[HN Gopher] The biggest CRT ever made: Sony's PVM-4300
___________________________________________________________________
The biggest CRT ever made: Sony's PVM-4300
Author : rbanffy
Score : 222 points
Date : 2024-06-21 22:22 UTC (2 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
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| You must be fun at parties
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| The rich have to spend their money somewhere...
| userbinator wrote:
| When I see that weight, I think "medium-sized car engine". Not
| too difficult to move around with an engine hoist.
| TylerE wrote:
| It's not so much the moving it... it's that it's heavy enough
| that "can this floor/piece of furniture support this" becomes
| very relevant.
| 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.
| WWLink wrote:
| IIRC, Sony CRTs also love blowing up their flyback
| transformer boards.
| qingcharles wrote:
| They made a 40" CRT. I used to find them for free all the time
| on Craigslist because people just wanted them gone.
|
| Here's a pic of one:
|
| https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VkcAAOSw1jpij-aq/s-l1600.webp
|
| I found a brand new one from someone's house where the person
| had died a long time ago and three of us lugged it back to my
| house (three people can barely lift it). I grabbed it for light
| gun games, but it uses some sort of digital filtering on all
| the inputs which stops gun games from detecting the scan. I was
| going to take it apart and figure out how to bypass it, but I
| lost it in my divorce lol.
| masto wrote:
| That's the one I had. What a beast. I gave it away around
| 2009 when I got my first LCD.
| 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.
| refurb wrote:
| You'd be surprised how little glass is needed to be strong
| enough to withstand a near perfect vacuum.
|
| I worked in a lab where we routinely held a few micro-torr of
| vacuum, which is about the limit for mechanical pumps.
| Cathode ray tubes are typically thousands or tens of
| thousands higher pressure.
|
| We ran 1/4" wall thickness glass even in large flat stretches
| without issue.
|
| I'm guessing the weight of large cathode ray tubes are more
| for durability than need for the vacuum inside.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| How much did the flat sections bend or deflect under
| vacuum?
| Karliss wrote:
| That's a bit misleading the level of vacum might differ by
| factor of 10000, but most of the force is still coming from
| atmosphere. For overall mechanical strength it doesn't
| matter that much if its 0.99 or 0.99999999999 atmospheres
| of pressure difference, temperature and other wheather
| changes are probably causing much bigger change in force
| applied to glass.
| willis936 wrote:
| I don't think it's that misleading. At the end of the day
| you need a 14.696 psi negative pressure vessel. That
| isn't very dramatic. If you can confidently make
| something that works to 14.696 psi then you can be
| confident it will work at 14.65 or 14.5 psi.
|
| The meat of the comment is that you don't need much
| material to withstand Earth's atmosphere compared to
| pressure vessel. It's a common misconception for folks
| who don't work with vacuums.
|
| Having carried my share of heavy CRTs I can share that
| most of the weight is in the front glass. It needs to
| support the phosphor wire mesh and withstand the pokes
| and stabs of the world while not compromising the fragile
| thin-walled neck.
| guenthert wrote:
| Living room tv sets need to be child-save, unlike lab
| equipment.
| 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...
| Aeolun wrote:
| 32 inch wide, 14.5 inch deep. Not bad. You could actually fit
| that on a 80cm desk.
| cubefox wrote:
| _" These wide-deflection CRTs attracted an extraordinary
| amount of attention even from end users in a variety of
| display shows last year and will help maintain the solid
| positions of CRTs in the coming era."_
| medstrom wrote:
| /r/crtgaming ... calling it, this the new hip before it's
| cool
| 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/
| Gare wrote:
| There was also a brief reign of plasma TVs in-between, now
| almost a forgotten technology
| floam wrote:
| A good 720p plasma is still a great display to this day.
| phibz wrote:
| I have the second to last generation Panasonic plasmas.
| 42" 1080p display. At first the picture was amazing but
| over time it degraded slightly with what looks like
| subtle noise affecting the entire display. Solid colors
| have a faint shimmer of noise in them. As if white noise
| was blended with everything.
|
| I still use it as a bedroom TV. I can barely lift it
| myself and it claims to use 450watts of power. It's
| certainly a lot. It's notably warm near it and will heat
| my room if I don't open the door.
|
| Still the picture quality is very good at a distance.
| Only oled or micro led displays look better.
| pandaman wrote:
| This could be that you just noticed it? Panasonic plasma
| cells brightness is controlled by PWM off a 600 Hz
| carrier (it's even proudly advertised as "600 Hz!" on the
| TV box and stickers). While the number is quite big and
| stands out nicely against "240 Hz" advertised as refresh
| rate for the competing LCD TVs, it did not provide many
| different brightness levels per pixel (keep in mind that
| it's divided by 60 Hz or higher frame refresh) so those
| TVs were running temporal stochastic dithering to create
| more levels. If you looked closely at a new plasma TV
| screen it was very noisy with random pixels firing up at
| high frequency.
| phibz wrote:
| The level of noise went up dramatically after the first
| year. I read that this is part of the panel aging. It
| hasn't gotten worse since then. My two biggest gripes are
| high brightness areas don't work on large portions of the
| screen. A windows file browser is basically unusable.
|
| The heat is probably what will eventually get me to
| replace it.
| xattt wrote:
| The heat! Many plasma displays had a faint heat you would
| feel on your face if you were near that I found
| uncomfortable. I am not sure if others felt the same.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I remember the heat.
|
| I had a year of sickness, or so, back in the day. I
| decided I was gonna blow as much money as I could on the
| "best" TV setup. I bought a 42" plasma TV, and I sat it
| on the floor in my living room, in front of a window.
|
| You could see the heat-haze above the screen, the air
| shimmering in front of the window, after it had been on
| for a while.
|
| Lovely display, far too expensive, and far far too heavy,
| but for the five+ years I kept it I think I got my
| money's worth.
| kevinsync wrote:
| I had a Zenith 42" plasma (maybe Zenith Z42PX2D?) for
| about 10 years before the screen became insanely noisy
| and LG OLEDs hit the market. Really an amazing display
| though, at "tv distance" (6 to 8ft) the 852x480
| resolution was not at all noticeable as "low resolution".
|
| What I actually found was dog-shit quality video looked
| AMAZING on it, as did downsampled high-res video -- I had
| a media center pc hooked up via DVI, and off it went.
|
| I replaced it with a 1080p 55" OLED in 2014 or 15 when it
| became unwatchable, and it's been incredible as well
| aside from very rare, short instances of judder.. As per
| my Zenith experience above, I figured lower-res (not 4k)
| would be better in the long run.
|
| Curious to see how long it lasts, but it's still very
| bright and very good almost a decade later, no burn-in,
| no dead pixels, and it's on constantly.
| ddingus wrote:
| I have an HD plasma and it is fantastic. It is the very
| best living room display I have owned.
|
| Like the CRT, it has glowing phosphors in a tube. Unlike
| the CRT, it is pixel addressable, where the CRT is
| basically not addressable, or maybe just field, frame and
| or line addressable. Of course the tradeoffs are well
| known. Resolution scaling on a CRT is rarely an issue,
| except when the dot mask is too coarse. It still looks
| great. It can be a major issue with pixel addressable
| displays, when uneven multiples are in play.
|
| In my experience, a good plasma is right there with the CRT
| on color gamut and contrast, even does well on speed. Or
| can. Mine is 120Hz and does not lag more than a CRT does on
| 60Hz signals.
|
| (If you want a fast one, get one of the 3D capable TV sets
| from that era. They have fast video processors and
| basically can run at least double the necessary frame rate.
| And if you have an nVidia GPU and good CAD software, you
| can even use one as a wall sized 3D display featuring a
| bunch of things an ordinary set will struggle with and
| large assembly visualization as well as technical surfacing
| being two use cases I found amazing.)
|
| AMOLED looks like it may be the next plasma. I have one
| from Waveshare that is 10.5" and has 2560x1600 resolution.
| I wish it were bigger. It is fantastic! It has a much
| higher DPI than my plasma does and appears to not require a
| PWM cycling of pixels to get those hard to hit grey levels.
|
| I am learning I like displays where the light is not
| filtered down to a color, instead is just emitted at the
| color. Micro LED could be another contender if they can get
| the dot pitch high enough.
|
| All that said, I keep a few CRT displays. I really like
| them for retro computing and gaming.
| ansgri wrote:
| microLED is the next plasma, with tiny non-organic LEDs.
| Organic LEDs have some problems with color gamut and
| (AFAIR) response time that make them inferior to plasma,
| whereas microLED, while still exotic, is being rapidly
| developed.
|
| I've even worked on a color science-related project that
| attempted to use LG OLED TV as a poor man's reference
| display, and turns out they use a lot of tricks like
| dithering, heavy power limiting and low brightness
| resolution for each subpixel that make them look bad when
| pixel-peeping.
| ddingus wrote:
| Ahhh, thanks for that. microLED was my first hope, until
| the AMOLED tech seemed to fill the gap for the smaller,
| high DPI, display use case at least. Nice to see the
| rapid dev going on.
|
| Are there differences between OLED sources? I'm using
| Samsung AMOLED displays at present. I don't have access
| to an LG.
|
| Do you have any thoughts on DPI for microLED?
|
| I will definitely poke at the displays I have more to see
| what I can learn.
| ansgri wrote:
| Sorry, cannot answer these questions competently. From my
| understanding, LG has monopoly on TV-scale OLED displays,
| so others big players in premium TV market (Sony and
| Samsung come to mind) bet on productizing uLED.
| ddingus wrote:
| Well you improved my own lacking understanding, and with
| exemplary form. It is rare to see others share what you
| did. Thanks again.
| MBCook wrote:
| Despite its benefits over LCDs, it had no chance to compete
| on price. LCD prices just plummeted to far too fast.
|
| OLED is the current equivalent (with perhaps QLED) and
| micro LED on the horizon.
| cubefox wrote:
| The problem with MicroLED is that they remain very
| expensive to produce, so they may have no chance to
| compete on price, and the quality of OLED is getting
| better as well. Apple recently abandoned their MicroLED
| plans: https://www.yolegroup.com/strategy-insights/did-
| apple-just-k...
| MBCook wrote:
| Yeah, and we can't make them small enough either. But it
| seems like the probable next big thing to me. Just gotta
| solve some issues.
| layer8 wrote:
| The death knell was that they couldn't shrink the plasma
| cells enough to support 4K. LCD didn't kill it, in the
| same sense that LCD doesn't kill OLED.
| shrubble wrote:
| The glass has to be thicker, thus more weight, to withstand
| implosion from the vacuum it is holding.
| NikkiA wrote:
| Gorilla glass or sapphire glass might have enabled lighter
| tubes at a higher price, had CRTs retained popularity, but
| from what I can see, Corning never even considered it as a
| use case for Gorilla glass in their original 1960s attempt at
| development.
| MBCook wrote:
| Would there be any point? Given the TV sizes of the 60s
| standard glass was probably more than strong enough, and
| the tube wouldn't be very heavy.
|
| No one would need to really think about until around 2000.
| perihelions wrote:
| On top of the mechanical issues, CRT glass also functions as
| x-ray shielding, for which reason it is leaded (Pb). You can't
| really make that part lighter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube#Body
|
| https://www.epa.gov/hw/frequent-questions-about-regulation-u...
|
| (This isn't really an answer to the overall question--just a
| narrow observation of interest).
| MBCook wrote:
| Oh I didn't know that. Neat.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is an interesting point. Does anyone know how much lead
| would be in a 21 inch monitor?
| RetroSpark wrote:
| According to [0], about 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs). Surprisingly this
| is mostly in the neck and funnel of the tube - the screen
| itself uses different metals because lead would affect its
| optical performance.
|
| [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878
| 02961...
| grishka wrote:
| I remember reading somewhere that there was this wild prototype
| flat CRT where the electron gun was at the top, shooting down,
| and the beam did a 180 degree turn at the bottom before being
| deflected into the surface of the screen.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Yes, the Sinclair TV80 worked on that principle:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV80
| grishka wrote:
| Nope, it's _that_ , but folded in half. Found a mention of
| it (that I commented on, lol):
| https://mastodon.social/@tubetime/111219376410543899
| userbinator wrote:
| _I assume that CRT technology development stopped decades ago,
| but could we have e.g., replaced the heavy glass with some
| plastic-like material to save weight without compromising the
| picture?_
|
| Metal-cone CRTs were common in the early decades, and had a
| flatter screen than typical all-glass construction; here's the
| largest of those, a 30":
|
| https://www.earlytelevision.org/dumont_30bp4.html
|
| a TV using it cost almost $1800 in 1952 (equivalent to over
| $21k today):
|
| https://www.earlytelevision.org/dumont_ra-119.html
|
| I think metal-cone CRTs became unpopular due to the glass-to-
| metal seal not being as reliable, and difficulties with
| insulation (the whole cone is at the final accelerating
| voltage.)
| 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?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| The article is calling two-speaker mono "high fidelity" so I'd
| take details like this with a grain of salt. I'm sort of
| wondering if TFA is AI filtered content from another site.
| MBCook wrote:
| While I don't remember hearing the term before, it absolutely
| sounds like something on marketing department would come up
| with.
|
| HD was around, but incredibly uncommon, in the late 90s. I
| remember seeing news segments and stuff on it every once in a
| while about how it was coming "soon".
|
| It doesn't seem too unlikely to me that you might be able to
| trick some buyers into thinking "oh that's that thing I heard
| about".
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| My assumption is that IDTV is deinterlacing a 480i signal to
| 480p, which is shown on a CRT running at 31khz (though I don't
| know what algorithms it would use to deinterlace).
| 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.
| sgerenser wrote:
| CRT TVs up to 36" were widely available (although expensive)
| in the 90s. Projection sets usually started at 42 or 43".
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| My impression is that projection TVs reflect/diffuse even
| more of ambient light than regular CRTs, making black areas
| of the image look gray (regular CRTs already reflect more
| light than LCD-like monitors, though CRTs could be tinted to
| improve contrast at the cost of brightness).
| bitwize wrote:
| They were projection TVs, that typically had three small CRTs
| (red, green, blue) with lenses that projected the image either
| onto the screen from the back (rear projection) or bounced off
| a mirror from the front(front projection).
|
| Color plasma screens did not become a real thing until the
| early 2000s or so.
| WWLink wrote:
| Typically there was a projector in the bottom that pointed up
| at a mirror. The mirror was mounted at a 45 degree angle and
| pointed at a screen consisting of a giant Fresnel lens and
| another piece of plastic.
| adamzegelin wrote:
| For big screen projected analog sources (aka, a video signal
| rather than film) there was this amazing piece of tech:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor
|
| A mirror coated in a thin layer of oil that is deformed by
| electrostatic charges.
| 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.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Think I had this TV. It was an absolute unit and took 2-3
| people to move.
|
| An N64 and Mario Kart completed the setup.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| I had one of these. Somehow got it on clearance at Circuit
| City when it was being EOL'd. I must have hit that window
| just right, because I got it for something like $450?
|
| Managed to sell it about five years back for $200, and
| someone picked it up from my house and carried it out of my
| basement. It was a win all around. They got an amazing
| display for their old consoles, and despite my fondness for
| the same, I just wanted to be rid of the thing because I was
| prepping to move and wanted to rid the house of CRTs.
| 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
| mizzack wrote:
| Great TV. Iirc the last Triniton tube produced. After moving it
| 3 times over 15 years I sold mine to a guy during covid for $20
| so he could play Time Crisis.
| cuvinny wrote:
| My friends dad had one of those. Incredible picture on that
| recent tvs can reach.
| 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 back when university classrooms
| were ditching them in favor of their first slimmer LCDs. I let
| it go during a move, and have missed it ever since.
| burtonator wrote:
| All this old SGI and SUN equipment was super cool. It was all
| before my time but it was all super high end and really well
| built.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes though their displays were generally OEM.
|
| In fact I'm pretty sure that Sun, SGI and HP all used the
| same OEM. They were really nice Trinitron displays though and
| this meant they were well interchangeable too. Which was
| great because by PC standard they used a weird DB25 with 3
| composite RGB connector and sync on green iirc.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that looks a heck of a lot like a rebranded Trinitron. (I
| bought a super nice Sony Trinitron from BestBuy in fall 1994 to
| get a better screen for a second hand Sparcstation 1+ i had.)
| serf wrote:
| all the sun displays were built by Sony afaik, so you're
| probably not far off.
| dunham wrote:
| Yeah the 21" sun monitors we had in school were trinitron. I
| remember they were heavy for a 21" monitor (shielding?) and
| the degaussing on startup would induct into an adjacent
| monitor. (I was a sysadmin for a Sun heavy CS department in
| the 90's.)
| krs_ wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Trinitrons are always heavier than other
| monitors of equivalent size because of the aperture grill
| design. It let's more light pass through, making them
| brighter, but boy do they get stupid heavy as the size
| increases.
| RetroSpark wrote:
| Yes, the aperture grille (hundreds of wires and a metal
| frame holding them in tension) is itself heavier than a
| traditional shadow mask.
|
| However, aperture grilles also use differently-shaped
| glass from shadow masks. The screens are only curved
| horizontally like a cylinder rather than on both axes
| like a sphere. This requires thicker, heavier glass to
| hold the vacuum.
|
| Later flat-glass shadow-mask tubes were much closer in
| weight to flat Trinitrons.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| I had a 21" Viewsonic in the late 90s, with an enormous (for
| the time) 1600x1200 resolution. It weighed around 60 pounds. My
| desk sagged in the middle from the weight of the monitor.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I had something similar, though it was maybe a Trinitron? The
| glass was also flat. It was a long, long time until it felt
| worth it to "upgrade" to an LCD screen.
| ahonhn wrote:
| I threw out a 17" Trinitron last year. It had outlived all
| of the flatscreens bought to replace it and was still
| working, but after ~23 years the plastic casing was
| dangerously brittle. It left a trail of little bits of
| broken plastic all the way to the dumpster.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| The trinitrons were great, but way beyond my budget at the
| time. I seem to remember at work we had a nice Trinitron
| with a flat screen that had 13w3 and vga inputs. IIRC, it
| was bought as a "budget" monitor for a Sun workstation, but
| was still like twice as much as my Viewsonic.
| FpUser wrote:
| Yup, I had that one too.
| alexwasserman wrote:
| A neighbor gave me his aging Apple ColorSync 850 back around
| 1999/2000 -
| https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/applevision_colorsync/sp...
|
| 67.4 lbs, but 20" and 1600x1200, which was incredible 25 years
| ago. It was by far the best monitor of my friend group, despite
| the heft.
|
| It took a long time to find an LCD to replace it with.
| MBCook wrote:
| Wow. Just that image of the monitor brings back memories of
| reading Mac magazine because they used that same example
| pictures on all their ads.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Early LCDs had that dumb dead pixel thing too, which made the
| upgrade from CRT risky.
|
| Modern screen may have the issue too, but pixels are so small
| I probably wouldn't notice.
| notarealllama wrote:
| Nowadays you get dead lines, like blue or red, and with
| high resolution it's generally liveable unless you're super
| sensitive. I'm fairly intolerant and had a Samsung with a
| blue line, but didn't bother me much.
| neckro23 wrote:
| There's a dead pixel on my 4k monitor. It's so small that I
| think it's just a speck of dust, if I notice it at all.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Haha AppleVision
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| I think we had one of those in the Remote Sensing Lab at my
| university. You could fit an entire Civilisation 1 map on
| screen without having to scroll vertically (you still had to
| scroll horizontally - natch).
| hakfoo wrote:
| This was my last CRT too. I bought mine from the local
| university's sale of scrap goods, a few months after spending
| $350 on a 19" LCD which paled in comparison.
| jajko wrote:
| Yeah same here, bought cheap used 21" from some design studio
| around 2002 i think. Barely fit keyboard on campus desk in
| front of it, but Counter strike while smoking some weed was
| very absorbing.
|
| One of benefits of CRT was they flawlessly handled lower
| resolutions in a way impossible for LCDs. Very much required
| for the hardware of that era.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I had three of them on a cheap plywood desk - that I had just
| picked up for nothing from the kerb outside a brokerage who
| were switching to LCDs. They were great, and I loved them.
|
| The desk, not so much, it ended up, uh, _ergonomic_.
| animal531 wrote:
| An older guy at my first serious job bought himself a 21" to
| use at work, the weight was incredible.
| kazinator wrote:
| That's interesting. So in a sense, we hit "peak CRT" in 1989,
| quite a bit before large flat screens hit.
| rabf wrote:
| The best CRT I ever had and kept well into the flat screen era
| was the Sony GDM-FW900. Released in 2002, 24" widescreen with a
| resolution of 2304x1440.
| bitwize wrote:
| Wouldn't surprise me if all ten remaining units were in the hands
| of Smash community members or something.
| mrob wrote:
| The "IDTV" buffering sounds like it increases latency, so
| unlikely.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Ugh, reminds me of my parent's 35" Sony CRT. The picture was
| wonderful for its day, but my brother and I almost killed
| ourselves trying to carry it down the stairs. It was kind of
| brilliant by Sony in a way since it was so deep, there weren't
| any TV stands that could properly hold it so you had to buy a TV
| stand from Sony as well.
| dzink wrote:
| A friend in Bulgaria had a similar size CRT in his house when it
| got burglarized. The burglars drugged the dog, disabled the alarm
| system and stole all the things, except for the giant TV (they
| couldn't lift it).
| fmj wrote:
| My family had one about the same size as well, and it was setup
| in the basement. When my parents sold the house the contract
| stated that the TV in the basement would not be removed and it
| was the buyers problem now.
| spacecadet wrote:
| I had a 38" Wide Flat Trinitron that I miss so much, dont miss
| the 500lb carry weight lol, buy damn the pinnacle of TV.
|
| At some point I had one of those ugly wooden desks with the
| Trinny crammed into it and a dinky 17" CRT next to it. Ran
| S-Video and then eventually Component to the TV for games and
| movies. Pretty sure the desk sagged from all the weight.
| drcode wrote:
| One of my bosses in the late 80s had one of these in his living
| room.
|
| It was, indeed, a big TV- Somewhat impressive at the time.
| esprehn wrote:
| My parents had a Sony KV-40XBR700, the 40in 300lb CRT. I thought
| it was the largest you could buy until learning about the even
| larger one in TFA.
|
| The picture quality on the KV-40XBR700 was amazing for the era
| (~2003). My Dad cleverly cut a hole into the wall up high and
| stuck the TV into it, then put a picture frame around it giving
| us one of the first "high definition flat screens" even if it was
| an illusion.
|
| Of course these days our 43in TV weighs less than 20lbs and is
| mounted with a couple small wall anchors.
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/234568374191
|
| Relive these days with the KV-40XBR800, only $750
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| Before I click "Buy It Now"... does this include shipping? :)
| smnrchrds wrote:
| No, it says pickup only.
|
| > Shipping and handling
|
| > Item location:
|
| > Negley, Ohio, United States
|
| > Ships to:
|
| > Will arrange for local pickup only (no shipping).
| mikepurvis wrote:
| And wild to think that nowadays 43" is on the smaller side even
| for a non home theatre "living room" TV-- the standard is much
| more around 55".
| TylerE wrote:
| Seems like every time I've bought one "standard" has moved up
| a size. My current is a 65", the one before that a 55", a 47"
| before that, and I think a 43 or 44 before that.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Yup, I have a 65" 1080p panel that came with my house and
| looking at a 77" 4K OLED to replace it.
| te_chris wrote:
| I actively waited for 47ish OLEDs to come out and drop in
| price before upgrading my tv as didn't want or need anything
| bigger but definitely wanted OLED.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'm getting bigger because I can but really going to
| OLED/HDR is a far bigger upgrade then either the size or
| the resolution bumps.
| TylerE wrote:
| The resolution bump is a pretty big deal too, paired with
| 4K Bluray discs and players. Only way to get HDR content
| that hasn't been webcompressed to shit.
| IsoldesKnight wrote:
| I remember the KV-40XBR700. Those suckers were heavy. I worked
| at Circuit City in 2003 delivering those behemoths to customers
| until I dropped two in a single day (the handholds on the side
| weren't very good) and got moved to the warehouse.
| maxden wrote:
| That seems like an even worse place to move you to!
| asddubs wrote:
| that's someone elses problem, I want this kid out of my
| deparment
| epiccoleman wrote:
| If you have to do the dishes...
| radiojosh wrote:
| I worked at "The Only Sony Only" store in St. Louis when this
| TV came out. I delivered and installed equipment among other
| responsibilities. I might have delivered two of these
| particular units. I believe it was actually like 305 pounds.
|
| This television had a couple of interesting traits. Sony flat
| Trinitrons were apparently the only true flat CRT televisions
| where both the outside AND inside of the tube were flat. This
| is why they were so heavy - the flat glass had to be thicker to
| withstand the vacuum inside.
|
| It was a high definition television, but it was 4:3 aspect
| ratio. They sold a 34 inch CRT that was the only 16:9 CRT they
| offered at the time.
|
| Additionally, the size of the 40 inch tube apparently left it
| extra vulnerable to stray magnetic fields. CRT screens all
| respond to magnets by producing rainbow colored distortions,
| but the 40 inch was extra sensitive. We delivered one to a
| house and turned it on only to find that the screen colors were
| distorted. I'm not sure how we figured it out, but we realized
| it was the proximity to the metal floor beam, so we moved the
| TV to another spot in the room and the color distortion went
| away.
|
| For context, you could get an HD 65 inch rear projection wide
| screen television at the time that only weighed 265 pounds. I
| delivered both the 40 inch and the 65 inch up a flight of
| stairs. Those moving straps that hang from your forearms were
| not yet popular.
| err4nt wrote:
| Here I am worried that my cat is going to knock my flat
| lightweight TV over one of these days, and you had a 300 lb TV?
| That sounds like what I need now!
| grogenaut wrote:
| I had a 27" view sonic with something like 2500 4:3 resolution.
| One went out and I got a replacement that lasted till the 2010s.
| Also had a Sony vega 37" that was amazing. I was gonna get the 41
| and probably should have because even though it was heavier it
| had handled. I used trucks to move both. I am sad I had to get
| rid of the vega as it was an amazing image and great for retro
| gaming, probably one of the best TVs ever made in the crt era.
| But just no where to keep the monstrosity. I dropped it at
| goodwill the month before they stopped taking carts and I knew
| I'd want it and my old 19" uncaged someday. Still don't have room
| for them.
|
| Side note at the time I had a 144" projector as well and the 37
| was the pip on the side. My cleaning lady (I traveled a lot) kept
| rearranging the room around the TV because she couldn't grok the
| projector. I had to turn it on for her one day before she stopped
| moving things. The big o on her face was priceless. Also the big
| o on that screen was also priceless as was ssx3
| TechSquidTV wrote:
| This is like one of those moments for me where it feels like the
| phones are listening to me. I have been very actively
| hunting/shopping for PVMs the last two days.
| Taniwha wrote:
| We rented one of these for a trade show (MacWorld), at the time
| there were reputedly 3 in the US, was brought in on a forklift,
| had to build a specially strong bench to put it on - people would
| come around just to see it (and the digital video hardware we
| were showing off)
| coldblues wrote:
| John Carmack was programming on a Intergraph InterView 28hd96,
| which was a 28-Inch, 16:9, 1080p CRT Monitor. What a beauty.
| animal531 wrote:
| Dang, that was probably when the rest of us were still using
| 16" or so CRT's, it must have been amazing.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I used to have a CRT-based HDTV (16:9 ratio).
|
| The screen size was 27 inches, and it was a big, heavy honker.
|
| I think it was a Samsung. Many moons ago.
|
| It was non-optimal. There was visible fringing on the edges.
|
| I don't miss CRTs.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| > In Japan, it sold for 2.6 million yen, but in the United
| States, it retailed for $40,000, a significant markup. To be
| fair, shipping them across the Atlantic and then throughout the
| United States must have been expensive.
|
| Yes, I imagine the cost of shipping something from Japan to the
| States across _the Atlantic_ would be nothing to sniff at.
| rasz wrote:
| Sea transport is really cheap in bulk. Somehow Japanese cars
| didnt fetch $15K premium after crossing the pond in the
| nineties.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| The OP's point was more that the Atlantic is the wrong pond
| to ship across from Japan :)
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Sony's competitive disadvantage was it found the Northwest
| Passage before others.
| ghusto wrote:
| I really miss CRTs. They had more vivid colour, had near zero
| response times, and I even _liked_ the blur the scanlines caused.
| Not to mention the calm that the simplicity brought; turn on,
| watch.
| mrob wrote:
| While I can appreciate the advantages of CRTs (I didn't switch
| to LCD until 120Hz LCDs were released), I don't see how CRTs
| have "turn on, watch" simplicity. CRTs needed careful
| calibration to look their best, and even when calibrated
| correctly needed a minute or so to fully warm up.
| deergomoo wrote:
| For retro games especially, nothing can quite beat them.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| That $40k price tag from 1989, with inflation, is about $100k
| today. That's quite something for a TV!
| RetroSpark wrote:
| > _Sony's part number suggests it has a 45 inch tube inside. But
| in a rare case of truth in advertising, Sony advertised it as a
| 43-inch model._
|
| The overall tube size is 45", the actual screen size is 43". I
| believe it was mandatory in the USA to market TVs based on screen
| size, in most of the rest of the world they were sold based on
| tube size.
|
| That's why common sizes of 4:3 CRT TV in the US were
| 13/20/24/27/32" whereas in the rest of the world the same size
| TVs were sold as 14/21/25/29/34". Interestingly the tubes'
| internal part numbers are based on the screen size _in
| centimeters_ : 34/51/59/68/80 cm.
| chx wrote:
| Sony in 1989 bought CBS which got renamed to Sony Music
| Entertainment (SME) in 1991. This was the beginning of the end
| for Sony as an engineering pioneer. Walkman, CD -- completely
| gone from these markets, crushed by noname, at the time tiny
| rivals. But seriously, Apple in 2001 was basically nothing and
| yet they won the US market with the iPod, more or less. Sony was
| too busy DRMing its music to bring an MP3 player to the market.
| It was an astounding defeat.
| mackwell wrote:
| I had a Gateway Destination 36" monitor that I somehow acquired
| at a garage sale in my room as a teenager. Getting it into my
| upstairs room required my friends and I to all risk our lives but
| it was well worth it.
| cjensen wrote:
| Be aware that this is not a TV. The PVM Series of monitors are
| professional video monitors that are not offered for sale to mere
| consumers. This is the kind of thing that would be installed in
| the control room of a TV station to display the station's final
| output.
|
| 20 years ago the small video company I worked for had a $30K Sony
| PVM monitor that was probably only 30-35 inches. So the $40K
| price in 1990 doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
|
| The only thing interesting about this is "biggest CRT ever made"
| because it shows the limits of CRT technology.
| Qem wrote:
| I miss the fun thought of owning a desktop particle accelerator
| that came with CRTs. The physics behind LCDs doesn't feel as
| exciting.
| louthy wrote:
| My back is aching just looking at it!
| elijahbenizzy wrote:
| It's really fascinating that most things in the US economy
| inflate (commodities, services, housing, etc...), but some things
| just inevitably deflate (TVs).
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