "biggest CRT ever made" because it shows the limits of CRT technology.
I had a 38" Wide Flat Trinitron that I miss so much, dont miss the 500lb carry weight lol, buy damn the pinnacle of TV.
At some point I had one of those ugly wooden desks with the Trinny crammed into it and a dinky 17" CRT next to it. Ran S-Video and then eventually Component to the TV for games and movies. Pretty sure the desk sagged from all the weight.
So what were “big screen TVs” (which my family never owned) that appeared in movies and tv? I feel like they looked more lightweight than this so I’m assuming they were like Plasma screens? Or maybe that technology was after the pop culture I’m referring to
Typically there was a projector in the bottom that pointed up at a mirror. The mirror was mounted at a 45 degree angle and pointed at a screen consisting of a giant Fresnel lens and another piece of plastic.
For big screen projected analog sources (aka, a video signal rather than film) there was this amazing piece of tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor
A mirror coated in a thin layer of oil that is deformed by electrostatic charges.
They were projection TVs, that typically had three small CRTs (red, green, blue) with lenses that projected the image either onto the screen from the back (rear projection) or bounced off a mirror from the front(front projection).
Color plasma screens did not become a real thing until the early 2000s or so.
Late in the 90s we had a 27” CRT. That was absolutely sold as a big screen. I don’t think you could get much bigger.
Past that you had projection TVs. They could get way bigger but the picture was also dimmer and perhaps not as sharp? I only remember being around one a few times, we never had one.
My impression is that projection TVs reflect/diffuse even more of ambient light than regular CRTs, making black areas of the image look gray (regular CRTs already reflect more light than LCD-like monitors, though CRTs could be tinted to improve contrast at the cost of brightness).
Rear projection TVs were a neat party trick, but I always liked either a projector or screen, or just using a smaller CRT. Even the cheaper sets would give a brighter (and usually slightly sharper) image than even the nicer rear-projection TVs in that era.
> Sony’s part number suggests it has a 45 inch tube inside. But in a rare case of truth in advertising, Sony advertised it as a 43-inch model.
The overall tube size is 45”, the actual screen size is 43”. I believe it was mandatory in the USA to market TVs based on screen size, in most of the rest of the world they were sold based on tube size.
That’s why common sizes of 4:3 CRT TV in the US were 13/20/24/27/32” whereas in the rest of the world the same size TVs were sold as 14/21/25/29/34”. Interestingly the tubes’ internal part numbers are based on the screen size in centimeters: 34/51/59/68/80 cm.
I had a Gateway Destination 36” monitor that I somehow acquired at a garage sale in my room as a teenager. Getting it into my upstairs room required my friends and I to all risk our lives but it was well worth it.
I really miss CRTs. They had more vivid colour, had near zero response times, and I even _liked_ the blur the scanlines caused. Not to mention the calm that the simplicity brought; turn on, watch.
While I can appreciate the advantages of CRTs (I didn't switch to LCD until 120Hz LCDs were released), I don't see how CRTs have "turn on, watch" simplicity. CRTs needed careful calibration to look their best, and even when calibrated correctly needed a minute or so to fully warm up.
This is like one of those moments for me where it feels like the phones are listening to me. I have been very actively hunting/shopping for PVMs the last two days.
It's really fascinating that most things in the US economy inflate (commodities, services, housing, etc...), but some things just inevitably deflate (TVs).
My assumption is that IDTV is deinterlacing a 480i signal to 480p, which is shown on a CRT running at 31khz (though I don't know what algorithms it would use to deinterlace).
The article is calling two-speaker mono “high fidelity” so I’d take details like this with a grain of salt. I’m sort of wondering if TFA is AI filtered content from another site.
While I don’t remember hearing the term before, it absolutely sounds like something on marketing department would come up with.
HD was around, but incredibly uncommon, in the late 90s. I remember seeing news segments and stuff on it every once in a while about how it was coming “soon”.
It doesn’t seem too unlikely to me that you might be able to trick some buyers into thinking “oh that’s that thing I heard about“.
The best CRT I ever had and kept well into the flat screen era was the Sony GDM-FW900. Released in 2002, 24" widescreen with a resolution of 2304x1440.
Sony in 1989 bought CBS which got renamed to Sony Music Entertainment (SME) in 1991. This was the beginning of the end for Sony as an engineering pioneer. Walkman, CD -- completely gone from these markets, crushed by noname, at the time tiny rivals. But seriously, Apple in 2001 was basically nothing and yet they won the US market with the iPod, more or less. Sony was too busy DRMing its music to bring an MP3 player to the market. It was an astounding defeat.
> In Japan, it sold for 2.6 million yen, but in the United States, it retailed for $40,000, a significant markup. To be fair, shipping them across the Atlantic and then throughout the United States must have been expensive.
Yes, I imagine the cost of shipping something from Japan to the States across the Atlantic would be nothing to sniff at.
[dead]
Sea transport is really cheap in bulk. Somehow Japanese cars didnt fetch $15K premium after crossing the pond in the nineties.
The OP's point was more that the Atlantic is the wrong pond to ship across from Japan :)
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As one of my last monitors before LCDs took over, I had a 21-inch Sun, and boy was that sucker heavy (>30 kgs (>65 lbs)):
* https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
* https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
* https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
A neighbor gave me his aging Apple ColorSync 850 back around 1999/2000 - https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/applevision_colorsync/sp...
67.4 lbs, but 20" and 1600x1200, which was incredible 25 years ago. It was by far the best monitor of my friend group, despite the heft.
It took a long time to find an LCD to replace it with.
Wow. Just that image of the monitor brings back memories of reading Mac magazine because they used that same example pictures on all their ads.
I think we had one of those in the Remote Sensing Lab at my university. You could fit an entire Civilisation 1 map on screen without having to scroll vertically (you still had to scroll horizontally - natch).
Early LCDs had that dumb dead pixel thing too, which made the upgrade from CRT risky.
Modern screen may have the issue too, but pixels are so small I probably wouldn’t notice.
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Haha AppleVision
I had a 21” Viewsonic in the late 90s, with an enormous (for the time) 1600x1200 resolution. It weighed around 60 pounds. My desk sagged in the middle from the weight of the monitor.
I had something similar, though it was maybe a Trinitron? The glass was also flat. It was a long, long time until it felt worth it to “upgrade” to an LCD screen.
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Yup, I had that one too.
I had that model too, acquired back when university classrooms were ditching them in favor of their first slimmer LCDs. I let it go during a move, and have missed it ever since.
All this old SGI and SUN equipment was super cool. It was all before my time but it was all super high end and really well built.
Yes though their displays were generally OEM.
In fact I'm pretty sure that Sun, SGI and HP all used the same OEM. They were really nice Trinitron displays though and this meant they were well interchangeable too. Which was great because by PC standard they used a weird DB25 with 3 composite RGB connector and sync on green iirc.
I had three of them on a cheap plywood desk - that I had just picked up for nothing from the kerb outside a brokerage who were switching to LCDs. They were great, and I loved them.
The desk, not so much, it ended up, uh, ergonomic.
This was my last CRT too. I bought mine from the local university's sale of scrap goods, a few months after spending $350 on a 19" LCD which paled in comparison.
Yeah same here, bought cheap used 21" from some design studio around 2002 i think. Barely fit keyboard on campus desk in front of it, but Counter strike while smoking some weed was very absorbing.
One of benefits of CRT was they flawlessly handled lower resolutions in a way impossible for LCDs. Very much required for the hardware of that era.
> before LCDs took over, I had a 21-inch Sun, and boy was that sucker heavy
You should have seen Apollo 19" CRTs.
An older guy at my first serious job bought himself a 21" to use at work, the weight was incredible.
that looks a heck of a lot like a rebranded Trinitron. (I bought a super nice Sony Trinitron from BestBuy in fall 1994 to get a better screen for a second hand Sparcstation 1+ i had.)
SGI also used rebranded Trinitrons. My first job out of college I had an Indy with a giant (for the time) Trinitron on top of it. Don't remember the exact size except that it was bigger than 17", so probably 19" or 21".
all the sun displays were built by Sony afaik, so you're probably not far off.
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Yeah the 21" sun monitors we had in school were trinitron. I remember they were heavy for a 21" monitor (shielding?) and the degaussing on startup would induct into an adjacent monitor. (I was a sysadmin for a Sun heavy CS department in the 90's.)
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My parents had a Sony KV-40XBR700, the 40in 300lb CRT. I thought it was the largest you could buy until learning about the even larger one in TFA.
The picture quality on the KV-40XBR700 was amazing for the era (~2003). My Dad cleverly cut a hole into the wall up high and stuck the TV into it, then put a picture frame around it giving us one of the first "high definition flat screens" even if it was an illusion.
Of course these days our 43in TV weighs less than 20lbs and is mounted with a couple small wall anchors.
I worked at "The Only Sony Only" store in St. Louis when this TV came out. I delivered and installed equipment among other responsibilities. I might have delivered two of these particular units. I believe it was actually like 305 pounds.
This television had a couple of interesting traits. Sony flat Trinitrons were apparently the only true flat CRT televisions where both the outside AND inside of the tube were flat. This is why they were so heavy - the flat glass had to be thicker to withstand the vacuum inside.
It was a high definition television, but it was 4:3 aspect ratio. They sold a 34 inch CRT that was the only 16:9 CRT they offered at the time.
Additionally, the size of the 40 inch tube apparently left it extra vulnerable to stray magnetic fields. CRT screens all respond to magnets by producing rainbow colored distortions, but the 40 inch was extra sensitive. We delivered one to a house and turned it on only to find that the screen colors were distorted. I'm not sure how we figured it out, but we realized it was the proximity to the metal floor beam, so we moved the TV to another spot in the room and the color distortion went away.
For context, you could get an HD 65 inch rear projection wide screen television at the time that only weighed 265 pounds. I delivered both the 40 inch and the 65 inch up a flight of stairs. Those moving straps that hang from your forearms were not yet popular.
I remember the KV-40XBR700. Those suckers were heavy. I worked at Circuit City in 2003 delivering those behemoths to customers until I dropped two in a single day (the handholds on the side weren't very good) and got moved to the warehouse.
That seems like an even worse place to move you to!
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If you have to do the dishes...
And wild to think that nowadays 43” is on the smaller side even for a non home theatre “living room” TV— the standard is much more around 55”.
Seems like every time I've bought one "standard" has moved up a size. My current is a 65", the one before that a 55", a 47" before that, and I think a 43 or 44 before that.
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I actively waited for 47ish OLEDs to come out and drop in price before upgrading my tv as didn’t want or need anything bigger but definitely wanted OLED.
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/234568374191
Relive these days with the KV-40XBR800, only $750
Before I click "Buy It Now"... does this include shipping? :)
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Here I am worried that my cat is going to knock my flat lightweight TV over one of these days, and you had a 300 lb TV? That sounds like what I need now!
I'm kinda curious if CRT technology advanced to the point where a TV like that would've been possible at a better weight and price tag? I assume that CRT technology development stopped decades ago, but could we have e.g., replaced the heavy glass with some plastic-like material to save weight without compromising the picture? And are there any heavy components in the mechanism itself (Coils, Magnets?) that would have had alternatives?
I know it's just theorycrafting, but I do wonder what kind of CRT someone could've created if it wasn't for market economy forces.
Here's the last gasp of thinner, bigger CRTs, in 2005.[1]
"Today, CRT markets are being threatened by flat-panel displays (FPDs) even though the screen quality of the CRT is one of the best of existing display devices. The depth of CRTs is one of its most important design factors to maintain its dominant position in the display market. Thus, a 32-in.-wide deflection-angle 125° CRT (tube length of 360 mm) has been developed, and mass production began in January 2005."
That was the Samsung Vixlim.[2] Apparently worked OK, but obsolete at launch.
Goes down in history as another last and greatest achievement of the wrong technology, along with the Doble steam car, the SS United States, 3-projector Cinerama, quadrophonic phonograph records, and the Olivetti Divisumma 24 mechanical four-function calculator.
[1] https://sid.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1889/1.216683...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/xgtmdw/does_anyo...
32 inch wide, 14.5 inch deep. Not bad. You could actually fit that on a 80cm desk.
/r/crtgaming ... calling it, this the new hip before it's cool
"These wide-deflection CRTs attracted an extraordinary amount of attention even from end users in a variety of display shows last year and will help maintain the solid positions of CRTs in the coming era."
On top of the mechanical issues, CRT glass also functions as x-ray shielding, for which reason it is leaded (Pb). You can't really make that part lighter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube#Body
https://www.epa.gov/hw/frequent-questions-about-regulation-u...
(This isn't really an answer to the overall question—just a narrow observation of interest).
This is an interesting point. Does anyone know how much lead would be in a 21 inch monitor?
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Oh I didn’t know that. Neat.
The next big thing was supposed to be Field Emission Displays. Microscopic electron guns directly behind each phosphor. The big manufacturers experimented and tried getting it commercialized for decades, then pretty much gave up in the 2000s when LCDs got stupid cheap.
https://www.engineersgarage.com/field-emission-display/
There was also a brief reign of plasma TVs in-between, now almost a forgotten technology
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I imagine much of the weight is for the tube to be strong enough to hold the vacuum without shattering. As the screen area increases, you need stronger electron sources, and higher HT to get the electrons to the phosphor. I think small 14 inch trinitrons are already using 20-30kV so I imagine the power supply and associated HT stuff will be quite scary in these larger sets.
There are all sorts of complex magnet arrangements to tune the beam to stay in focus across the image area, i don't know how that will scale with size, but it's probably more of a complexity when assembling the sets to calibrate the tubes.
You’d be surprised how little glass is needed to be strong enough to withstand a near perfect vacuum.
I worked in a lab where we routinely held a few micro-torr of vacuum, which is about the limit for mechanical pumps. Cathode ray tubes are typically thousands or tens of thousands higher pressure.
We ran 1/4” wall thickness glass even in large flat stretches without issue.
I’m guessing the weight of large cathode ray tubes are more for durability than need for the vacuum inside.
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I assume that CRT technology development stopped decades ago, but could we have e.g., replaced the heavy glass with some plastic-like material to save weight without compromising the picture?
Metal-cone CRTs were common in the early decades, and had a flatter screen than typical all-glass construction; here's the largest of those, a 30":
https://www.earlytelevision.org/dumont_30bp4.html
a TV using it cost almost $1800 in 1952 (equivalent to over $21k today):
https://www.earlytelevision.org/dumont_ra-119.html
I think metal-cone CRTs became unpopular due to the glass-to-metal seal not being as reliable, and difficulties with insulation (the whole cone is at the final accelerating voltage.)
I remember reading somewhere that there was this wild prototype flat CRT where the electron gun was at the top, shooting down, and the beam did a 180 degree turn at the bottom before being deflected into the surface of the screen.
Yes, the Sinclair TV80 worked on that principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV80
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The glass has to be thicker, thus more weight, to withstand implosion from the vacuum it is holding.
Gorilla glass or sapphire glass might have enabled lighter tubes at a higher price, had CRTs retained popularity, but from what I can see, Corning never even considered it as a use case for Gorilla glass in their original 1960s attempt at development.
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Sony had all the coolest TVs in that era—one of the last great ones, which I've only seen in person _once_ at a broadcast TV tower site (it's still there today, and works!) was the KD-34XBR970[1]. It was 'only' 34", but it weighed nearly 200 lbs.
[1] https://youtu.be/W_U9pFfXjYA?t=614
I believe my friend still has our 32" 1080i tube TV kicking around. All 180lbs of it. has HDMI and everything if I recall. Old consoles look awesome on it and if you can get your PC drivers to play ball games on that also look stellar, but text looks like trash.
It was also a Trinitron.
I had one of these. Somehow got it on clearance at Circuit City when it was being EOL'd. I must have hit that window just right, because I got it for something like $450?
Managed to sell it about five years back for $200, and someone picked it up from my house and carried it out of my basement. It was a win all around. They got an amazing display for their old consoles, and despite my fondness for the same, I just wanted to be rid of the thing because I was prepping to move and wanted to rid the house of CRTs.
Think I had this TV. It was an absolute unit and took 2-3 people to move.
An N64 and Mario Kart completed the setup.
I really do miss my RCA mm36100. 190 pounds. 2 VGA inputs. It could do 800x600 progressive scan. The Dreamcast with a VGA adapter really did look incredible on it!
https://lowendmac.com/2019/rca-mm36100-amazing-under-the-rad...
https://archive.org/details/manualsbase-id-145505
Great TV. Iirc the last Triniton tube produced. After moving it 3 times over 15 years I sold mine to a guy during covid for $20 so he could play Time Crisis.
My friends dad had one of those. Incredible picture on that recent tvs can reach.
Ugh, reminds me of my parent's 35" Sony CRT. The picture was wonderful for its day, but my brother and I almost killed ourselves trying to carry it down the stairs. It was kind of brilliant by Sony in a way since it was so deep, there weren't any TV stands that could properly hold it so you had to buy a TV stand from Sony as well.
A friend in Bulgaria had a similar size CRT in his house when it got burglarized. The burglars drugged the dog, disabled the alarm system and stole all the things, except for the giant TV (they couldn’t lift it).
My family had one about the same size as well, and it was setup in the basement. When my parents sold the house the contract stated that the TV in the basement would not be removed and it was the buyers problem now.
Here's a news article saying that Sony had only sold 3 PVM-4300s as of April 1990: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/1990/04/22/for-40000-tvs-pictur...
I guess it makes sense considering the price. I wonder how many of them still exist today.
Here are three of them:
https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/liyitz/the_pictu...
https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/egvuqt/kv3000r_u...
And this guy "I have a Sony KV-3000R in New Condition. Mike exestexas@aol.com" https://www.avsforum.com/threads/seeking-sony-pvm-4300-and-k...
the KV-3000R is not the PWM-4300 though? And since the second but older post is from a deleted redditor it's unclear whether it's two or one.
We rented one of these for a trade show (MacWorld), at the time there were reputedly 3 in the US, was brought in on a forklift, had to build a specially strong bench to put it on - people would come around just to see it (and the digital video hardware we were showing off)
450lbs… that’s approaching piano territory. Smaller grands are 600 or so, with a full sized concert 9fter being 900-1100.
When I see that weight, I think "medium-sized car engine". Not too difficult to move around with an engine hoist.
It’s not so much the moving it… it’s that it’s heavy enough that “can this floor/piece of furniture support this” becomes very relevant.
And $40K, which will comfortably buy you a grand piano
The rich have to spend their money somewhere...
Yeah but Doom 2 would look much nicer on that than on a piano.
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I had a 27" view sonic with something like 2500 4:3 resolution. One went out and I got a replacement that lasted till the 2010s. Also had a Sony vega 37" that was amazing. I was gonna get the 41 and probably should have because even though it was heavier it had handled. I used trucks to move both. I am sad I had to get rid of the vega as it was an amazing image and great for retro gaming, probably one of the best TVs ever made in the crt era. But just no where to keep the monstrosity. I dropped it at goodwill the month before they stopped taking carts and I knew I'd want it and my old 19" uncaged someday. Still don't have room for them.
Side note at the time I had a 144" projector as well and the 37 was the pip on the side. My cleaning lady (I traveled a lot) kept rearranging the room around the TV because she couldn't grok the projector. I had to turn it on for her one day before she stopped moving things. The big o on her face was priceless. Also the big o on that screen was also priceless as was ssx3
My AIM username for a while was kw34hd1 which is the model of Sony’s first (and maybe last?) 1080i CRT. I recall it being around $25k too at the time.
34” diagonal, 196lb.
Edit: A googling suggests it was launched end of ‘98 for $9k. $17k in 2024 dollars.
They made a 40" CRT. I used to find them for free all the time on Craigslist because people just wanted them gone.
Here's a pic of one:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VkcAAOSw1jpij-aq/s-l1600.webp
I found a brand new one from someone's house where the person had died a long time ago and three of us lugged it back to my house (three people can barely lift it). I grabbed it for light gun games, but it uses some sort of digital filtering on all the inputs which stops gun games from detecting the scan. I was going to take it apart and figure out how to bypass it, but I lost it in my divorce lol.
That’s the one I had. What a beast. I gave it away around 2009 when I got my first LCD.
These kinds of TVs were under $2k a few years later. I had a Panasonic CT-34WX53 "Tau" display that I bought for $1600 in 2002.
I was seriously considering Sony’s 32” CRT for my first HDTV around 2006 or so. It must have been right about the tail end.
It may have had a better picture, at least for analog stuff which was most all of it at the time. But the biggest factor was size. At ~150-200 lbs I couldn’t move it and would need new furniture to hold it.
The LCD I bought probably weighed 40 pounds, was easy to move, and my existing furniture was fine. It was 720p only though.
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and those Taus are still selling for that much due to the retro gaming craze and scalpers.
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Be aware that this is not a TV. The PVM Series of monitors are professional video monitors that are not offered for sale to mere consumers. This is the kind of thing that would be installed in the control room of a TV station to display the station's final output.
20 years ago the small video company I worked for had a $30K Sony PVM monitor that was probably only 30-35 inches. So the $40K price in 1990 doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
The only thing interesting about this is "biggest CRT ever made" because it shows the limits of CRT technology.
I had a 38" Wide Flat Trinitron that I miss so much, dont miss the 500lb carry weight lol, buy damn the pinnacle of TV.
At some point I had one of those ugly wooden desks with the Trinny crammed into it and a dinky 17" CRT next to it. Ran S-Video and then eventually Component to the TV for games and movies. Pretty sure the desk sagged from all the weight.
That $40k price tag from 1989, with inflation, is about $100k today. That's quite something for a TV!
So what were “big screen TVs” (which my family never owned) that appeared in movies and tv? I feel like they looked more lightweight than this so I’m assuming they were like Plasma screens? Or maybe that technology was after the pop culture I’m referring to
They were projection TV's. Both front, or rear projection.
Typically there was a projector in the bottom that pointed up at a mirror. The mirror was mounted at a 45 degree angle and pointed at a screen consisting of a giant Fresnel lens and another piece of plastic.
For big screen projected analog sources (aka, a video signal rather than film) there was this amazing piece of tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor
A mirror coated in a thin layer of oil that is deformed by electrostatic charges.
They were projection TVs, that typically had three small CRTs (red, green, blue) with lenses that projected the image either onto the screen from the back (rear projection) or bounced off a mirror from the front(front projection).
Color plasma screens did not become a real thing until the early 2000s or so.
Late in the 90s we had a 27” CRT. That was absolutely sold as a big screen. I don’t think you could get much bigger.
Past that you had projection TVs. They could get way bigger but the picture was also dimmer and perhaps not as sharp? I only remember being around one a few times, we never had one.
My impression is that projection TVs reflect/diffuse even more of ambient light than regular CRTs, making black areas of the image look gray (regular CRTs already reflect more light than LCD-like monitors, though CRTs could be tinted to improve contrast at the cost of brightness).
CRT TVs up to 36” were widely available (although expensive) in the 90s. Projection sets usually started at 42 or 43”.
> Late in the 90s we had a 27” CRT. That was absolutely sold as a big screen. I don’t think you could get much bigger.
CRTs were 4:3 aspect ratio. I remember that a 19" CRT was about the same size as a 21" LCD with 16:9 aspect ratio.
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Rear projection
Rear projection TVs were a neat party trick, but I always liked either a projector or screen, or just using a smaller CRT. Even the cheaper sets would give a brighter (and usually slightly sharper) image than even the nicer rear-projection TVs in that era.
> Sony’s part number suggests it has a 45 inch tube inside. But in a rare case of truth in advertising, Sony advertised it as a 43-inch model.
The overall tube size is 45”, the actual screen size is 43”. I believe it was mandatory in the USA to market TVs based on screen size, in most of the rest of the world they were sold based on tube size.
That’s why common sizes of 4:3 CRT TV in the US were 13/20/24/27/32” whereas in the rest of the world the same size TVs were sold as 14/21/25/29/34”. Interestingly the tubes’ internal part numbers are based on the screen size in centimeters: 34/51/59/68/80 cm.
I had a Gateway Destination 36” monitor that I somehow acquired at a garage sale in my room as a teenager. Getting it into my upstairs room required my friends and I to all risk our lives but it was well worth it.
I really miss CRTs. They had more vivid colour, had near zero response times, and I even _liked_ the blur the scanlines caused. Not to mention the calm that the simplicity brought; turn on, watch.
For retro games especially, nothing can quite beat them.
While I can appreciate the advantages of CRTs (I didn't switch to LCD until 120Hz LCDs were released), I don't see how CRTs have "turn on, watch" simplicity. CRTs needed careful calibration to look their best, and even when calibrated correctly needed a minute or so to fully warm up.
This is like one of those moments for me where it feels like the phones are listening to me. I have been very actively hunting/shopping for PVMs the last two days.
I miss the fun thought of owning a desktop particle accelerator that came with CRTs. The physics behind LCDs doesn't feel as exciting.
John Carmack was programming on a Intergraph InterView 28hd96, which was a 28-Inch, 16:9, 1080p CRT Monitor. What a beauty.
Dang, that was probably when the rest of us were still using 16" or so CRT's, it must have been amazing.
Wouldn't surprise me if all ten remaining units were in the hands of Smash community members or something.
The "IDTV" buffering sounds like it increases latency, so unlikely.
It's really fascinating that most things in the US economy inflate (commodities, services, housing, etc...), but some things just inevitably deflate (TVs).
I used to have a CRT-based HDTV (16:9 ratio).
The screen size was 27 inches, and it was a big, heavy honker.
I think it was a Samsung. Many moons ago.
It was non-optimal. There was visible fringing on the edges.
I don’t miss CRTs.
> It was non-optimal. There was visible fringing on the edges.
> I don’t miss CRTs.
Samsung was cheap.
That aside about IDTV was interesting. Hadn’t heard of that before.
It used a buffer to interpolate multiple frames from OTA TV also had motion sensing!
Wonder how good it looked in reality?
My assumption is that IDTV is deinterlacing a 480i signal to 480p, which is shown on a CRT running at 31khz (though I don't know what algorithms it would use to deinterlace).
The article is calling two-speaker mono “high fidelity” so I’d take details like this with a grain of salt. I’m sort of wondering if TFA is AI filtered content from another site.
While I don’t remember hearing the term before, it absolutely sounds like something on marketing department would come up with.
HD was around, but incredibly uncommon, in the late 90s. I remember seeing news segments and stuff on it every once in a while about how it was coming “soon”.
It doesn’t seem too unlikely to me that you might be able to trick some buyers into thinking “oh that’s that thing I heard about“.
One of my bosses in the late 80s had one of these in his living room.
It was, indeed, a big TV- Somewhat impressive at the time.
That's interesting. So in a sense, we hit "peak CRT" in 1989, quite a bit before large flat screens hit.
The best CRT I ever had and kept well into the flat screen era was the Sony GDM-FW900. Released in 2002, 24" widescreen with a resolution of 2304x1440.
My back is aching just looking at it!
Sony in 1989 bought CBS which got renamed to Sony Music Entertainment (SME) in 1991. This was the beginning of the end for Sony as an engineering pioneer. Walkman, CD -- completely gone from these markets, crushed by noname, at the time tiny rivals. But seriously, Apple in 2001 was basically nothing and yet they won the US market with the iPod, more or less. Sony was too busy DRMing its music to bring an MP3 player to the market. It was an astounding defeat.
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