[HN Gopher] The biggest CRT ever made: Sony's PVM-4300
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The biggest CRT ever made: Sony's PVM-4300
Author : rbanffy
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-06-21 22:22 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dfarq.homeip.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dfarq.homeip.net)
| TylerE wrote:
| 450lbs... that's approaching piano territory. Smaller grands are
| 600 or so, with a full sized concert 9fter being 900-1100.
| Oarch wrote:
| And $40K, which will comfortably buy you a grand piano
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Yeah but Doom 2 would look much nicer on that than on a
| piano.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Doom came out 4 years after this tho
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| The rich have to spend their money somewhere...
| ndiddy wrote:
| Here's a news article saying that Sony had only sold 3 PVM-4300s
| as of April 1990: https://www.sun-
| sentinel.com/1990/04/22/for-40000-tvs-pictur...
|
| I guess it makes sense considering the price. I wonder how many
| of them still exist today.
| hammock wrote:
| Here are three of them:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/liyitz/the_pictu...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/egvuqt/kv3000r_u...
|
| And this guy "I have a Sony KV-3000R in New Condition. Mike
| exestexas@aol.com" https://www.avsforum.com/threads/seeking-
| sony-pvm-4300-and-k...
| chx wrote:
| the KV-3000R is not the PWM-4300 though? And since the second
| but older post is from a deleted redditor it's unclear
| whether it's two or one.
| sneak wrote:
| My AIM username for a while was kw34hd1 which is the model of
| Sony's first (and maybe last?) 1080i CRT. I recall it being
| around $25k too at the time.
|
| 34" diagonal, 196lb.
|
| Edit: A googling suggests it was launched end of '98 for $9k.
| $17k in 2024 dollars.
| jeffbee wrote:
| These kinds of TVs were under $2k a few years later. I had a
| Panasonic CT-34WX53 "Tau" display that I bought for $1600 in
| 2002.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| and those Taus are still selling for that much due to the
| retro gaming craze and scalpers.
| krs_ wrote:
| Which is strange because 240p and 480i absolutely looks
| worse on them than on an SD TV. Better than a flat panel
| though to be fair.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah I would think that if you just wanted an amazing
| image from a PS1 or SNES then you'd want a regular aspect
| ratio anyway. If I was going to plunder eBay for such a
| thing I'd go with a Panasonic SuperFlat.
| sneak wrote:
| It's so weird. The Super NT is as accurate as anything
| and has an HDMI out. I love CRTs and Trinitrons but I'd
| never want to game on one (again).
| MBCook wrote:
| I was seriously considering Sony's 32" CRT for my first HDTV
| around 2006 or so. It must have been right about the tail
| end.
|
| It may have had a better picture, at least for analog stuff
| which was most all of it at the time. But the biggest factor
| was size. At ~150-200 lbs I couldn't move it and would need
| new furniture to hold it.
|
| The LCD I bought probably weighed 40 pounds, was easy to
| move, and my existing furniture was fine. It was 720p only
| though.
| MenhirMike wrote:
| I'm kinda curious if CRT technology advanced to the point where a
| TV like that would've been possible at a better weight and price
| tag? I assume that CRT technology development stopped decades
| ago, but could we have e.g., replaced the heavy glass with some
| plastic-like material to save weight without compromising the
| picture? And are there any heavy components in the mechanism
| itself (Coils, Magnets?) that would have had alternatives?
|
| I know it's just theorycrafting, but I do wonder what kind of CRT
| someone could've created if it wasn't for market economy forces.
| cesaref wrote:
| I imagine much of the weight is for the tube to be strong
| enough to hold the vacuum without shattering. As the screen
| area increases, you need stronger electron sources, and higher
| HT to get the electrons to the phosphor. I think small 14 inch
| trinitrons are already using 20-30kV so I imagine the power
| supply and associated HT stuff will be quite scary in these
| larger sets.
|
| There are all sorts of complex magnet arrangements to tune the
| beam to stay in focus across the image area, i don't know how
| that will scale with size, but it's probably more of a
| complexity when assembling the sets to calibrate the tubes.
| Animats wrote:
| Here's the last gasp of thinner, bigger CRTs, in 2005.[1]
|
| _" Today, CRT markets are being threatened by flat-panel
| displays (FPDs) even though the screen quality of the CRT is
| one of the best of existing display devices. The depth of CRTs
| is one of its most important design factors to maintain its
| dominant position in the display market. Thus, a 32-in.-wide
| deflection-angle 125deg CRT (tube length of 360 mm) has been
| developed, and mass production began in January 2005."_
|
| That was the Samsung Vixlim.[2] Apparently worked OK, but
| obsolete at launch.
|
| Goes down in history as another last and greatest achievement
| of the wrong technology, along with the Doble steam car, the SS
| United States, 3-projector Cinerama, quadrophonic phonograph
| records, and the Olivetti Divisumma 24 mechanical four-function
| calculator.
|
| [1]
| https://sid.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1889/1.216683...
|
| [2]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/xgtmdw/does_anyo...
| joezydeco wrote:
| The next big thing was _supposed_ to be Field Emission
| Displays. Microscopic electron guns directly behind each
| phosphor. The big manufacturers experimented and tried getting
| it commercialized for decades, then pretty much gave up in the
| 2000s when LCDs got stupid cheap.
|
| https://www.engineersgarage.com/field-emission-display/
| shrubble wrote:
| The glass has to be thicker, thus more weight, to withstand
| implosion from the vacuum it is holding.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| That aside about IDTV was interesting. Hadn't heard of that
| before.
|
| It used a buffer to interpolate multiple frames from OTA TV also
| had motion sensing!
|
| Wonder how good it looked in reality?
| UnreachableCode wrote:
| So what were "big screen TVs" (which my family never owned) that
| appeared in movies and tv? I feel like they looked more
| lightweight than this so I'm assuming they were like Plasma
| screens? Or maybe that technology was after the pop culture I'm
| referring to
| ses1984 wrote:
| Rear projection
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Rear projection TVs were a neat party trick, but I always
| liked either a projector or screen, or just using a smaller
| CRT. Even the cheaper sets would give a brighter (and usually
| slightly sharper) image than even the nicer rear-projection
| TVs in that era.
| spitfire wrote:
| They were projection TV's. Both front, or rear projection.
| MBCook wrote:
| Late in the 90s we had a 27" CRT. That was absolutely sold as a
| big screen. I don't think you could get much bigger.
|
| Past that you had projection TVs. They could get way bigger but
| the picture was also dimmer and perhaps not as sharp? I only
| remember being around one a few times, we never had one.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Sony had all the coolest TVs in that era--one of the last great
| ones, which I've only seen in person _once_ at a broadcast TV
| tower site (it's still there today, and works!) was the
| KD-34XBR970[1]. It was 'only' 34", but it weighed nearly 200 lbs.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/W_U9pFfXjYA?t=614
| hypercube33 wrote:
| I believe my friend still has our 32" 1080i tube TV kicking
| around. All 180lbs of it. has HDMI and everything if I recall.
| Old consoles look awesome on it and if you can get your PC
| drivers to play ball games on that also look stellar, but text
| looks like trash.
|
| It was also a Trinitron.
| corysama wrote:
| I really do miss my RCA mm36100. 190 pounds. 2 VGA inputs. It
| could do 800x600 progressive scan. The Dreamcast with a VGA
| adapter really did look incredible on it!
|
| https://lowendmac.com/2019/rca-mm36100-amazing-under-the-rad...
|
| https://archive.org/details/manualsbase-id-145505
| throw0101d wrote:
| As one of my last monitors before LCDs took over, I had a 21-inch
| Sun, and boy was that sucker _heavy_ ( >30 kgs (>65 lbs)):
|
| * https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
|
| * https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
|
| * https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
| dmitshur wrote:
| I had that model too, acquired at a time university classrooms
| were ditching them in favor of the first LCDs. I let it go
| during a move, and have missed it ever since.
| kazinator wrote:
| That's interesting. So in a sense, we hit "peak CRT" in 1989,
| quite a bit before large flat screens hit.
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(page generated 2024-06-22 23:00 UTC)