Comment by lrvick
1 day ago
CRTs are literally particle accelerators smashing electrons into phosphors with high enough accuracy to make human recognizable images. And this was not just at some university science lab. We mass produced this crazy shit and put it in most homes on planet earth as new campfire our families would gather around, replacing primitive transistor radios.
And now people just leave these displays of humanities wildest engineering capabilities... on the side of the road. There is not a factory left on the planet with the experience or equipment to make them anymore, and these tubes have a limited lifespan.
I recently setup 30+ game consoles in my garage, along with a modular a/v synth and switchboard equipment and 30+ CRT TVs of every size ever mass produced in a big amorphous blob floor to ceiling. No one else wants these beautiful things? MORE FOR ME :D
It is glorious, and as a security engineer it is how I detox and remember that I actually do enjoy playing with technology when it does not require user tracking or the internet to function.
> There is not a factory left on the planet with the experience or equipment to make them anymore
IIRC CRTs are still being manufactured in small quantities for military and aviation equipment.
Source? Maybe we can convince them to ramp up production with a crowdfund or something :D
Do you wish CRT manufacturing would start again? Let's suppose there is enough market demand for that. What advantages could they bring back that we have since lost?
I don't, but I feel like GP was just expressing respect for the aesthetics of the engineering accomplishment, orthogonal to whether it was obsolete or not.
Something akin to how one might feel looking at the design of a clipper ship.
CRT advantages over modern displays: - Blackest blacks. Deep detail in dark scenes. - Lower latency. - scanlines make everything look cooler. Especially pixel art. - nes and arcade light guns! Making this kind of experience work on modern lcds means entirely different much more expensive tech.
Yes to all of that, but also glitch art unique to each tube which is an art style you can not readily create any other way.