It's a well done storytelling, but two odd thoughts/questions about it...
As I was watching it, there was the drama of whether it would be saved from imminent destruction, and it actually seemed unlikely that they could, but their approach was to be... secretive about it.
It turned out that they wanted it for themselves, and didn't that create a conflict of interest? By keeping it quiet, they increased the chance that they would obtain it themselves (and the YouTube story to tell about it), but increased the likelihood that the TV would be lost entirely (because other efforts wouldn't be brought)?
Fortunately the gamble worked out, and the TV wasn't destroyed.
There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
I applaud preserving this rare artifact, and compliment the storytelling, but did have these couple odd thoughts.
From the interview with the TV's original owner, this seemed like his ideal outcome.
The owner had seen discussions of the TV online and knew it was a big deal. But he still couldn't get rid of it until this guy came along.
The owner even said he wanted the TV to go to someone who would use, appreciate, and take care of it. The video clearly demonstrates all of the above. If the TV ended up in some museum, forever powered off, that would be even more tragic in some ways.
I didn't get the impression that anyone was bamboozled or cheated.
> There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
I didn't read that as Sony being pissed off by. Occam's razor says it's more likely to be your regular corporate dysfunction. Japanese corporations do seem as a whole to be more concerned about preserving their history than US ones, and Sony did have a small museum called ソニー歴史資料館 (the Sony Archive), but that Museum closed down in 2018[1]. Meanwhile, Toyota has six different Museum dedicated to its history and the history of the industries it participated in (including textile — Toyota was a major textile machinery manufacturer before it was an automotive company).
Sony still seems to display some of the archive's content in its headquarters, but I'm unclear how much of it. In general, closing the museum shows that preservation is perhaps important, but not very high on their priority list.
But even if preservation was a top goal, you still can't expect every employee on the PR department to be dedicated to that. PR departments are generally more concerned with current events, and may view such an interview as a distraction that isn't worth their time.
With respect to keeping quiet about it: it may not have been selfless, but it may also have drawn so much attention to it that the owner of the set wouldn't have wanted to deal with it. After all, he had already dealt with one person who didn't follow through.
As for the Sony not talking bit, it can probably be chalked up to corporate policy. Large organizations rarely let staff speak on matters when it may be construed as being speaking for the corporation.
True. Although, would a call to a museum of Japanese technology/industry, or to Sony HQ, have had a better chance to preserve it? (More likely to save it, less likely for it to be destroyed in handling and shipping.)
As well as keep it in country?
Perhaps the current owners will be reached by a museum, and decide to repatriate it. I imagine that the right museum home could be a win for everyone.
They posted on Twitter to find people who wanted to get involved
> With no time to lose, Shank posted a call for help on Twitter, hoping someone in Osaka could investigate. Enter Abebe, a stranger who volunteered to check the location.
The restaurant was about to be demolished.
I don’t see any problems with this process or outcome. I think you’re comparing this outcome to an imagined alternative reality (going into a museum) that wasn’t even an option.
If I was in charge of a big corporation that still made displays, I would not want to preserve CRTs because it could hurt the narrative that modern technology is strictly superior to old technology. If people thought about CRTs in a positive light they might realize that no modern display can match them in latency and motion quality when it comes to displaying 60fps content (as found in console and arcade games). I'd prefer that all CRTs were destroyed and forgotten.
I don’t think any large screen manufacturer would give a second thought to this, the average consumer will still want the 4K, HDR, flat screen that is wall mountable.
The market the CRTs would steal is practically non existent, surely. I’d love this in my house for retro gaming purposes, but I’d still have my LG C/Gx or Samsung N95x or whatever the newest, fanciest models are for movies and modern use cases.
As much I appreciated the experience of no input latency CRTs they always gave me headaches after some hours due to the refresh rate flicker. LCDs were an immense relief even despite having very noticeable input latency for the same Hz (eg: cursor movement, which one gets accustomed to).
There's no need for this. If you want to make sure consumers don't want to return to CRTs, all you have to do are the following:
1) point out how heavy they are. Give them a facsimile to lift to show them, after making them sign a waiver that they may permanently injure their back doing so.
2) show them how deep they are, and how far away from the wall they must sit because of this.
3) show them two power meters, showing the power consumption of a CRT and a modern LCD for comparison. Also show the actual costs for that power, and how much typical usage of these displays will cost per day and per year.
The last one alone should dissuade most people from wanting to go backwards.
Most people don't give two shits about latency, and modern LCDs with >= 120 fps capability already exist.
There is no way CRTs would be a competition to modern displays. Modern displays are strictly superior for all practical purposes. The microsecond latencies don't matter in practice, we are getting to the point where even esports pros won't get significant benefit compared to modern gaming displays, which are well beyond 60Hz. Some CRT monitors could do more (like 180Hz at low resolution), but not TVs.
The only thing CRTs are really better for is for content that is designed for CRTs, i.e. oldschool video games. And of course, that's what they are demonstrating. But it is just about giving the right context to historical video games.
I’d compare this to large format film cameras. By raw resolution, large format film cameras are still far and above what is achievable digitally. Yet, of course, no one would argue that they pose a threat to the practicality and efficiency of digital, and few people appreciate/care about/need so much resolution.
I know I moved into the LCD monitor era kicking and screaming because the CRTs I used with my computers were far superior for text sharpness and didn't cause me near the eye-strain when doing long programming sessions.
not really true anymore as the latest oled tech surpasses crt in almost every spec. And the spec it does not the difference is detectable by devices not human senses so practically makes no difference.
(nit) Please don't use "conflict of interest" that way (casually). It should only apply to situations where there are actual legal or ethical obligations in opposition. Nobody owes the online CRT community anything.
Point understood, but do you think there's no obligations to communities or societies, other than those codified in law, contracts, or some (professional?) ethics?
If those other obligations existed, could we say "conflict of interest" about them, or is there a better term or phrasing?
i don't get the skepticism, yes a youtuber did a thing but without them probably no one would have cared and the TV would've ended up destroyed in the rubble of the building
he even went to the lengths of calling up different CRT experts trying getting them to fix it
all this negativism just feels like older people being all "zoomers bad" because the medium is not what they prefer. maybe we should just be happy to pass the torch and glad that younger generations even have interest in this sort of thing
The negativity struck me as jealousy. I honestly don't get it though. The YouTuber went through significant effort to save a very cool artifact, and then shared it with the world via a well made video. Bravo I say!
The email he shared that he was sending to Sony was obnoxious “this is a chance for some wicked awesome free PR for Sony..” so it is kind of no wonder they stopped talking to him. Other than that, he never said he was doing it for the good of humanity or anything, he just wanted it and found a way to make it happen, I admire the pluck.
It might be pretty on the nose but I don't see why that would make them stop talking to him. Wouldn't that be the reason they'd approve a corporate interview in the first place? I doubt they'd do it for no reason
> It turned out that they wanted it for themselves, and didn't that create a conflict of interest? By keeping it quiet, they increased the chance that they would obtain it themselves (and the YouTube story to tell about it), but increased the likelihood that the TV would be lost entirely (because other efforts wouldn't be brought)?
Based on the timeline there was limited time to act.
Additionally, given they did some public 'reach-out' posts (that wound up finding them the thing) there were theoretically others that could have tried to handle it via their own channels.
Per the YT video's 'sponsorship', I'll note that shipping a ~450 pound TV and ~150-200 pound stand overseas in general is not a cheap, or easily logistical task given the timeframe. Esp if it's on the 2nd floor of a building to start (can't just do a simple hand hydraulic lift for the hard parts.)
> There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
Overthinking it perhaps. Sony has a lot of divisions and it's hard to get live assistance from them even if you are a current user of their products, at least speaking from personal experience with a couple different lines.
-----
That said, the YT video drew things out way too much for drama's sake and it made me glad I have ad-free.
Arcade collectors are practically liquidating Japan of many valuable arcade cabinets and PCBs. Nobody cared about much of these items 10-15 years ago. The YouTube and Reddit subcultures have grown a new younger audience for retro gaming, who often have a lot of money to throw around buying up rare items. There are also IG accounts of folks in places like Dubai, who clearly have wealth, amassing large collections of Japanese retro game tech.
If Japan, Sony or any other individual wanted to save this CRT for themselves, it would have been snatched up by now. The fact stands that the creator of the video is the only person on earth who did the detective work and put boots on the ground to make it their own rare CRT. Good work, I say!
It's interesting that they say they had such a hard time finding help, I have never heard about this entire endeavor until now, and the video mentions them desiring contacts at Sony with the display division, which I happen to have, and would have helped if I had known about it.
It's not too late! I recommend that you reach out to him on Twitter or Facebook. If he really could secure that interview, I am sure he could release a follow-up video, or update his original video to add a final chapter.
Eh, what standard are we holding people to? You ever shop for a used car(maybe even some rare spec of a sports car)? When you finally found a good deal did you shout in the streets and put out an ad to make sure no one else is around to make a greater offer?
~~Plus, who plays out a mental moral dilemma with a historical museum any time they want to buy something?~~
Actually I think this might be a false equivalency OP, because this isn't just any old used car. I think it's fair to at least stop and question whether this should go to some greater good or not.
I also had an odd feeling avout several other enthusiasts travelling to the guy's place presumably at their own cost, spending a lot of time to repair / tune up the thing, and in the end, our hero just adds it to his collection.
If I were passionate about something, I would fly in to play with it and tweak it on my own dime. Did you get the impression that somebody was swindled in this process?
Just knowing it still exists and is owned by someone as passionate as the YTer would be enough for me. And the possibility of paying visits and playing classic games on it.
What got me was the four-player game where each player effectively had their own 21" monitor. Mind-boggling.
Conservation or not, that TV has been given out by its owner so there is no theft involved. Neither has it been moved out of the country by colons or illegaly.
And it is a damn TV. A big one for sure but it isn't Moctezuma II headdress nor are those Devatas carved from Banteay Srei cambodian temple.
This example is what makes much of the "stealing" claim bogus, both for this and many artifacts. The Japanese owner wanted it gone and considered it trash. It wasn't some beloved item. Even Sony didn't care.
And so much of what is considered "stolen" was given away by someone in that culture as trash.
I have no information that you don't, but it looks to be blogspam of it -- it always refers to Shank as a separate party, it doesn't claim to have had any involvement in what happened.
As a child in the early 90s (maybe 1993), I nearly got crushed under one of these trying to connect my Nintendo to the AV cables on the back. It was against the wall in an alcove and the only way to access was to rotate it slightly and lean it forward to reach the connections on the back (which I couldn’t see, only feel). It tipped off the shelf and onto me, partially supported by the shelf and partially by me.
I didn’t want to get in trouble because it was so nice, so I just kind of squatted there pinned under it trying to lever it back. Thankfully my dad walked by, noticed, and kept into action. And here I still am today.
As the video mentions this model is so incredibly rare that previously there were only two known photos of retail units in the wild - and one of those photos was of the very unit that the guy in this story eventually managed to acquire.
The other photo is a mystery, nobody knows who took it or whether that unit is still intact.
Wow, goes to show how people are gullible to their "memories", never stopping to question them. This could explain the "communism was better" ramblings you get from old farts quite well...
I... just don't get it. What I remember from my young is not that much but it all definitely happened and does not need any artistic license.
Crushing was probably not the only danger you were in there - even if the thing would have just fallen and imploded next to you, that could have been pretty dangerous as well...
It is very difficult to break a CRT from the front, even deliberately. The neck is fragile but a CRT TV falling on its face (which is what tends to happen as they're very front-heavy) is far more likely to break the case or the boards inside than the tube.
I also almost got killed by one too. I was a baby playing around it, the unit was a communmist era black and white monstruosity 30 something inch and it sit on a floral lace and that on a very smooth wood table, the cable was dangling around it and plugged in front of it, I pulled by the power cable and made the tv slide until it fell of the right by me.
Am I overthinking it or is this blog post heavily AI-edited? The way the text is very similar to what modern GPT models would give you.
This paragraph was the last straw that made me think so:
>This story isn’t just about a TV; it’s about preserving history and celebrating the people who make it possible. Shank’s journey serves as a reminder of the lengths we’ll go to honor the past and connect through shared enthusiasm.
Also
>Shank Mods’ video is not just a celebration of retro tech but a love letter to the communities that keep these technologies alive. From the daring extraction to the meticulous restoration, every moment of this story is a testament to what can be achieved with determination and collaboration.
> "Shank Mods’ video is not just a celebration of retro tech but a love letter to the communities that keep these technologies alive. From the daring extraction to the meticulous restoration, every moment of this story is a testament to what can be achieved with determination and collaboration"
Not just a X but a Y
From the A to the B
GPT LOVES this kind of verbose garbage - it's the non-fiction equivalent of purple prose and reads like a 6th grader desperately trying to pad out their MLA-formatted 5 paragraph essay.
> The fact that some people can’t tell is actually scary.
It really is, and I see more and more of it in Reddit comments, and even at work.
I had some obvious AI writing sent to me by a lawyer on the other side of a dispute recently and I was pissed - I don't mind if you want to use it to help you (I do myself), but at least have the decency to edit so it doesn't read like ChatGPT trash.
If you're below-average, AI writing looks great. If you've above, it looks horrible. That goes not just for writing but anything else created by AI --- it's the average of its training data, which is also going to be average in quality.
What's worse is that this obvious AI writing is going to become a part of new AI training datasets, as it gets scraped, so we'll end up with some kind of ouroborus of AI slop.
It's in the third person and is frequently mentioning the third party in most sections and it appears (to me) to be written by that same party. The third party is presented as a human entity but not particularly human. There's nothing in the article about that entity which one should expect in such a format.
Feels like it's written as if it's a press release. Normally a press release would have notes for editors with biography and additional info. Feels off.
You can clearly see lots of similarities, especially the "Why it matters" section. Of course the substack post fed the actual video transcript to the model to write or refine the contents, but it's still very obvious.
I really enjoy reading this blog in general, but I do agree with you that it absolutely has that AI-assisted-writing style.
Looking at this and other posts, they often feel like if one prompted ChatGPT with something like "please write a timeline of the Walkman". I think they may want to dial it back for a more natural feeling.
It has that "stretched to maximize Youtube engagement revenue" feel.
There is apparently an SEO advantage to "long form" Youtube videos. You also have to hit 4,000 viewing hours per year before Google pays out.[1]
So there's an incentive to bloat videos with background material. That's why so many Youtube videos have a collection of stock photos and clips at the beginning giving a history of something, before they get to the new thing.
Now we need local crap blockers which will delete that crap. Good AI problem.
Yes, I immediately noticed that it's likely AI written and I thought that this really discounts an otherwise great story.
What I mean is that if the author does not put in the least effort to make it not AI sounding, how much does the author actually care about his/her content?
I see lots of passages that scream AI. Some selections:
> Retailing for $40,000 (over $100,000 today), it pushed the boundaries of what CRTs could achieve, offering professional-grade performance.
"Professional-grade" huh? There are professional TV watchers? It's not a studio reference monitor. It's just a regular TV but bigger.
> The urgency was palpable.
Where does one palpate urgency?
> Against the odds, Abebe found the CRT still in place, fully operational, and confirmed that the restaurant owner was looking for a way to get rid of it.
We establish later that it wasn't fully operational at all. And what odds? We didn't establish any. The TV is rare, and we later establish that the original owner knew it.
> What follows is a race against time to coordinate the TV's extraction, involving logistics experts, a moving team, and a mountain of paperwork.
> Abebe, the man who made the rescue possible, turned out to be the director of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon. His selfless dedication during the final months of the game’s development exemplifies the power of shared passions.
Cool detail, but irrelevant, even if followed by breathless admiration fluff.
> This story isn’t just about a TV; it’s about preserving history and celebrating the people who make it possible.
I don't recall anybody being celebrated. They got a cool TV. Cool.
I had one of the 36” Sony Wega Trinitron CRTs for years. Weighed well over 200lbs, which combined with the shape, made it a really “fun” thing to move.
The geometry was a killer when trying to move it because you couldn't wrap your arms around the thing. When faced with moving one by myself down the stairs to my apartment, I was forced to (carefully) roll it downhill.
When I was about 14, my mom got a new TV and I got the 27” Trinitron. I was simultaneously excited and terrified. I would have to move it.
My arms were too short to get around it. Somehow we made it down the basement stairs without help. By “we” I mean the TV and I. I got it across the room and onto the TV stand.
33 year old me would definitely need an Advil after.
I'll add my voice. I bought one from a friend for $36 (a dollar an inch) while waiting for flatscreens to come down in price. It bent my TV stand and I ended up keeping it a couple extra years because I didn't want to move it out of the house. Eventually we put it on Craigslist for free (with a warning about the weight) and two very large men showed up and carried it away.
Me too. It was an anchor. I had a couple of movers nearly drop it once. Getting it out of my house was a great accomplishment (I felt like a great weight had been lifted). At the time it was a definite improvement in video quality (IIRC my first real 1080p, coupled with HDTV) and I still find it crazy I can buy larger, better screens that are lighter and cheaper. Clearly, you can scale up tubes but it's just not going to win against LCD or LED.
It wasn't actually 1080p but 1080i, meaning it interlaced each field. It worked well for CRTs because of the way they operated, but it is a different standard.
I use a 55" 4k curved TV. The upper portion is too high to do computer work but I move unused windows up there. It's on a desk opposite the couch so I also use it as a TV.
Ignore the other commenter, there is no such thing as too big as long as there are enough pixels!
Fun fact: it had a special "anamorphic" mode. You know how widescreen movies on 4:3 displays are cropped? Someone had the idea that maybe instead of cropping them, you could use all of the resolution must just direct the electron beam to display it on middle 3/4 (vertically) of the screen. There, an extra 33% better vertical resolution and brightness for free?
There weren't a whole lot of DVDs mastered that way, but when you could get one, and your DVD player supported it, and your TV supported it, it looked freaking fantastic.
32 is enough that you need to rotate your head if you want to see all parts of the screen. I have a 32" 4k screen and its a bit annoying, I get cricks in my neck, so I tend to only really use a centre 1080p sized area on the screen, with my winXP era wallpaper showing through around it.
Tbh I'll prefer 27" 4k.
43 might be a bit better because you can move the screen a little farther away.
I found a 32" on the curb, heaved it into the back of my truck, and got it home.
It worked great, I thought about how much of a pain it would be to drag into the house and up the stairs to the gaming room, and decided I'd just find a 19-27" to use for old consoles.
I had the 32" high-def XBR model (it did 1080i which WRAL in Raleigh was broadcasting). It weighed 211 pounds, of which about 3/4 of it was the front glass. Like the other poster, when it was time for it to leave, I had to carefully slide it down the stairs on some cardboard. Just too heavy and awkward to carry.
I bought it at Best Buy. They had put it off on an aisle and not next to all the new LCD and Plasma TVs they were selling. Likely because it had a much better picture than those early flat-screens and was $1200 vs the others that started at $1800 and quickly went up from there.
We inherited one of these from my in-laws, it was a beast. After about a year, it finally died so my son and I loaded it up and took it to Best Buy for free recycling. (this was about 15 years ago.) When the clerk come out with a trolley to collect the tv, we offered to help, but he said he would get it and that was that. I was impressed.
My BIL had one of those. He asked me to help bring in his new bazillion inch LCD so I drove over. Turned out the first task was to move that old CRT into his basement...
Amazing story, got sucked into watching the whole video despite not knowing much about the hobby. A random little bit stood out to me, when the president of Sony made a personal promise to fix the TV after it stopped working (a while back). Now that's dedication to quality and customer satisfaction.
It's a little sad to see CRTs withering into nothingness. The devices just don't last. The glass is obviously fragile. But even if you keep it padded and safe, the coils of the deflection yoke are thin magnet wire operated at high voltage, and after decades of thermal cycles and the resulting rubbing eventually the barrier between two drops enough and they short, catastrophically.
And you can't really repair that in any feasible way. There are hundreds or thousands of windings, which have to duplicate exactly the configuration from the factory (and then probably be calibrated by processes that are lost to history). A dead CRT is just a useless hunk of glass, forever.
> But even if you keep it padded and safe, the coils of the deflection yoke are thin magnet wire operated at high voltage
The coils in the deflection yoke are run at 24-100V.
The acceleration voltage is the high voltage one.
> There are hundreds or thousands of windings, which have to duplicate exactly the configuration from the factory (and then probably be calibrated by processes that are lost to history).
Tubes are very not exact compared to solid state devices— to replace a deflection yoke, it has to be of similar deflection angle and inductance, all the rest of the adjustment has to be done anyway.
It’s hard but pales in comparison to the impossibility manufacturing a new CRT vacuum tube.
> The coils in the deflection yoke are run at 24-100V.
They aren't the kV scale killer voltages, no. My memory was closer to 200, but sure. That's still "high voltage" for magnet wire, and a short will rapidly destroy the coil. I've had three different monitors go to that kind of failure. One day you turn them on and... nope.
CRT phosphor chemistry was very sophisticated and mature, and there were many phosphors to choose from by the 1970s depending on the application. Maybe someday a flat panel screen will be produced with some warm and slow characteristics of CRTs without the drawbacks.
Like 2/3 of the weight is that front glass. It's _thick_.
When I was younger and dumber (well, at least younger) I tried breaking one. Took a running swing at the screen with a wrecking bar. It bounced off and all I got for my trouble was a sore shoulder.
In the YouTube video they explain that CRTs have a layer of safety glass in front of the actual screen to protect viewers in the event that the screen implodes. You were actually trying to break through multiple pieces of glass! I've taken a crowbar to a broken CRT before for fun and can confirm that it takes a lot more effort than one might think.
The fun way to do it is to pull the deflection yoke off and shear the neck of the tube. I was pretty far away the only time I experienced somebody do that, but it sounded like a rifle round.
I believe the thick front (leaded) glass is to try to block the produced x-rays.
People were starting to get scared of the cancer those xrays might produce, and I suspect CRT manufacturers predicted a huge court settlement for cancers caused by TV's with insufficient shielding.
So far, it seems that hasn't materialized - not, I suspect because those xrays didn't cause cancer, but because it is simply impossible to produce any kind of evidence of cause/effect.
Another day, another LLM generated blog post on the front page.
I'm not opposed to AI tools on principle, but why does this article exist?
It's not because the author had anything interesting to say. It's not because the AI had anything interesting to say. It's a summary of a Youtube video because... clicks or something.
Counterpoint (as someone who watched the 30 mins video originally): some people may not have time to watch said video and can read the AI-generated summary quicker and then decide if the video is worth watching.
The glass optics on these and other large screen CRTs is something that always impress[es|ed] me. From the older screens that had more of a circular image all the way to these "flat" CRTs, there were lots of improvements in everything except weight. It took a lot of glass to get the flat front, but was far from flat on the inside.
It seems this TV is more rare than special. Sony was again making up to 42" models in the 2000s. Not quite at 43" however those were 1080i, 16:9 flat screen CRTs with a plethora of analog and digital ports in the rear.
The later CRT models you are describing here are not coveted by retro gaming enthusiasts (which the people involved here clearly are) since the digital nature of them meant they introduced a ton of processing that negates the near zero input lag all earlier analog CRTs benefit from. Many of the later digital models can actually be had for much cheaper these days than the full analog ones despite looking more powerful on spec sheets.
I am not a CRT collector, but as a NES dev I keep a small 13" around and use it reqularly for dev purposes and for showing off my games at conventions. 13" is the perfect size in my opinion. Does not take up too much space and is easy to lug around to shows.
I fear the day that mine dies because small 13" models in good condition are getting harder to find for a decent price. Seems like some people caught on and are selling them on FB Marketplace for high prices and advertising them as "Retro Gaming TVs".
I used to have a Samsung 27” HDTV CRT. I think I brought it, in the late ‘90s. Back then, LCD/plasma monitors of similar size, cost thousands (my, how times have changed).
Big, heavy honker, and suffered from chronic fringing, around the edges.
I gave it away, in the mid-oughts, which required a pickup truck, and two strong men.
I don’t miss it, at all.
My job was for an imaging company, and we had a massive HDTV CRT in our showroom. I think it was around 32”. It was a Sony. That was in the early ‘90s.
There is mostly one thing I still remember about tube TV and one reason why I', so happy they are gone. It's the high pitch noise they make. Even now over 40 I'm still able to hear it. Can't imagine how it must be if everything is bigger.
My first college roommate brought the largest CRT I've ever seen. It looks a LOT like this one. He passed away this last year, otherwise I'd ask him how large it was.
It took FIVE adults to carry up the two stories to our apartment! But man, that thing was awesome back in 2007.
CRTs used to be cheap because they were made in high volumes and had a large ecosystem of parts suppliers. If you were to make a CRT today, you'd need to fabricate a lot more parts yourself, and the low volume production would require charging very high prices. You'd also have to deal with more stringent environmental laws, as CRTs contain many toxins, including large amounts of lead.
It's much cheaper to emulate CRT effects so that they work with any display technology. Modern LCDs and OLEDs have fast enough response times that you can get most CRT effects (and omit the ones you dislike, such as refresh flicker). And you don't have to deal with a heavy, bulky display that can implode and send leaded glass everywhere.
Unfortunately, the flicker is essential for the excellent motion quality CRTs are renowned for. If the image on the screen stays constant while you eyes are moving, the image formed on your retina is blurred. Blurbusters has a good explanation:
CRT phosphors light up extremely brightly when the electron beam hits them, then exponentially decay. Non-phosphor-based display technologies can attempt to emulate this by strobing a backlight or lighting the pixel for only a fraction of the frame time, but none can match this exponential decay characteristic of a genuine phosphor. I'd argue that the phosphor decay is the most important aspect of the CRT look, more so than any static image quality artifacts.
There is such a thing as a laser-powered phosphor display, which uses moving mirrors to scan lasers over the phosphors instead of an electron beam, but AFAIK this is only available as modules intended for building large outdoor displays:
Looking at that Dallibor Farney company and how hard it is for them to get new nixie tubes to be a sustainable business, I shudder to think how much more effort it would be to get new, high quality CRTs off the ground. It would be cool though. A good start might be bringing back tube rebuilding more widely.
I think it's one of these things that people like to talk about in the abstract, but how many people really want a big CRT taking up space in their home?
Modern OLED displays are superior in every way and CRT aesthetics can be replicated in software, so a more practical route would be probably to build some "pass-through" device that adds shadow mask, color bleed, and what-have-you. A lot cheaper than restarting the production of cathode-ray tubes.
I recently bought a big CRT to take up space in my home.
Yes, of course, "objectively" speaking, an OLED display is superior. It has much better blacks and just better colors with a much wider gamut in general. But there's just something about the way a CRT looks - the sharp contrast between bleeding colors and crisp subpixels, the shadows that all fade to gray, the refresh flicker, the small jumps the picture sometimes makes when the decoding circuit misses an HBLANK - that's hard to replicate just in software. I've tried a lot of those filters, and it just doesn't come out the same. And even if it did look as nice, it would never be as cool.
Retro gaming has to be retro. And to be honest, the CRT plays Netflix better as well. It doesn't make you binge, you see? Because it's a little bit awful, and the screen is too small, and you can't make out the subtitles if you sit more than two meters away from the screen, and you can't make out anything if you sit closer than that.
Does that mean we have to restart the production of cathode-ray tubes? Hopefully not. But you can't contain the relics of an era in a pass-through device from jlcpcb.
> Modern OLED displays are superior in every way and CRT aesthetics can be replicated in software, so a more practical route would be probably to build some "pass-through" device that adds shadow mask, color bleed, and what-have-you.
OLEDs are still behind on motion clarity, but getting close. We finally have 480 Hz OLEDs, and seem to be on track to the 1000Hz needed to match CRTs.
The Retrotink 4k also exists as a standalone box to emulate CRTs and is really great. The main problem being it's HDMI 2.0 output, so you need to choose between 4k60 output with better resolution to emulate CRT masks/scan lines, or 1440p120 for better motion clarity.
Something 4k500 or 4k1000 is likely needed to really replace CRTs completely.
Really hoping by the time 1000 Hz displays are common we do end up with some pass-through box that can fully emulate everything. Emulating full rolling CRT gun scan out should be possible at that refresh rate, which would be amazing.
You should probably watch one of the old films about how CRTs were made. It's not a simple process and basically would require setting up a whole factory to mass produce them.
Hobbyist-level production of monochrome TV tubes is possible, but a big effort. Some of the early television restorers have tried.[1] Color, though, is far more complicated. A monochrome CRT just has a phosphor coating inside the glass. A color tube has photo-etched patterns of dots aligned with a metal shadow mask.
CRT rebuilding, where the neck is cut off, a new electron gun installed, and the tube re-sealed and evacuated, used to be part of the TV repair industry. That can be done in a small-scale workshop.
There's a commercial business which still restores CRTs.[2] Most of their work is restoring CRTs for old military avionics systems. But there are a few Sony and Panasonic models for which they have parts and can do restoration.
A practical thing about costs is likely shipping. There aren't many consumer products that would be more costly to move around, so you're looking at something as messy as a fridge to sell at the high end.
I imagine one could target smaller CRTs as an idea though.
I know there have been conversations here about simulating crt subpixels on hidpi displays. There are some games that used subpixel rendering to achieve better antialiasing. With hidpi you at least have a chance of doing it well.
I worked for a stereo store in San Francisco in the late-90s. We didn't have to deliver these, but we did have to deliver the 36" Sony XBRs, which weighed over 200 lbs and were just a delight to drag up 4 flights of stairs with two people.
OMG. I have one of the original SGI 24” 1080p flat screen CRTs (went with the onyx2) in storage. One wonders what that’s worth :) fundamentally a better tube ..
Oh interesting. I'm like 90% sure my shop teacher had one of these!
He had a giant ass CRT in his home (took up like half the living room in his tiny house). He got it from a facilities friend at a university that he was friendly with in like ~00s. They were getting rid of all these because flat-screens and projectors were much more in vogue at the time and these behemoths were simply dated.
In 2006 or so I bought a house at the top of the real estate market (whereupon it quickly crashed and we enjoyed the wild ride of refinancing and property value swings until we finally unloaded the place at cost - at least it was a really nice neighborhood).
The real estate agents, as a token of their thanks for allowing them to claw back 6% of an outrageously priced house, gave us back some of the money in the form of a $2500 gift card to BestBuy.
Of course, I immediately used it to buy a state of the art Samsung DLP rear projection TV with more inputs than you could shake a stick at including then new HDMI and VGA. I still have that TV, it looks pretty good for 720p and 46" or so, and has a chromecast dongle permanently stuck in its HDMI port to make it useable. It works amazing as an impromptu VGA monitor, and old games console system as well. The cost, with stand, was something like $2400 plus some change and I was left with a few dollars at the end.
I wanted to finish off the gift card so I looked around the store. There, off in the corner was an absolutely massive Sony CRT tv with a yellow sticker on the side. "$1.72". I gasped.
"Is that TV really $1.72?"
"Yup, the future is these DLP or these Plasma TVs, we're getting rid of our CRTs"
Instant purchase, closed out the card, set the delivery dates for both and waited.
A week later two guys showed up "we got two TVs, one of them if fcking heavy, where do we put 'em?"
The DLP went of course into the living room without any fuss, but the Sony...well that was the heavy one. It took two guys, working hard, to move all 39" of it up a flight of stairs into an upper bedroom. It sat in its place until we sold the house and decided to move. That's when I learned what a monster it was.
For absolutely foolhardy reasons, I decided to junk it, so I had to take it to the curb. I tried to lift it. No go. I was like trying to lift Mjolnir or free Excalibur. I had a friend come over. It took us about an hour to move it down that flight of stairs and drag* it on piece of plastic to the curb.
The trash people, even prepped for an unusually heavy pickup, had to make three attempts at it before they could get it. During that time it was at the curb, two cars stopped and tried to pick it up before giving up.
Looking up the specs now, it looks like it was probably somewhere north of 300 lbs (136 kg). I see on Ebay that today it's probably worth around $600-$1000. But damn, if it wouldn't cost that much to move it within the same county. I still have a 24" I'll keep until I'll die for old gaming reasons, but man, that other monster was too big.
A guy at work the other day moved a 72" TV by himself, like it was nothing. There's a reason some tech falls away.
When vacuum tubes have high voltages applied to them, they generate x rays. The glass envelope is impregnated with lead so as to reduce the amount of x ray radiation that is emitted. The primary source of x ray radiation from TVs had been from their other components other than the tube itself but the tube was still a source of ionizing radiation.
The whole time I was reading this article, I just wanted to know the history of the soba restaurant that was being demolished. I bet there’s an interesting story there too.
tbh probably not. There are a lot of soba restaurants, and a lot of demolitions. Buildings are typically demolished after 20-30 years to make way for new ones.
The problem with ICE isn't being able to buy them, it's buying them in huge quantities. You'll probably be able to buy them for sports cars or some other low volume commodity.
Of the existing plans to ban the purchase of gas vehicles in the future, do any have exemptions for low volume production of enthusiast vehicles? California's plan (which 17 other states follow) seems to only have exemptions for heavy duty vehicles.[1]
My guess is that enthusiasts will get around these laws by modifying old vehicle frames. New emissions and safety standards tend to grandfather old vehicles in, so as long as the VIN says it was made before a certain date, you can avoid having curtain airbags, backup cameras, tire pressure monitoring systems, electronic stability control, etc. (There requirements are why new cars have so many computers in them.)
It's a well done storytelling, but two odd thoughts/questions about it...
As I was watching it, there was the drama of whether it would be saved from imminent destruction, and it actually seemed unlikely that they could, but their approach was to be... secretive about it.
It turned out that they wanted it for themselves, and didn't that create a conflict of interest? By keeping it quiet, they increased the chance that they would obtain it themselves (and the YouTube story to tell about it), but increased the likelihood that the TV would be lost entirely (because other efforts wouldn't be brought)?
Fortunately the gamble worked out, and the TV wasn't destroyed.
There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
I applaud preserving this rare artifact, and compliment the storytelling, but did have these couple odd thoughts.
From the interview with the TV's original owner, this seemed like his ideal outcome.
The owner had seen discussions of the TV online and knew it was a big deal. But he still couldn't get rid of it until this guy came along.
The owner even said he wanted the TV to go to someone who would use, appreciate, and take care of it. The video clearly demonstrates all of the above. If the TV ended up in some museum, forever powered off, that would be even more tragic in some ways.
I didn't get the impression that anyone was bamboozled or cheated.
> But he still couldn't get rid of it until this guy came along
Yep. There are always droves of "it belongs in a museum" crowds, but when you ask if they want it there is only silence.
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> There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
I didn't read that as Sony being pissed off by. Occam's razor says it's more likely to be your regular corporate dysfunction. Japanese corporations do seem as a whole to be more concerned about preserving their history than US ones, and Sony did have a small museum called ソニー歴史資料館 (the Sony Archive), but that Museum closed down in 2018[1]. Meanwhile, Toyota has six different Museum dedicated to its history and the history of the industries it participated in (including textile — Toyota was a major textile machinery manufacturer before it was an automotive company).
Sony still seems to display some of the archive's content in its headquarters, but I'm unclear how much of it. In general, closing the museum shows that preservation is perhaps important, but not very high on their priority list.
But even if preservation was a top goal, you still can't expect every employee on the PR department to be dedicated to that. PR departments are generally more concerned with current events, and may view such an interview as a distraction that isn't worth their time.
[1] https://nakamura.yokohama/sony-history-museum-36870.html
With respect to keeping quiet about it: it may not have been selfless, but it may also have drawn so much attention to it that the owner of the set wouldn't have wanted to deal with it. After all, he had already dealt with one person who didn't follow through.
As for the Sony not talking bit, it can probably be chalked up to corporate policy. Large organizations rarely let staff speak on matters when it may be construed as being speaking for the corporation.
True. Although, would a call to a museum of Japanese technology/industry, or to Sony HQ, have had a better chance to preserve it? (More likely to save it, less likely for it to be destroyed in handling and shipping.)
As well as keep it in country?
Perhaps the current owners will be reached by a museum, and decide to repatriate it. I imagine that the right museum home could be a win for everyone.
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They posted on Twitter to find people who wanted to get involved
> With no time to lose, Shank posted a call for help on Twitter, hoping someone in Osaka could investigate. Enter Abebe, a stranger who volunteered to check the location.
The restaurant was about to be demolished.
I don’t see any problems with this process or outcome. I think you’re comparing this outcome to an imagined alternative reality (going into a museum) that wasn’t even an option.
Exactly. The idea alone is worthless. The guy in the video has the idea and executed on it.
Ultimately, Indiana Jones does not exist. Only collectors.
If I was in charge of a big corporation that still made displays, I would not want to preserve CRTs because it could hurt the narrative that modern technology is strictly superior to old technology. If people thought about CRTs in a positive light they might realize that no modern display can match them in latency and motion quality when it comes to displaying 60fps content (as found in console and arcade games). I'd prefer that all CRTs were destroyed and forgotten.
I don’t think any large screen manufacturer would give a second thought to this, the average consumer will still want the 4K, HDR, flat screen that is wall mountable.
The market the CRTs would steal is practically non existent, surely. I’d love this in my house for retro gaming purposes, but I’d still have my LG C/Gx or Samsung N95x or whatever the newest, fanciest models are for movies and modern use cases.
As much I appreciated the experience of no input latency CRTs they always gave me headaches after some hours due to the refresh rate flicker. LCDs were an immense relief even despite having very noticeable input latency for the same Hz (eg: cursor movement, which one gets accustomed to).
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There's no need for this. If you want to make sure consumers don't want to return to CRTs, all you have to do are the following:
1) point out how heavy they are. Give them a facsimile to lift to show them, after making them sign a waiver that they may permanently injure their back doing so.
2) show them how deep they are, and how far away from the wall they must sit because of this.
3) show them two power meters, showing the power consumption of a CRT and a modern LCD for comparison. Also show the actual costs for that power, and how much typical usage of these displays will cost per day and per year.
The last one alone should dissuade most people from wanting to go backwards.
Most people don't give two shits about latency, and modern LCDs with >= 120 fps capability already exist.
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There is no way CRTs would be a competition to modern displays. Modern displays are strictly superior for all practical purposes. The microsecond latencies don't matter in practice, we are getting to the point where even esports pros won't get significant benefit compared to modern gaming displays, which are well beyond 60Hz. Some CRT monitors could do more (like 180Hz at low resolution), but not TVs.
The only thing CRTs are really better for is for content that is designed for CRTs, i.e. oldschool video games. And of course, that's what they are demonstrating. But it is just about giving the right context to historical video games.
I’d compare this to large format film cameras. By raw resolution, large format film cameras are still far and above what is achievable digitally. Yet, of course, no one would argue that they pose a threat to the practicality and efficiency of digital, and few people appreciate/care about/need so much resolution.
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I know I moved into the LCD monitor era kicking and screaming because the CRTs I used with my computers were far superior for text sharpness and didn't cause me near the eye-strain when doing long programming sessions.
Good point TBH.
not really true anymore as the latest oled tech surpasses crt in almost every spec. And the spec it does not the difference is detectable by devices not human senses so practically makes no difference.
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> conflict of interest
(nit) Please don't use "conflict of interest" that way (casually). It should only apply to situations where there are actual legal or ethical obligations in opposition. Nobody owes the online CRT community anything.
Point understood, but do you think there's no obligations to communities or societies, other than those codified in law, contracts, or some (professional?) ethics?
If those other obligations existed, could we say "conflict of interest" about them, or is there a better term or phrasing?
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i don't get the skepticism, yes a youtuber did a thing but without them probably no one would have cared and the TV would've ended up destroyed in the rubble of the building
he even went to the lengths of calling up different CRT experts trying getting them to fix it
all this negativism just feels like older people being all "zoomers bad" because the medium is not what they prefer. maybe we should just be happy to pass the torch and glad that younger generations even have interest in this sort of thing
The negativity struck me as jealousy. I honestly don't get it though. The YouTuber went through significant effort to save a very cool artifact, and then shared it with the world via a well made video. Bravo I say!
The email he shared that he was sending to Sony was obnoxious “this is a chance for some wicked awesome free PR for Sony..” so it is kind of no wonder they stopped talking to him. Other than that, he never said he was doing it for the good of humanity or anything, he just wanted it and found a way to make it happen, I admire the pluck.
It might be pretty on the nose but I don't see why that would make them stop talking to him. Wouldn't that be the reason they'd approve a corporate interview in the first place? I doubt they'd do it for no reason
That’s not a conflict of interest, it’s just an interest
Quietly removed from the country but if they truly were worried about that then they only have themselves to blame.
Only giving value when something is already gone is kind of a toxic trait. It means you don't actually value it and you have other motives.
> It turned out that they wanted it for themselves, and didn't that create a conflict of interest? By keeping it quiet, they increased the chance that they would obtain it themselves (and the YouTube story to tell about it), but increased the likelihood that the TV would be lost entirely (because other efforts wouldn't be brought)?
Based on the timeline there was limited time to act.
Additionally, given they did some public 'reach-out' posts (that wound up finding them the thing) there were theoretically others that could have tried to handle it via their own channels.
Per the YT video's 'sponsorship', I'll note that shipping a ~450 pound TV and ~150-200 pound stand overseas in general is not a cheap, or easily logistical task given the timeframe. Esp if it's on the 2nd floor of a building to start (can't just do a simple hand hydraulic lift for the hard parts.)
> There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
Overthinking it perhaps. Sony has a lot of divisions and it's hard to get live assistance from them even if you are a current user of their products, at least speaking from personal experience with a couple different lines.
-----
That said, the YT video drew things out way too much for drama's sake and it made me glad I have ad-free.
Arcade collectors are practically liquidating Japan of many valuable arcade cabinets and PCBs. Nobody cared about much of these items 10-15 years ago. The YouTube and Reddit subcultures have grown a new younger audience for retro gaming, who often have a lot of money to throw around buying up rare items. There are also IG accounts of folks in places like Dubai, who clearly have wealth, amassing large collections of Japanese retro game tech.
If Japan, Sony or any other individual wanted to save this CRT for themselves, it would have been snatched up by now. The fact stands that the creator of the video is the only person on earth who did the detective work and put boots on the ground to make it their own rare CRT. Good work, I say!
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It's interesting that they say they had such a hard time finding help, I have never heard about this entire endeavor until now, and the video mentions them desiring contacts at Sony with the display division, which I happen to have, and would have helped if I had known about it.
It's not too late! I recommend that you reach out to him on Twitter or Facebook. If he really could secure that interview, I am sure he could release a follow-up video, or update his original video to add a final chapter.
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Oh god who cares!!
You’re overthinking it. Sony is no longer the same Sony.
Eh, what standard are we holding people to? You ever shop for a used car(maybe even some rare spec of a sports car)? When you finally found a good deal did you shout in the streets and put out an ad to make sure no one else is around to make a greater offer?
~~Plus, who plays out a mental moral dilemma with a historical museum any time they want to buy something?~~
Actually I think this might be a false equivalency OP, because this isn't just any old used car. I think it's fair to at least stop and question whether this should go to some greater good or not.
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I also had an odd feeling avout several other enthusiasts travelling to the guy's place presumably at their own cost, spending a lot of time to repair / tune up the thing, and in the end, our hero just adds it to his collection.
If I were passionate about something, I would fly in to play with it and tweak it on my own dime. Did you get the impression that somebody was swindled in this process?
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Just knowing it still exists and is owned by someone as passionate as the YTer would be enough for me. And the possibility of paying visits and playing classic games on it.
What got me was the four-player game where each player effectively had their own 21" monitor. Mind-boggling.
Getting a chance to work on this unique device is probably its own reward for them.
I agree. At the beginning I thought this was a conservation effort.
Turns out to be the modern equivalent of colonisers stealing local artefacts.
Why export this at all!?
Today I learned that carefully preserving an artefact that neither its owner nor anyone else in its origin country wanted = “colonizers stealing.”
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Conservation or not, that TV has been given out by its owner so there is no theft involved. Neither has it been moved out of the country by colons or illegaly.
And it is a damn TV. A big one for sure but it isn't Moctezuma II headdress nor are those Devatas carved from Banteay Srei cambodian temple.
This example is what makes much of the "stealing" claim bogus, both for this and many artifacts. The Japanese owner wanted it gone and considered it trash. It wasn't some beloved item. Even Sony didn't care.
And so much of what is considered "stolen" was given away by someone in that culture as trash.
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Here's the (fantastic) YouTube video that this is a recap of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk
Was this done by the same person as made the video, or is it blogspam of it? (I'm asking because people are complaining about it elsewhere).
I have no information that you don't, but it looks to be blogspam of it -- it always refers to Shank as a separate party, it doesn't claim to have had any involvement in what happened.
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Here's the real one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk
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Such a well done video, thanks for sharing.
I even happily watched a very well executed sponsor ad.
A similar but not as large (merely 37") CRT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o7R8oJEZhY
Thanks, really good story. It unfolds like an Indiana Jones movie for priceless antique CRTs.
As a child in the early 90s (maybe 1993), I nearly got crushed under one of these trying to connect my Nintendo to the AV cables on the back. It was against the wall in an alcove and the only way to access was to rotate it slightly and lean it forward to reach the connections on the back (which I couldn’t see, only feel). It tipped off the shelf and onto me, partially supported by the shelf and partially by me.
I didn’t want to get in trouble because it was so nice, so I just kind of squatted there pinned under it trying to lever it back. Thankfully my dad walked by, noticed, and kept into action. And here I still am today.
Are you saying as a child you were able to move and hold up a 400 lbs tv or are you talking about a smaller tv?
Tilting or rotating a TV is different from lifting it (especially if there isn't much friction by design?) and might require much less force.
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400 lbs -> 181 kg
Just curious, are you certain it was this model or just “a large CRT?”
This model retailed for $40,000 in the US (100K adjusted for inflation) and only a small number (reportedly in the low double digits) were ever sold.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/1990/03/06/to-get-the-big-pic...
As the video mentions this model is so incredibly rare that previously there were only two known photos of retail units in the wild - and one of those photos was of the very unit that the guy in this story eventually managed to acquire.
The other photo is a mystery, nobody knows who took it or whether that unit is still intact.
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I think most will infer "a large CRT" after reading OPs comment.
Wow, goes to show how people are gullible to their "memories", never stopping to question them. This could explain the "communism was better" ramblings you get from old farts quite well...
I... just don't get it. What I remember from my young is not that much but it all definitely happened and does not need any artistic license.
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Crushing was probably not the only danger you were in there - even if the thing would have just fallen and imploded next to you, that could have been pretty dangerous as well...
It is very difficult to break a CRT from the front, even deliberately. The neck is fragile but a CRT TV falling on its face (which is what tends to happen as they're very front-heavy) is far more likely to break the case or the boards inside than the tube.
I also almost got killed by one too. I was a baby playing around it, the unit was a communmist era black and white monstruosity 30 something inch and it sit on a floral lace and that on a very smooth wood table, the cable was dangling around it and plugged in front of it, I pulled by the power cable and made the tv slide until it fell of the right by me.
“One of these” $40,000 tvs, sure
Probably meant the category of CRT TVs, not that exact model.
Am I overthinking it or is this blog post heavily AI-edited? The way the text is very similar to what modern GPT models would give you.
This paragraph was the last straw that made me think so: >This story isn’t just about a TV; it’s about preserving history and celebrating the people who make it possible. Shank’s journey serves as a reminder of the lengths we’ll go to honor the past and connect through shared enthusiasm.
Also
>Shank Mods’ video is not just a celebration of retro tech but a love letter to the communities that keep these technologies alive. From the daring extraction to the meticulous restoration, every moment of this story is a testament to what can be achieved with determination and collaboration.
That last one is a huge tipoff:
> "Shank Mods’ video is not just a celebration of retro tech but a love letter to the communities that keep these technologies alive. From the daring extraction to the meticulous restoration, every moment of this story is a testament to what can be achieved with determination and collaboration"
Not just a X but a Y
From the A to the B
GPT LOVES this kind of verbose garbage - it's the non-fiction equivalent of purple prose and reads like a 6th grader desperately trying to pad out their MLA-formatted 5 paragraph essay.
Yes, it’s obvious AI writing. The fact that some people can’t tell is actually scary. Eventually (soon?) none of us will be able to tell.
> The fact that some people can’t tell is actually scary.
It really is, and I see more and more of it in Reddit comments, and even at work.
I had some obvious AI writing sent to me by a lawyer on the other side of a dispute recently and I was pissed - I don't mind if you want to use it to help you (I do myself), but at least have the decency to edit so it doesn't read like ChatGPT trash.
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If you're below-average, AI writing looks great. If you've above, it looks horrible. That goes not just for writing but anything else created by AI --- it's the average of its training data, which is also going to be average in quality.
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It won't be long before you'll have people who learn English with ChatGPT and then it'll get even more confusing.
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More likely it'll be normalised until we all start to think of it as normal and start to write like that ourselves.
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What's worse is that this obvious AI writing is going to become a part of new AI training datasets, as it gets scraped, so we'll end up with some kind of ouroborus of AI slop.
It's in the third person and is frequently mentioning the third party in most sections and it appears (to me) to be written by that same party. The third party is presented as a human entity but not particularly human. There's nothing in the article about that entity which one should expect in such a format.
Feels like it's written as if it's a press release. Normally a press release would have notes for editors with biography and additional info. Feels off.
I think you should try using GPT-4o for writing text - it'll generate blog posts in a style that's very similar to this.
Just a random example: https://chatgpt.com/share/6769d176-af34-8006-9c47-e40f1efca0...
You can clearly see lots of similarities, especially the "Why it matters" section. Of course the substack post fed the actual video transcript to the model to write or refine the contents, but it's still very obvious.
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I really enjoy reading this blog in general, but I do agree with you that it absolutely has that AI-assisted-writing style.
Looking at this and other posts, they often feel like if one prompted ChatGPT with something like "please write a timeline of the Walkman". I think they may want to dial it back for a more natural feeling.
It has that "stretched to maximize Youtube engagement revenue" feel. There is apparently an SEO advantage to "long form" Youtube videos. You also have to hit 4,000 viewing hours per year before Google pays out.[1] So there's an incentive to bloat videos with background material. That's why so many Youtube videos have a collection of stock photos and clips at the beginning giving a history of something, before they get to the new thing.
Now we need local crap blockers which will delete that crap. Good AI problem.
[1] https://www.72works.com/marketing/how-long-should-a-youtube-...
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Yes, I immediately noticed that it's likely AI written and I thought that this really discounts an otherwise great story.
What I mean is that if the author does not put in the least effort to make it not AI sounding, how much does the author actually care about his/her content?
My personal verdict is "not AI"
I see lots of passages that scream AI. Some selections:
> Retailing for $40,000 (over $100,000 today), it pushed the boundaries of what CRTs could achieve, offering professional-grade performance.
"Professional-grade" huh? There are professional TV watchers? It's not a studio reference monitor. It's just a regular TV but bigger.
> The urgency was palpable.
Where does one palpate urgency?
> Against the odds, Abebe found the CRT still in place, fully operational, and confirmed that the restaurant owner was looking for a way to get rid of it.
We establish later that it wasn't fully operational at all. And what odds? We didn't establish any. The TV is rare, and we later establish that the original owner knew it.
> What follows is a race against time to coordinate the TV's extraction, involving logistics experts, a moving team, and a mountain of paperwork.
> Abebe, the man who made the rescue possible, turned out to be the director of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon. His selfless dedication during the final months of the game’s development exemplifies the power of shared passions.
Cool detail, but irrelevant, even if followed by breathless admiration fluff.
> This story isn’t just about a TV; it’s about preserving history and celebrating the people who make it possible.
I don't recall anybody being celebrated. They got a cool TV. Cool.
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It does seem strange, but there's a decent chance the author is ESL or just has an unusual writing style
100% AI drivel.
You take the video transcript, ask ChatGPT to write a short blogpost about it, and this is what you get.
it reads fine to me
This is a great story, but why does content that is clearly LLM-generated continually make it to the HN front page?
Sir this is a subReddit
I had one of the 36” Sony Wega Trinitron CRTs for years. Weighed well over 200lbs, which combined with the shape, made it a really “fun” thing to move.
The geometry was a killer when trying to move it because you couldn't wrap your arms around the thing. When faced with moving one by myself down the stairs to my apartment, I was forced to (carefully) roll it downhill.
Relatable!
When I was about 14, my mom got a new TV and I got the 27” Trinitron. I was simultaneously excited and terrified. I would have to move it.
My arms were too short to get around it. Somehow we made it down the basement stairs without help. By “we” I mean the TV and I. I got it across the room and onto the TV stand.
33 year old me would definitely need an Advil after.
I'll add my voice. I bought one from a friend for $36 (a dollar an inch) while waiting for flatscreens to come down in price. It bent my TV stand and I ended up keeping it a couple extra years because I didn't want to move it out of the house. Eventually we put it on Craigslist for free (with a warning about the weight) and two very large men showed up and carried it away.
Me too. It was an anchor. I had a couple of movers nearly drop it once. Getting it out of my house was a great accomplishment (I felt like a great weight had been lifted). At the time it was a definite improvement in video quality (IIRC my first real 1080p, coupled with HDTV) and I still find it crazy I can buy larger, better screens that are lighter and cheaper. Clearly, you can scale up tubes but it's just not going to win against LCD or LED.
It wasn't actually 1080p but 1080i, meaning it interlaced each field. It worked well for CRTs because of the way they operated, but it is a different standard.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FD_Trinitron/WEGA
27 inch Wega here, dating myself.
Mom: "Dont sit too close to that thing"
Fast forward 20 years, a 27 inch monitor is right up on my face, contemplating a 32 or 43.
> contemplating a 32 or 43
Definitely a 32. 43 is a bit much.
Edit: Unless you're an office manager and plan on watching football most of the day.
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I use a 55" 4k curved TV. The upper portion is too high to do computer work but I move unused windows up there. It's on a desk opposite the couch so I also use it as a TV.
Ignore the other commenter, there is no such thing as too big as long as there are enough pixels!
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I had that same one.
Fun fact: it had a special "anamorphic" mode. You know how widescreen movies on 4:3 displays are cropped? Someone had the idea that maybe instead of cropping them, you could use all of the resolution must just direct the electron beam to display it on middle 3/4 (vertically) of the screen. There, an extra 33% better vertical resolution and brightness for free?
There weren't a whole lot of DVDs mastered that way, but when you could get one, and your DVD player supported it, and your TV supported it, it looked freaking fantastic.
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32 is enough that you need to rotate your head if you want to see all parts of the screen. I have a 32" 4k screen and its a bit annoying, I get cricks in my neck, so I tend to only really use a centre 1080p sized area on the screen, with my winXP era wallpaper showing through around it.
Tbh I'll prefer 27" 4k.
43 might be a bit better because you can move the screen a little farther away.
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I have a 40, it's great. Fewer pixels and width than my previous 3x 27" 4k setup, but more height.
I had a 36" RCA. https://lowendmac.com/2019/rca-mm36100-amazing-under-the-rad... 190 pounds. It could do 800x600. The Dreamcast with a VGA adapter looked incredible on it.
I found a 32" on the curb, heaved it into the back of my truck, and got it home.
It worked great, I thought about how much of a pain it would be to drag into the house and up the stairs to the gaming room, and decided I'd just find a 19-27" to use for old consoles.
Ended up selling it on Craigslist for $250.
I had the 32" high-def XBR model (it did 1080i which WRAL in Raleigh was broadcasting). It weighed 211 pounds, of which about 3/4 of it was the front glass. Like the other poster, when it was time for it to leave, I had to carefully slide it down the stairs on some cardboard. Just too heavy and awkward to carry.
I bought it at Best Buy. They had put it off on an aisle and not next to all the new LCD and Plasma TVs they were selling. Likely because it had a much better picture than those early flat-screens and was $1200 vs the others that started at $1800 and quickly went up from there.
We inherited one of these from my in-laws, it was a beast. After about a year, it finally died so my son and I loaded it up and took it to Best Buy for free recycling. (this was about 15 years ago.) When the clerk come out with a trolley to collect the tv, we offered to help, but he said he would get it and that was that. I was impressed.
Me too, I loved that thing. One of the first things I saved up for when I started earning my own money, so it was extra special.
I had the fully "decked out" version with better speakers, two tuners (picture in picture or two pictures side by side), and tons of other features.
Glorious picture quality, and the tube was completely flat (but still very deep, of course).
My BIL had one of those. He asked me to help bring in his new bazillion inch LCD so I drove over. Turned out the first task was to move that old CRT into his basement...
my wife just got an enterprise grade treadmill (used from a fitness center) that weighs 600 lbs. moving that thing around is a nightmare.
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Amazing story, got sucked into watching the whole video despite not knowing much about the hobby. A random little bit stood out to me, when the president of Sony made a personal promise to fix the TV after it stopped working (a while back). Now that's dedication to quality and customer satisfaction.
It's a little sad to see CRTs withering into nothingness. The devices just don't last. The glass is obviously fragile. But even if you keep it padded and safe, the coils of the deflection yoke are thin magnet wire operated at high voltage, and after decades of thermal cycles and the resulting rubbing eventually the barrier between two drops enough and they short, catastrophically.
And you can't really repair that in any feasible way. There are hundreds or thousands of windings, which have to duplicate exactly the configuration from the factory (and then probably be calibrated by processes that are lost to history). A dead CRT is just a useless hunk of glass, forever.
They're all dying. And that's kind of sad.
> But even if you keep it padded and safe, the coils of the deflection yoke are thin magnet wire operated at high voltage
The coils in the deflection yoke are run at 24-100V.
The acceleration voltage is the high voltage one.
> There are hundreds or thousands of windings, which have to duplicate exactly the configuration from the factory (and then probably be calibrated by processes that are lost to history).
Tubes are very not exact compared to solid state devices— to replace a deflection yoke, it has to be of similar deflection angle and inductance, all the rest of the adjustment has to be done anyway.
It’s hard but pales in comparison to the impossibility manufacturing a new CRT vacuum tube.
> The coils in the deflection yoke are run at 24-100V.
They aren't the kV scale killer voltages, no. My memory was closer to 200, but sure. That's still "high voltage" for magnet wire, and a short will rapidly destroy the coil. I've had three different monitors go to that kind of failure. One day you turn them on and... nope.
CRT phosphor chemistry was very sophisticated and mature, and there were many phosphors to choose from by the 1970s depending on the application. Maybe someday a flat panel screen will be produced with some warm and slow characteristics of CRTs without the drawbacks.
> The glass is obviously fragile.
Ever broke one?
Like 2/3 of the weight is that front glass. It's _thick_.
When I was younger and dumber (well, at least younger) I tried breaking one. Took a running swing at the screen with a wrecking bar. It bounced off and all I got for my trouble was a sore shoulder.
In the YouTube video they explain that CRTs have a layer of safety glass in front of the actual screen to protect viewers in the event that the screen implodes. You were actually trying to break through multiple pieces of glass! I've taken a crowbar to a broken CRT before for fun and can confirm that it takes a lot more effort than one might think.
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The fun way to do it is to pull the deflection yoke off and shear the neck of the tube. I was pretty far away the only time I experienced somebody do that, but it sounded like a rifle round.
I believe the thick front (leaded) glass is to try to block the produced x-rays.
People were starting to get scared of the cancer those xrays might produce, and I suspect CRT manufacturers predicted a huge court settlement for cancers caused by TV's with insufficient shielding.
So far, it seems that hasn't materialized - not, I suspect because those xrays didn't cause cancer, but because it is simply impossible to produce any kind of evidence of cause/effect.
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> Ever broke one?
Yes, drop one from a few feet, and the immense weight will do the work for you.
Another day, another LLM generated blog post on the front page.
I'm not opposed to AI tools on principle, but why does this article exist?
It's not because the author had anything interesting to say. It's not because the AI had anything interesting to say. It's a summary of a Youtube video because... clicks or something.
Counterpoint (as someone who watched the 30 mins video originally): some people may not have time to watch said video and can read the AI-generated summary quicker and then decide if the video is worth watching.
prev discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42489600
This video is delightful! I wish Sony were just a fraction as innovative and engineering-driven as they used to be.
The glass optics on these and other large screen CRTs is something that always impress[es|ed] me. From the older screens that had more of a circular image all the way to these "flat" CRTs, there were lots of improvements in everything except weight. It took a lot of glass to get the flat front, but was far from flat on the inside.
...something that continues to impress me.
That's not a very l33t way of writing it though
It seems this TV is more rare than special. Sony was again making up to 42" models in the 2000s. Not quite at 43" however those were 1080i, 16:9 flat screen CRTs with a plethora of analog and digital ports in the rear.
They never quite made another model this big, though. The 2000s sets are 42” tube (40” visible) whereas this one is 45” tube (43” visible).
The later CRT models you are describing here are not coveted by retro gaming enthusiasts (which the people involved here clearly are) since the digital nature of them meant they introduced a ton of processing that negates the near zero input lag all earlier analog CRTs benefit from. Many of the later digital models can actually be had for much cheaper these days than the full analog ones despite looking more powerful on spec sheets.
Love seeing old CRTs like this preserved.
I am not a CRT collector, but as a NES dev I keep a small 13" around and use it reqularly for dev purposes and for showing off my games at conventions. 13" is the perfect size in my opinion. Does not take up too much space and is easy to lug around to shows.
I fear the day that mine dies because small 13" models in good condition are getting harder to find for a decent price. Seems like some people caught on and are selling them on FB Marketplace for high prices and advertising them as "Retro Gaming TVs".
I used to have a Samsung 27” HDTV CRT. I think I brought it, in the late ‘90s. Back then, LCD/plasma monitors of similar size, cost thousands (my, how times have changed).
Big, heavy honker, and suffered from chronic fringing, around the edges.
I gave it away, in the mid-oughts, which required a pickup truck, and two strong men.
I don’t miss it, at all.
My job was for an imaging company, and we had a massive HDTV CRT in our showroom. I think it was around 32”. It was a Sony. That was in the early ‘90s.
I used to live in Key West. A lot of amazing things were put out on the curb there.
The best that we found was a Sony 34XBR910 HD widescreen CRT!
I had no idea that a widescreen HD CRT existed until my friend brought one home. As far as I know, this was the pinnacle of CRT displays.
Here is a video about that same model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ccUF1eeIz4
There is mostly one thing I still remember about tube TV and one reason why I', so happy they are gone. It's the high pitch noise they make. Even now over 40 I'm still able to hear it. Can't imagine how it must be if everything is bigger.
My first college roommate brought the largest CRT I've ever seen. It looks a LOT like this one. He passed away this last year, otherwise I'd ask him how large it was.
It took FIVE adults to carry up the two stories to our apartment! But man, that thing was awesome back in 2007.
Is there really no market for a modern CRT tailor-made for retro gaming? Or is it just not feasible?
CRTs used to be cheap because they were made in high volumes and had a large ecosystem of parts suppliers. If you were to make a CRT today, you'd need to fabricate a lot more parts yourself, and the low volume production would require charging very high prices. You'd also have to deal with more stringent environmental laws, as CRTs contain many toxins, including large amounts of lead.
It's much cheaper to emulate CRT effects so that they work with any display technology. Modern LCDs and OLEDs have fast enough response times that you can get most CRT effects (and omit the ones you dislike, such as refresh flicker). And you don't have to deal with a heavy, bulky display that can implode and send leaded glass everywhere.
Unfortunately, the flicker is essential for the excellent motion quality CRTs are renowned for. If the image on the screen stays constant while you eyes are moving, the image formed on your retina is blurred. Blurbusters has a good explanation:
https://blurbusters.com/faq/oled-motion-blur/
CRT phosphors light up extremely brightly when the electron beam hits them, then exponentially decay. Non-phosphor-based display technologies can attempt to emulate this by strobing a backlight or lighting the pixel for only a fraction of the frame time, but none can match this exponential decay characteristic of a genuine phosphor. I'd argue that the phosphor decay is the most important aspect of the CRT look, more so than any static image quality artifacts.
There is such a thing as a laser-powered phosphor display, which uses moving mirrors to scan lasers over the phosphors instead of an electron beam, but AFAIK this is only available as modules intended for building large outdoor displays:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser-powered_phosphor_display
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And even then, they weren’t that cheap, or at least good ones weren’t. Even with the benefit of mass production, this one cost $40k in today’s money.
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Looking at that Dallibor Farney company and how hard it is for them to get new nixie tubes to be a sustainable business, I shudder to think how much more effort it would be to get new, high quality CRTs off the ground. It would be cool though. A good start might be bringing back tube rebuilding more widely.
Also, see the visit to one of the last CRT refurbishing facilities out there: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YqGaEM9sjVg
I think it's one of these things that people like to talk about in the abstract, but how many people really want a big CRT taking up space in their home?
Modern OLED displays are superior in every way and CRT aesthetics can be replicated in software, so a more practical route would be probably to build some "pass-through" device that adds shadow mask, color bleed, and what-have-you. A lot cheaper than restarting the production of cathode-ray tubes.
I recently bought a big CRT to take up space in my home.
Yes, of course, "objectively" speaking, an OLED display is superior. It has much better blacks and just better colors with a much wider gamut in general. But there's just something about the way a CRT looks - the sharp contrast between bleeding colors and crisp subpixels, the shadows that all fade to gray, the refresh flicker, the small jumps the picture sometimes makes when the decoding circuit misses an HBLANK - that's hard to replicate just in software. I've tried a lot of those filters, and it just doesn't come out the same. And even if it did look as nice, it would never be as cool.
Retro gaming has to be retro. And to be honest, the CRT plays Netflix better as well. It doesn't make you binge, you see? Because it's a little bit awful, and the screen is too small, and you can't make out the subtitles if you sit more than two meters away from the screen, and you can't make out anything if you sit closer than that.
Does that mean we have to restart the production of cathode-ray tubes? Hopefully not. But you can't contain the relics of an era in a pass-through device from jlcpcb.
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> Modern OLED displays are superior in every way and CRT aesthetics can be replicated in software, so a more practical route would be probably to build some "pass-through" device that adds shadow mask, color bleed, and what-have-you.
OLEDs are still behind on motion clarity, but getting close. We finally have 480 Hz OLEDs, and seem to be on track to the 1000Hz needed to match CRTs.
The Retrotink 4k also exists as a standalone box to emulate CRTs and is really great. The main problem being it's HDMI 2.0 output, so you need to choose between 4k60 output with better resolution to emulate CRT masks/scan lines, or 1440p120 for better motion clarity.
Something 4k500 or 4k1000 is likely needed to really replace CRTs completely.
Really hoping by the time 1000 Hz displays are common we do end up with some pass-through box that can fully emulate everything. Emulating full rolling CRT gun scan out should be possible at that refresh rate, which would be amazing.
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Such products exist: https://www.retrotink.com/shop
You should probably watch one of the old films about how CRTs were made. It's not a simple process and basically would require setting up a whole factory to mass produce them.
Hobbyist-level production of monochrome TV tubes is possible, but a big effort. Some of the early television restorers have tried.[1] Color, though, is far more complicated. A monochrome CRT just has a phosphor coating inside the glass. A color tube has photo-etched patterns of dots aligned with a metal shadow mask.
CRT rebuilding, where the neck is cut off, a new electron gun installed, and the tube re-sealed and evacuated, used to be part of the TV repair industry. That can be done in a small-scale workshop.
There's a commercial business which still restores CRTs.[2] Most of their work is restoring CRTs for old military avionics systems. But there are a few Sony and Panasonic models for which they have parts and can do restoration.
[1] http://earlytelevision.org/crt_project.html
[2] https://www.thomaselectronics.com
A practical thing about costs is likely shipping. There aren't many consumer products that would be more costly to move around, so you're looking at something as messy as a fridge to sell at the high end.
I imagine one could target smaller CRTs as an idea though.
The whole supply chain is dead. No way the demand is great enough to justify rebooting it.
I know there have been conversations here about simulating crt subpixels on hidpi displays. There are some games that used subpixel rendering to achieve better antialiasing. With hidpi you at least have a chance of doing it well.
I worked for a stereo store in San Francisco in the late-90s. We didn't have to deliver these, but we did have to deliver the 36" Sony XBRs, which weighed over 200 lbs and were just a delight to drag up 4 flights of stairs with two people.
OMG. I have one of the original SGI 24” 1080p flat screen CRTs (went with the onyx2) in storage. One wonders what that’s worth :) fundamentally a better tube ..
Widescreen? If so it’s likely a Sony GDM-FW900 in disguise - would probably sell for a couple of thousand nowadays.
Yes, widescreen. SGI P/N GDM-FW9011 - from 2001 :)
Oh interesting. I'm like 90% sure my shop teacher had one of these!
He had a giant ass CRT in his home (took up like half the living room in his tiny house). He got it from a facilities friend at a university that he was friendly with in like ~00s. They were getting rid of all these because flat-screens and projectors were much more in vogue at the time and these behemoths were simply dated.
I wonder if he still has it.
Frank had a 2000" TV. You could watch The Simpsons from 30 blocks away!
(This is a Weird Al reference)
Buy CRT displays now! In a few year they will be sought after collector items.
We're well into that territory already. Go on Marketplace and try to find a decent Trinitron for less than $200
In 2006 or so I bought a house at the top of the real estate market (whereupon it quickly crashed and we enjoyed the wild ride of refinancing and property value swings until we finally unloaded the place at cost - at least it was a really nice neighborhood).
The real estate agents, as a token of their thanks for allowing them to claw back 6% of an outrageously priced house, gave us back some of the money in the form of a $2500 gift card to BestBuy.
Of course, I immediately used it to buy a state of the art Samsung DLP rear projection TV with more inputs than you could shake a stick at including then new HDMI and VGA. I still have that TV, it looks pretty good for 720p and 46" or so, and has a chromecast dongle permanently stuck in its HDMI port to make it useable. It works amazing as an impromptu VGA monitor, and old games console system as well. The cost, with stand, was something like $2400 plus some change and I was left with a few dollars at the end.
I wanted to finish off the gift card so I looked around the store. There, off in the corner was an absolutely massive Sony CRT tv with a yellow sticker on the side. "$1.72". I gasped.
"Is that TV really $1.72?"
"Yup, the future is these DLP or these Plasma TVs, we're getting rid of our CRTs"
Instant purchase, closed out the card, set the delivery dates for both and waited.
A week later two guys showed up "we got two TVs, one of them if fcking heavy, where do we put 'em?"
The DLP went of course into the living room without any fuss, but the Sony...well that was the heavy one. It took two guys, working hard, to move all 39" of it up a flight of stairs into an upper bedroom. It sat in its place until we sold the house and decided to move. That's when I learned what a monster it was.
For absolutely foolhardy reasons, I decided to junk it, so I had to take it to the curb. I tried to lift it. No go. I was like trying to lift Mjolnir or free Excalibur. I had a friend come over. It took us about an hour to move it down that flight of stairs and drag* it on piece of plastic to the curb.
The trash people, even prepped for an unusually heavy pickup, had to make three attempts at it before they could get it. During that time it was at the curb, two cars stopped and tried to pick it up before giving up.
Looking up the specs now, it looks like it was probably somewhere north of 300 lbs (136 kg). I see on Ebay that today it's probably worth around $600-$1000. But damn, if it wouldn't cost that much to move it within the same county. I still have a 24" I'll keep until I'll die for old gaming reasons, but man, that other monster was too big.
A guy at work the other day moved a 72" TV by himself, like it was nothing. There's a reason some tech falls away.
No doubt on the 300lbs. My dad and I hauled our brand-new 35" Toshiba when I was a teen. I clearly remember it was 198lbs per the spec sheet.
Why must the vacuum be made out of lead rather than e.g. steel?
When vacuum tubes have high voltages applied to them, they generate x rays. The glass envelope is impregnated with lead so as to reduce the amount of x ray radiation that is emitted. The primary source of x ray radiation from TVs had been from their other components other than the tube itself but the tube was still a source of ionizing radiation.
Got it, thanks!
Interesting to see what people are passionate about.
If you play retro video games from the NES / SNES / N64 / Gamecube era on original hardware, a CRT is the way to go.
People that play competitive Smash Bros Melee will only play on CRTs.
We don’t only play on CRTs, we just still use them in tournament formats.
What's the rationale? Is there a performance benefit or nostalgia?
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Without a shred of judgement or sarcasm, yeah I agree, it's a big part of what I enjoy about scrolling through New here.
yeah absolutely epic, watched it yday
The whole time I was reading this article, I just wanted to know the history of the soba restaurant that was being demolished. I bet there’s an interesting story there too.
tbh probably not. There are a lot of soba restaurants, and a lot of demolitions. Buildings are typically demolished after 20-30 years to make way for new ones.
At least these are not banned, as the ICEs no doubt will be in 11 years...
The problem with ICE isn't being able to buy them, it's buying them in huge quantities. You'll probably be able to buy them for sports cars or some other low volume commodity.
Of the existing plans to ban the purchase of gas vehicles in the future, do any have exemptions for low volume production of enthusiast vehicles? California's plan (which 17 other states follow) seems to only have exemptions for heavy duty vehicles.[1]
My guess is that enthusiasts will get around these laws by modifying old vehicle frames. New emissions and safety standards tend to grandfather old vehicles in, so as long as the VIN says it was made before a certain date, you can avoid having curtain airbags, backup cameras, tire pressure monitoring systems, electronic stability control, etc. (There requirements are why new cars have so many computers in them.)
1. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/9.23.20-EO...
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The problem will also be getting gasoline, if just 90% of the cars on the road are electric, a lot of the gasoline infrastructure will go away.
Apples, meet oranges. Or sand. Yeah, apples and sand.