[HN Gopher] What happened to the world's largest tube TV? [video]
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What happened to the world's largest tube TV? [video]
Author : ecliptik
Score : 599 points
Date : 2024-12-23 19:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Interesting to see what people are passionate about.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Without a shred of judgement or sarcasm, yeah I agree, it's a
| big part of what I enjoy about scrolling through New here.
| echelon wrote:
| 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.
| bumby wrote:
| What's the rationale? Is there a performance benefit or
| nostalgia?
| rwmj wrote:
| Low latency, and it looks like how the game designer
| intended it to look.
| nntwozz wrote:
| It looks much better on CRT.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/wr31qd/my_crt_vs_m
| y...
|
| "...scanlines were used to blend "pixels" together, plus
| "pixels" on a CRT tend to bleed color slightly and artists
| would also use that to their advantage."
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| Aside from the visuals (4:3 to 16:9, etc), converting the
| analog console signals into digital formats for your
| flatscreen creates lag, enough to often ruin the gameplay.
| AndrewDavis wrote:
| Even though I have a CRT and NES, I bought one of the NES
| minis when they released.
|
| I played some Mario Bros 3 and... I kept dying. Jumping
| too late led to running into holes and enemies. It was so
| bizarre, I couldn't believe how bad I'd gotten. Tried the
| next day, same deal.
|
| Then I had a thought re delays. Pulled out my NES and
| hooked it up to the CRT and all that stopped
|
| There was sufficient delay in the NES mini and modern TV
| it made a huge difference.
|
| I'm sure I could retrain myself, but it was honestly
| stunned at how much of a difference it made
| exitb wrote:
| It's difficult to overstate just how little lag there is
| in such setups. These systems had no frame buffer
| whatsoever - everything rendered on the fly. You could
| potentially affect a frame after it already started.
|
| That said, if you ever get an urge to play Mario on
| modern hardware, try run ahead emulation. It's quite
| magical.
| vunderba wrote:
| I've always found the litmus test of choice for measuring
| lag is NES Punch-out - your performance in that game is
| heavily dependent on lightning fast reaction time and any
| additional latency towards the later stages will 100% get
| you KO'd.
| sparky_z wrote:
| For competitions, the performance benefit is zero time lag
| between controller inputs and the screen output.
|
| Also, it's very very difficult to get the "look" right on
| an hdtv. The original graphics were intended to be
| displayed on a slightly "fuzzy" CRT, and if you care about
| the aesthetic, just transferring those same graphics to an
| hd-tv display often doesn't look right in a bunch of
| different ways. (Pixel aspect ratio, aliasing, frame
| blending effects, color bloom effects, interlacing
| artifacts, etc.) It's a very deep rabbit hole you can go
| down.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I grabbed a 40" Sony to play lightgun games on.
|
| Sadly the 40" have a framebuffer and I didn't have a chance
| to find a way around it. The 43" in the post has a bypass.
| Klonoar wrote:
| We don't _only_ play on CRTs, we just still use them in
| tournament formats.
| karakot wrote:
| prev discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42489600
| simonw wrote:
| Here's the (fantastic) YouTube video that this is a recap of:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk
| indigoabstract wrote:
| Thanks, really good story. It unfolds like an Indiana Jones
| movie for priceless antique CRTs.
| rwmj wrote:
| A similar but not as large (merely 37") CRT:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o7R8oJEZhY
| tptacek wrote:
| 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).
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| OK, we'll switch to the youtube link above. (Submitted URL
| was https://obsoletesony.substack.com/p/the-journey-to-
| save-the-....) Thanks all!
| hn92726819 wrote:
| Here's the real one:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk
| zdw wrote:
| Discussion here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42489600
| jader201 wrote:
| Such a well done video, thanks for sharing.
|
| I even happily watched a very well executed sponsor ad.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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.
| ajross wrote:
| 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.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > 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.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| 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.
| mrob wrote:
| It depends on the CRT. Some use steel bands wrapped around
| the edge of the faceplate and tightened to keep the glass
| in compression where it's strongest.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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.
| mrob wrote:
| Only the oldest CRTs used leaded glass for the front,
| because leaded glass gradually turns brown on exposure to
| X-rays. More modern CRTs used glass with barium and
| strontium for X-ray shielding in the front. They still used
| leaded glass for the back and sides, presumably as a cost
| saving. I don't see any reason why you couldn't use the
| barium-strontium glass for the whole thing. Alternatively,
| CRTs could be made with ceramic bodies like Tektronix used
| to do.
|
| The energy of the X-rays produced is limited by the CRT's
| acceleration voltage. The electrons get almost all of their
| energy from the field produced by the acceleration voltage.
| Electrons can produce photons when they hit matter, and one
| electron produces at most one photon, so by conservation of
| energy the X-ray cannot have greater energy. Smaller CRTs
| typically use low acceleration voltages, which means the
| X-rays are low energy and thus easy to block.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| AFAIK, the shielding was also just very effective. "Soft"
| x-rays (below 50-100 kV or so) are rather easy to shield
| and what screens had was pretty overkill.
| smitelli wrote:
| 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.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Ever broke one?
|
| Yes, drop one from a few feet, and the immense weight will do
| the work for you.
| emchammer wrote:
| 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.
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| > 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.
| ajross wrote:
| > 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.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| 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.
| bumby wrote:
| 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.
| doubled112 wrote:
| 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.
| bluedino wrote:
| 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.
| johngossman wrote:
| 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.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| 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.
| DCH3416 wrote:
| > 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.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Same here, 32". I'm using a swiveling TV wall mount also,
| it really frees up a lot of space under the monitor.
| phkahler wrote:
| 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!
| beAbU wrote:
| 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.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Surely it depends on the sitting distance? I have 2 27"
| 19:10 screens next to each other and do not need to move my
| head to see all parts of the screen.
| theshackleford wrote:
| It's a factor of size and distance. I have an 80cm deep
| desk with a 32" and it's fine.
|
| In fact it's nicer in that I can sit a little further back
| than a 27" which ultimately is better for my eyes.
| rconti wrote:
| I have a 40, it's great. Fewer pixels and width than my
| previous 3x 27" 4k setup, but more height.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| sgerenser wrote:
| That's actually not true, the majority of widescreen DVDs
| were mastered in Anamorphic format. The players themselves
| were then responsible for squishing down to letterboxed or
| doing an automated form of "pan and scan" which most people
| thought was terrible. If you were lucky though, you had a
| TV capable of doing the anamorphic adjustment and then
| you'd get the higher resolution as you stated.
| anyfoo wrote:
| 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).
| dekhn wrote:
| 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.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| 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
| phkahler wrote:
| 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...
| whalesalad wrote:
| my wife just got an enterprise grade treadmill (used from a
| fitness center) that weighs 600 lbs. moving that thing around
| is a nightmare.
| corysama wrote:
| 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.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| 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.
| Tiberium wrote:
| 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.
| xvector wrote:
| it reads fine to me
| infotainment wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| 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-...
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Solving problems caused a tech company using measurements
| that were turned into requirements by using AI to get
| around the effects of them is hilarious.
|
| I love the upcoming tech arms racing which is just going to
| be developing new technical solutions to problems cause by
| technical solutions. It's more convenient because it
| removes the inconvenience created by the thing that makes
| your life more convenient?
|
| At what point is it not worth it any more and people just
| avoid it all and start reading books again? I think
| something like that is a probable (though hyperbolically
| illustrated) outcome.
| overboard2 wrote:
| It does seem strange, but there's a decent chance the author is
| ESL or just has an unusual writing style
| thinkingemote wrote:
| 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.
| Tiberium wrote:
| 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-af3
| 4-8006-9c47-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.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Yes I wouldn't be surprised, you are not overthinking.
| Retr0id wrote:
| My personal verdict is "not AI"
| avidiax wrote:
| 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.
| russelg wrote:
| >I don't recall anybody being celebrated. They got a cool
| TV. Cool.
|
| The original video gives plenty of appreciation to the
| people who made moving it possible, the shop owner, and the
| people who restored it to perfect working condition.
| Retr0id wrote:
| The TV was bought and used by a business, it doesn't get
| much more "pro" than that (someone should remind Apple's
| marketing team). But we could argue about semantics all
| day, humans make vaguely inaccurate statements all the
| time.
|
| > Where does one palpate urgency?
|
| Most frequently in metaphors. https://books.google.com/ngra
| ms/graph?content=urgency+was+pa...
| rzzzt wrote:
| > Where does one palpate urgency?
|
| Ask an urologist!
| vunderba wrote:
| 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.
| sentientslug wrote:
| 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.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| More likely it'll be normalised until we all start to think
| of it as normal and start to write like that ourselves.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I doubt it, because it is a style that people who're bad at
| writing already use. Like, our magical robot overlords did
| not make it up wholesale; plenty examples of that
| particular sort of stylistic suck were already out there.
|
| (I am semi-convinced that the only job that'll really be
| impacted by LLMs is estate agent copywriters, because
| estate agents already love that awful style.)
| jandrese wrote:
| I can never be 100% sure it is AI writing or someone who
| cheated their English homework using AI and thinks normal
| people write like that.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It's never the latter until the current crop of high
| school students graduate. Most students couldn't have
| used it until 2022; it didn't exist.
| sourraspberry wrote:
| > 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.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It really is, and I see more and more of it in Reddit
| comments, and even at work.
|
| I have a morbid fascination with how bad Reddit has become.
| LLMs have supercharged the problem, but even before ChatGPT
| became popular Reddit was full of ragebait, reposts, lies,
| and misinformation.
|
| The scary and fascinating thing to me is that so many
| people eat that content right up. You can drop into the
| front page (default subreddits or logged out) and anyone
| with basic adult level understanding of the world can pick
| out obvious lies and deliberate misinformation in many of
| the posts. Yet 1000s of people in the comments are getting
| angry over obviously fabricated or reposted AITA stories,
| clear ragebait in /r/FluentInFinance, and numerous other
| examples. Yet a lot of people love that content and can't
| seem to get enough of it.
| geocrasher wrote:
| It won't be long before you'll have people who _learn
| English_ with ChatGPT and then it 'll get even more
| confusing.
| smt88 wrote:
| This is certainly already happening because TikTok and
| YouTube are packed with AI content
| userbinator wrote:
| 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.
| avidiax wrote:
| I didn't notice that this was AI myself. I tend to start
| skimming when the interesting bits are spread out.
|
| There's two variations of this that are very common:
|
| * Watering down - the interesting details are spread apart
| by lots of flowery language, lots of backstory, rehashing
| and retelling already established points. It's a way of
| spreading an cup of content into a gallon of text, the same
| way a cup of oatmeal can be thinned.
|
| * High fiber - Lots of long-form essays are like this. They
| start with describing the person being interviewed or the
| place visited as though the article were a novel and the
| author is paid by the word. Every person has some backstory
| that takes a few paragraphs. There is some philosophizing
| at some point. The essay is effectively the story of how
| the essay was written and all the backstory interviews
| rather than a treatise on the supposed topic. It's
| basically loading up your beef stew with cabbage; it is
| nutritive but not particularly dense or enjoyable.
|
| Both are pretty tedious. AI can produce either one, but it
| can only hallucinate or fluff to produce more content than
| its inputs. As such, AI writing is a bit like a reverse-
| compression algorithm.
| walrus01 wrote:
| 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.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| 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?
| sourraspberry wrote:
| 100% AI drivel.
|
| You take the video transcript, ask ChatGPT to write a short
| blogpost about it, and this is what you get.
| dzuc wrote:
| Is there really no market for a modern CRT tailor-made for retro
| gaming? Or is it just not feasible?
| rwmj wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| 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
| ggreer wrote:
| 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.
| mrob wrote:
| 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
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 72Hz is already a huge improvement in flicker from 60Hz
| though, and certainly maintains excellent motion quality.
| mrob wrote:
| But the refresh rate needs to match the frame rate to get
| the best motion quality. If you display the same frames
| multiple times you'll get ghost images trailing the
| motion. Lots of games are locked to lower frame rates,
| and there's barely any 72fps video.
| jtuple wrote:
| You should be able to emulate close to CRT beam scanout +
| phosphor decay given high enough refresh rates.
|
| Eg. given a 30 Hz (60i) retro signal, a 480 Hz display has
| 16 full screen refreshes for each input frame, while a 960
| Hz display has 32. 480 Hz already exists, and 960 Hz are
| expected by end of the decade.
|
| You essentially draw the frame over and over with
| progressive darkening of individual scan lines to emulate
| phosphor decay.
|
| In practice, you'd want to emulate the full beam scanout
| and not even wait for full input frames in order to reduce
| input lag.
|
| Mr. Blurbuster himself has been pitching this idea for
| awhile, as part of the software stack needed once we have
| 960+ Hz displays to finally get CRT level motion clarity.
| For example:
|
| https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/6984
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Eg. given a 30 Hz (60i) retro signal, a 480 Hz display
| has 16 full screen refreshes for each input frame, while
| a 960 Hz display has 32. 480 Hz already exists, and 960
| Hz are expected by end of the decade.
|
| Many retro signals are 240p60 rather than 480i60. Nearly
| everything before the Playstation era.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I assume the problem here is that the resulting perceived
| image would be quite dark.
|
| You'd need a screen that had a maximum brightness 10x
| more than normal, or something to that effect.
| crazygringo wrote:
| But why would the flicker be considered "excellent motion
| quality"?
|
| In real life, there's no flicker. Motion blur is part of
| real life. Filmmakers use the 180-degree shutter rule as a
| default to intentionally capture the amount of motion blur
| that feels natural.
|
| I can understand why the CRT would reduce the motion blur,
| in the same way that when I super-dim an LED lamp at night
| and wave my hand, I see a strobe effect instead of smooth
| motion, because the LED is actually flickering on and off.
|
| But I don't understand why this would ever be _desirable_.
| I view it as a defect of dimmed LED lights at night, and I
| view it as an undesirable quality of CRT 's. I don't
| understand why anyone would call that "excellent motion
| quality" as opposed to "undesirable strobe effect".
|
| Or for another analogy, it's like how in war and action
| scenes in films they'll occasionally switch to a 90-degree
| shutter (or something less than 180) to reduce the motion
| blur to give a kind of hyper-real sensation. It's effective
| when used judiciously for a few shots, but you'd never want
| to watch a whole movie like that.
| mrob wrote:
| You're correct, but sadly most games and movies are made
| with low frame rates. Even 120fps is low compared to what
| you need for truly realistic motion. Flicker is a
| workaround to mitigate this problem. The ideal solution
| would be 1000fps or higher on a sample-and-hold display.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Flicker is a workaround to mitigate this problem._
|
| Isn't motion blur the best workaround to mitigate this
| problem?
|
| As long as we're dealing with low frame rates, the motion
| blur in movies looks entirely natural. The lack of motion
| blur in a flicker situation looks extremely unnatural.
|
| Which is why a lot of 3D games intentionally try to
| simulate motion blur.
|
| And even if you're emulating an old 2D game designed for
| CRT's, I don't see why you'd prefer flicker over sample-
| and-hold. The link you provided explains how sample-and-
| hold "causes the frame to be blurred across your retinas"
| -- but this seems entirely desirable to me, since that's
| what happens with real objects in normal light. We
| _expect_ motion blur. Real objects don 't strobe/flicker.
|
| (I mean, I can get you might want flicker for historical
| CRT authenticity, but I don't see how it could be a
| desirable property of displays generally.)
| mrob wrote:
| >Isn't motion blur the best workaround to mitigate this
| problem?
|
| Motion blur in real life reacts to eye movement. When you
| watch a smoothly moving object, your eye accurately
| tracks it ("smooth pursuit") so that the image of that
| object is stationary on your retina, eliminating motion
| blur. If there are multiple objects moving in different
| directions you can only track one of them. You can choose
| where you want the motion blur just by focusing your
| attention. If you bake the motion blur into the video you
| loose this ability.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I guess it just comes down to aesthetic preference then.
|
| If there's motion blur on something I'm tracking in
| smooth pursuit, it doesn't seem particularly
| objectionable. (I guess I also wonder how accurate the
| eye's smooth pursuit is -- especially with fast objects
| in video games, surely it's only approximate and
| therefore always somewhat blurry anyways? And even if
| you're tracking an object's movement perfectly, it can be
| still be blurry as the video game character's arms move,
| its legs shift, its torso rotates, etc.)
|
| Whereas if there's a flicker/strobe effect, that feels
| far more objectionable to me.
|
| At the end of the day, my eyes are used to motion blur so
| a little bit extra on an object my eye is tracking
| doesn't seem like a big deal -- it still feels natural.
| Whereas strobe/flicker seems like a huge deal --
| extremely unnatural, jumpy and jittery.
| CarVac wrote:
| Sample-and-hold causes smearing when your eyes track an
| image that is moving across the screen. That doesn't
| happen in the real world: if you follow an object with
| your eyes it is seen sharply.
|
| With strobing, moving objects still remain sharp when
| tracked.
| noprocrasted wrote:
| Is there actually a fundamental physical limit in modern
| (O)LED displays not being able to emulate that "flicker",
| or is merely that all established display driver boards are
| unable to do it because it isn't a mainstream requirement?
| If so, it would still be much cheaper to make an FPGA-
| powered board that drives a modern panel to "simulate" (in
| quotes because it may not be simulating, instead merely
| avoiding to compensate for by avoiding the artificial
| persistence) the flicker than bootstrapping a modern CRT
| supply chain?
| ryansouza wrote:
| My LG has something like that, OLED motion pro. I believe
| it displays blank frames given the panel runs at higher
| than 24fps. Medium is noticeably darker but oleds have
| plenty of brightness for my viewing space and it makes
| slow pans look much nicer. High is even darker but adds
| noticeable flicker to my eyes
| tavavex wrote:
| The reason why this is a difficult problem is that
| physically emulating the flicker requires emulating the
| beam and phosphor decay, which necessitates a far higher
| refresh rate than just the input refresh rate. You'd need
| cutting-edge extremely high refresh rate monitors. The
| best monitor I found runs at 500hz, but pushing the
| limits like that usually means concessions in other
| departments. Maybe you could do it with that one.
| rsynnott wrote:
| 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.
| hn92726819 wrote:
| No, it's $100,000 in today's money
|
| Source @1:59:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk&t=119
| equestria wrote:
| 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.
| indigo945 wrote:
| 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.
| tom_ wrote:
| If the display is working and the input layout isn't
| changing, you shouldn't accept any jumps at all. If the
| sync signals are coming at the same rate, the display
| should remain steady. (Well - as steady as you get with a
| CRT.) If they don't: it's broken.
| jevogel wrote:
| Such products exist: https://www.retrotink.com/shop
| jtuple wrote:
| > 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.
| mrob wrote:
| 1000Hz is enough to match CRT quality on a sample-and-hold
| display, but only when you're displaying 1000fps content. A
| great many games are limited to 60fps, which means you'll
| need to either interpolate motion, which adds latency and
| artifacts, or insert black frames (or better, black lines
| for a rolling scan, which avoids the latency penalty),
| which reduces brightness. Adding 16 black frames between
| every image frame is probably going to reduce brightness to
| unacceptable levels.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How many nits of brightness did high end CRTs reach?
| mrob wrote:
| The brightest CRTs were those used in CRT projectors.
| These had the advantage of using three separate
| monochrome tubes, which meant the whole screen could be
| coated in phosphor without any gaps, and they were often
| liquid cooled.
|
| Direct-view color CRTs topped out at about 300 nits,
| which is IMO plenty for non-HDR content.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Why stop there? We can simulate the phosphor activation by
| the electron beam quite accurately with 5 million FPS or
| so.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| And the difference between 480 and 1000 Hz is perceptible?
| mrob wrote:
| For smooth and fast motion, yes. Although I don't have
| such fast displays for testing, you can simulate the
| effect of sample-and-hold blur by applying linear motion
| blur in a linear color space. A static image (e.g. the
| sample-and-hold frame) with moving eyeballs (as in smooth
| pursuit eye tracking) looks identical to a moving image
| with static eyeballs, and the linear motion blur effect
| gives a good approximation of that moving image.
| jdboyd wrote:
| 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.
| noprocrasted wrote:
| Also, see the visit to one of the last CRT refurbishing
| facilities out there:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YqGaEM9sjVg
| hinkley wrote:
| 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.
| kcb wrote:
| The whole supply chain is dead. No way the demand is great
| enough to justify rebooting it.
| rtpg wrote:
| 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.
| a12k wrote:
| 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.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| 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?
| Avamander wrote:
| 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.
| a12k wrote:
| Yes. This was more like continuously jerking my weight
| backwards with all my might while holding a front corner to
| maneuver the TV inch by inch into a diagonal orientation,
| until on the last jerk it went an inch too far.
| a1o wrote:
| 400 lbs -> 181 kg
| rob74 wrote:
| 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...
| userbinator wrote:
| 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.
| semiquaver wrote:
| 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...
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| 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.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| It's a great understatement to say that the end of the
| Eastern Bloc could have been handled a whole lot better,
| especially from the perspective of people who would have
| been established or even happy with their lives under
| Communism: age 40+, educated, successful career at the
| Trabbi factory, just got to the top of the waiting list for
| an apartment, etc.
|
| * This comment is not an endorsement of totalitarian
| governments
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Are you guys lost? We're talking about a very fucking
| large TV here.
| jsheard wrote:
| 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.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| It was also incredibly expensive - most people rich enough
| to buy it wouldn't typically post their living room online
| in the early 90ies
| abracadaniel wrote:
| And yet, common enough that a random guy in the forum
| claimed to have had several in his store and gave them a
| copy of the service manual. And that was in the same city
| as the collector in the video. A decent amount of these
| were probably sold, and almost certainly all disposed of as
| soon as they became obsoleted by plasmas.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I think most will infer "a large CRT" after reading OPs
| comment.
| garbagewoman wrote:
| "One of these" $40,000 tvs, sure
| pests wrote:
| Probably meant the category of CRT TVs, not that exact model.
| Koshkin wrote:
| At least these are not banned, as the ICEs no doubt will be in 11
| years...
| tehjoker wrote:
| 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.
| ggreer wrote:
| 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...
| jjulius wrote:
| OP implied buying engines as single units, an item unto
| itself - "you'll probably be able to buy them _for_ sports
| cars ". The California executive action is explicitly for
| the sale of new vehicles.
| kalleboo wrote:
| 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.
| jjulius wrote:
| Apples, meet oranges. Or sand. Yeah, apples and sand.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| dotancohen wrote:
| ...something that continues to impress me.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's not a very l33t way of writing it though
| dateSISC wrote:
| yeah absolutely epic, watched it yday
| neilv wrote:
| 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.
| II2II wrote:
| 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.
| neilv wrote:
| 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.
| Laforet wrote:
| The other parties you mentioned would probably have less
| motivation to preserve it, let alone restore it to a fully
| functional state. I find it rather bizarre that many
| posters here seem to think that it's morally preferable for
| the TV set to rot in Japan rather than getting the proper
| care in the hands of an American collector, all because of
| some imaginary cultural baggage.
| patcon wrote:
| Heh it strikes me that while the stakes of this "relic"
| are kinda low, it echos the conversations about
| institutions like the British Museum possessing historic
| artefacts :) some claim there is moral argument for it
| keeping its artefacts, because Britain can best preserve
| them and protect them from damage.
|
| Responsibility and autonomy to preserve one's own
| heritage (with the associated risk of failing to do so)
| is a longstanding ethical dilemma between cultures, and
| the answers aren't so clear imho! (This argument is much
| more compelling for museums, rather than Sony)
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| I just don't think ancient artifacts are comparable to an
| old TV.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| hmmm i dont know. ancient artifacts sometimes highlight
| the technical and artistic possibilities of the time. In
| my opinion this tv represents very good consumer culture
| in the 80s as do amphitheaters in rome and greece their
| consumer culture.
| Laforet wrote:
| Yes, I am aware of those arguments and I am inclined to
| agree with you. Compared to cultural artifacts which are
| mostly neutral in terms of externalities, relics of the
| industrial era suffer more from the cobra effect.
|
| Others in this thread have bought up the future of ICEs
| and classic car preservation. Back in the early 2000s the
| US government offered people cash incentives to dispose
| of their fuel inefficient cars, and by disposal they
| meant running the engine with an abrasive liquid instead
| of oil until it is totally ruined beyond repair.
| Mechanics will tell you horror stories of rare car models
| being destroyed this way so the owners can claim a few
| hundred bucks from the DOT. I'm sure car collectors had a
| field day back then but with such a glut in the market
| they could not save everything that's worth saving.
|
| Shank Mods was able to obtain a copy of the service
| manual in English from somebody in the US. This fact
| probably means that the TV was sold on (or imported to)
| the domestic US market for a while. (Sony have always
| allowed individuals to order parts through an authorised
| service centre, and the latter often insist on requesting
| a repair manual first even if you are 100% sure of the
| part number) It's very likely that a number of them
| existed in the US only to be unceremoniously thrown out
| by their owners when LCD TVs became more popular. I bet
| nobody batted an eyelid when that happened.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Back in the early 2000s the US government offered
| people cash incentives to dispose of their fuel
| inefficient cars, and by disposal they meant running the
| engine with an abrasive liquid instead of oil until it is
| totally ruined beyond repair.
|
| So. Fucking. Stupid. As though Joe Consumer with a V8
| Mustang he puts a few thousand miles on per year is the
| boogeyman of climate change, and not, hell just off the
| dome:
|
| - Every standing military on planet Earth
|
| - The global shipping industry
|
| - The fossil fuel industry
| layla5alive wrote:
| And agriculture
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" As though Joe Consumer with a V8 Mustang he puts a
| few thousand miles on per year is the boogeyman of
| climate change"_
|
| Scrappage schemes target the smokey, rusty shit-boxes
| that are worth next to nothing. Not Joe Mustang's prized
| V8, which would be worth far more than the value of the
| incentive anyway.
|
| And when it comes to old cars, reducing local air
| pollution is often the major concern. Not just climate
| change.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Cash for Clunkers did exactly what it was intended to do:
| It screwed up the used car market for a very long time,
| simply by decreasing supply while demand remained.
|
| People still needed cars, and everything is relative.
| When used car prices go up relative to that of new cars,
| then new cars become relatively inexpensive.
|
| This helps sell more new cars. And back in the time of
| "too big to fail" auto industry bailouts, selling more
| new cars was kind of important.
|
| edit: And remember, there were restrictions for Cash for
| Clunkers. The car had to be less than 25 years old, it
| had to run, and it had to have been registered and
| insured for the last 12 months. It was deliberately
| designed to thin the pool of functional used vehicles.
|
| This program claimed revered cars like Audi Quattros and
| BMW E30s...along with V8 Mustangs. And once turned in,
| they were all quite purposefully destroyed: Sodium
| silicate replaced the engine oil and they were run at WOT
| until they seized, and then they were crushed _just to be
| sure_.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| According to Wikipedia only about 677k vehicles were
| takes out of the market. In 2009 there were about 254
| million registered cars in the US so did it really put a
| dent in the market?
|
| [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_Sy
| stem
|
| [1]:https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-
| vehicle...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| That's the number of "registered vehicles" in the US,
| which is going to include everything from Joe Everyman's
| Mazda to every single truck AT&T uses to maintain what
| they assert strongly is a data network (sorry little
| snark there). A better thing to compare to would be the
| number of used cars sold. A quick google says about 35
| million sales are known for 2008, comprising dealer,
| private, and independent sales. Taking the 677k figure at
| face value, that would amount to roughly 2% of the
| "moving" supply of vehicles being removed from the
| market, and worth noting, the taxpayer paid for that.
| Also worth noting that figure is going to be inherently
| conservative, because that's "all used vehicle sales"
| which includes things like rental companies unloading
| older inventory, logistics companies selling trucks, that
| sort of thing.
|
| That isn't a _ton_ but it also isn 't nothing, and
| however you feel about it, that's 677,000 vehicles that
| were, according to the requirements laid out by the
| program, perfectly serviceable daily-driver vehicles that
| were in active use, that taxpayers paid to buy from
| consumers, strictly to destroy them. Irrespective of if
| it ruined the used market as the GP says, that's still a
| shit ton of perfectly usable machines that our government
| apportioned tax money to buy, and then paid contractors
| to destroy, on purpose.
| jmb99 wrote:
| Or the manufacture of new vehicles to replace perfectly
| serviceable old ones.
| to11mtm wrote:
| > Others in this thread have bought up the future of ICEs
| and classic car preservation. Back in the early 2000s the
| US government offered people cash incentives to dispose
| of their fuel inefficient cars, and by disposal they
| meant running the engine with an abrasive liquid instead
| of oil until it is totally ruined beyond repair.
| Mechanics will tell you horror stories of rare car models
| being destroyed this way so the owners can claim a few
| hundred bucks from the DOT. I'm sure car collectors had a
| field day back then but with such a glut in the market
| they could not save everything that's worth saving.
|
| But _what else_ happened with that?
|
| The glut ended. Used cars got more expensive relative to
| quality.
|
| And now the cost of a 'reliable used car' is far more
| than inflation adjusted for the time passed.
|
| getting back on topic...
|
| > unceremoniously thrown out by their owners when LCD TVs
| became more popular. I bet nobody batted an eyelid when
| that happened.
|
| IDK about all that, during the 'LCD Phase-in' everyone I
| knew either donated theirs and/or moved CRTs into smaller
| rooms when they replaced a working one.
|
| _Especially_ if it was 'Decent' TV, i.e. Progressive
| scan and component input...
|
| Let alone if the thing cost as much new as a very nice
| car of the day. The sheer _responsibility_ of it
| (thinking more, you really _can 't_ throw this thing out
| unceremoniously, at minimum it's part of a house or
| business space eviction proceeding...) has some weight,
| ironically.
| Laforet wrote:
| > everyone I knew either donated theirs and/or moved CRTs
| into smaller rooms when they replaced a working one.
|
| That might have happened for a while but by 2008-ish CRTs
| were being dumped left right and center. My city runs a
| annual kerbside collection program for large appliances
| and furniture, and I distinctly remember metal scavengers
| cruising the street gutting old CRTs people have left out
| for the copper coils, leaving whatever remains to be
| collected as hazardous e-waste. Around the same time, my
| parents got rid of a 16:10 CRT IDTV they bought in the
| 90s and semi-forced me to throw out a 21 inch IBM P275 I
| had because "it's using too much power".
|
| In any case I doubt any corporate (or rich household)
| owner of a 47 inch CRT back then would think too much
| about replacing it with a larger screen that took up less
| space. After all it's just another piece of asset that
| has depreciated to zero value on their books.
| to11mtm wrote:
| > That might have happened for a while but by 2008-ish
| CRTs were being dumped left right and center.That might
| have happened for a while but by 2008-ish CRTs were being
| dumped left right and center.
|
| Maybe I just grew up poorer than you but it took longer
| than that in my world.
|
| > my parents got rid of a 16:10 CRT IDTV they bought in
| the 90s
|
| Yeah meanwhile some of us had to deal with a Zenith TV
| that would 'jump' with a PS1 and other consoles on the
| RF/AV output because 'lord knows why'.
|
| > and semi-forced me to throw out a 21 inch IBM P275 I
| had because "it's using too much power".
|
| Given the other context of your comments I doubt this is
| a confession of contribution of hubristic affluence
| contributing to our modern disposable society but I feel
| like this underscores the point I'm trying to make in my
| reply.
|
| Resourceful not-well-off people used to _really_
| appreciate repairable things, and the worst thing C4C did
| was get rid of a lot of not-fuel-efficient vehicles that
| were at least cheap to repair.
|
| The video of that TV and the pair further underscores it.
| Everything on decently laid out boards. Nowadays an LCD
| tv, sometimes a part can go bad and it's so integrated
| that even 15 years ago it could be a 30 min solder job,
| nowadays it's cuck the whole shebang.
|
| > In any case I doubt any corporate (or rich household)
| owner of a 47 inch CRT back then would think too much
| about replacing it with a larger screen that took up less
| space. After all it's just another piece of asset that
| has depreciated to zero value on their books.
|
| Corporate maybe but I'd guess any smart corporation would
| try to load the 'disposal' costs of a 440 pound object
| onto the taker somehow. Similar for any rich household
| that wanted to keep wealth for more than a generation or
| two.
| Laforet wrote:
| > Given the other context of your comments I doubt this
| is a confession of contribution of hubristic affluence
| contributing to our modern disposable society but I feel
| like this underscores the point I'm trying to make in my
| reply.
|
| Let me assure you that none of what I said was meant to
| diminish your point of view which I agree with mostly.
|
| What I was trying to convey was that people's mindsets
| were rather different during the last decade of CRT. CRT
| had been around since the end of WWII, it may have gotten
| bigger over the years but the _form_ it took on largely
| remained the same so there was a sense of continuity as
| people handed down old TVs when they got something nicer.
|
| When cheap LCD TVs came to the market it represented
| something more akin to a paradigm shift as people with
| limited space at home could now easily own screens 30
| inches and up. My parents are actually rather frugal with
| my dad borders on being a tech hoarder who insist on
| keeping every single cell phone and laptop he ever owned
| somewhere in his garage. However even he was unable to
| justify the sheer bulk and running cost of CRT TVs back
| in that period. Even if he were to give it away there
| would have been very few takers of any.
|
| Therefore it's not inconceivable that this model could
| have been sold in the US or even few more places outside
| Japan. Most of them simply disappeared without a trace
| because at some point they were probably worth less than
| the space it occupies, and people were overly eager to
| embrace the flat panels without realising that they are
| not getting some of the utilities back.
| c22 wrote:
| I keep all my old cell phones too, but I had to get rid
| of a run of them from around 1998 - 2008 because the
| plastic started turning sticky a while back.
| Retric wrote:
| > not-fuel-efficient vehicles that were at least cheap to
| repair.
|
| You don't need to drive that much for fuel inefficiency
| to get really expensive. Even 10k miles/year which is
| well below average at 10MPH vs 30MPH @ 3$ / gallon is an
| extra 2,000$ / year, and adjusted for inflation gas is
| currently fairly cheap. Inflation adjusted in 2011 and
| 2012 gas was over 5$/gallon.
|
| We might see consistent low gas prices intended to delay
| the EV transition (or the could spike), but these cars
| were already old 15 years ago when the program happened.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| > everyone I knew either donated theirs and/or moved CRTs
| into smaller rooms when they replaced a working one.
|
| But you can't do that with a 400lbs behemoth of a TV, it
| would fill the entire room.
|
| This beast is highly impractical and still only 480p.
|
| Even those smaller CRTs got disposed of quickly as soon
| as the 2nd generation of flat screens arrived as they
| already took up way too much space.
| eru wrote:
| > Others in this thread have bought up the future of ICEs
| and classic car preservation. Back in the early 2000s the
| US government offered people cash incentives to dispose
| of their fuel inefficient cars, and by disposal they
| meant running the engine with an abrasive liquid instead
| of oil until it is totally ruined beyond repair.
|
| Could you elaborate?
| Laforet wrote:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-this-is-
| too-ab...
| eru wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Those were wild times. I remember they also had a similar
| scheme in Germany. Absolute madness (and that's even if
| you ignore the useless damage to old cars.)
|
| They should have just printed more money to juice the
| economy, instead of these wild schemes to give subsidies
| to specific industries.
| rasz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrappage_program
|
| Cash for Clunkers - 700,000 cars SCRAPPED by the USA
| Government https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZMJ_oNtzzE
|
| UK had its own program in 2009
| https://www.banpei.net/2010/04/07/wtf-mr2-sw20-in-
| british-ca...
|
| All the cars lost to the 2009 Scrappage Scheme - The UK
| SCRAPPED all these rare cars?!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLLNOUUqCUc
| rtpg wrote:
| Though I don't think anyone would have wanted it, I think
| there's a bit of a false dichotomy there. Maybe in theory
| there would have been a place for this in a curated space
| in Japan... if not for it being so massive at least.
|
| Ultimately if it was a TV designed in Japan, having it on
| display at a local tech museum would be nice. I just
| don't know where it would go that could deal with the
| space and the weight.
|
| Closest thing I could think of is the NTT museum, which
| is ginormous... but it's mostly about NTT's stuff. "Some
| other company in Japan made big TVs" is a bit less
| interesting than, say, some older tabulation machines
| they have there.
| sneak wrote:
| He tried contacting Sony several ways, but Sony dgaf about
| anything these days.
| rtpg wrote:
| To be quite honest I don't think there are many museums
| that would want that CRT. CRTs are notoriously a massive
| pain in the ass. Retro computing museums and the like have
| their CRTs, but they don't really have the space for it.
|
| It probably does make sense in the house of a massive
| hoarder.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Japan's really ill situated for industrial museums. Land is
| at premium, summer steam is brutal, disasters are routine,
| and public support is weak.
|
| It's also just one of the world's best for Sony - they make
| a lot of bests(with many asterisks too).
|
| One thing I only understood after I've bought a 3D printer
| is, someone wanting an obsolete product is weird from
| creator perspective. I still fully understand consumer side
| sentiments, and also am aware of vital importance of
| reference data archives, but I'd rather want audiences to
| seek the latest and greatest than asking me about a shelf
| bracket that I stopped making some time ago.
|
| So I think it's an okay outcome. The TV lives on. Someday
| Sony might buy it back, or it might get transferred to some
| other museums. That's good enough.
|
| The only stretch goal left is an interview with its
| creators or their autobiography(s). But that would be a
| cherry on top.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > Japan's really ill situated for industrial museums.
| Land is at premium, summer steam is brutal, disasters are
| routine, and public support is weak.
|
| Japan's suitability for industrial museums can be
| debated, but saying "summer steam is brutal, disasters
| are routine" as reasons is ridiculous. This is the 21st
| century, not the Middle Ages. Besides, Japan already has
| plenty of industrial museums.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Japan's really ill situated for industrial museums. Land
| is at premium, summer steam is brutal, disasters are
| routine, and public support is weak.
|
| This makes absolutely no sense. Japan is full of museums
| of all kinds, including really weird ones you'd never see
| in America. Not far from me, there's a museum of
| miniatures, a museum about sewers, a museum about tap
| water, a museum about subways, and a museum with an
| indoor recreation of an entire village from ~300 years
| ago. And the summers here are better than most southern
| US states like Florida or Arizona, and disasters much
| less routine than Florida.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| 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!?
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| 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.
| yehat wrote:
| That's the standard excuse of a thief. "I'm not stealing
| it, I'm saving it". Better stop the excusing.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Except that the owner is the one giving it away. The
| current owner doesn't claim theft.
|
| The only people claiming theft are a third party that
| never owned the property in question or at the time gave
| it away freely.
| xp84 wrote:
| Today I learned that carefully preserving an artefact that
| neither its owner nor anyone else in its origin country
| wanted = "colonizers stealing."
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| This is the same for a lot of supposed "theft" by museums.
| Lots of "priceless" objects now were at the time junk, so
| they were thrown away.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > This is the same for a lot of supposed "theft" by
| museums.
|
| Not to mention that in many countries art pieces
| predating a certain era are simply destroyed (on the
| ground that they're older than a particular religion).
|
| And most of the pharaohs' tombs were pillaged and unique
| pieces were melt by actual thiefs for their gold.
|
| These evil, evil, museums displaying these around the
| world for any visitor to see when you think these could
| have been melt for gold by thieves or simply destroyed
| because they were impure!
|
| Evil western civilization. That western civilization is
| so evil it must be replaced!
| Loughla wrote:
| Alternate theory, both are true.
|
| Western societies took advantage of multiple other
| societies to plunder their treasures. Those same
| societies didn't have the infrastructure and/or care to
| preserve these things themselves.
|
| Sometimes two things can be true.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| If they do not care about them, they are not "treasures"
| by the standards of those cultures but rather "waste."
| HeWhoLurksLate wrote:
| Not necessarily true- the majority of people don't know
| about 3-2-1 backup strategy and I've seen _hundreds_ of
| "help! my { phone | SD card | computer } died and I lost
| all my family photos" posts
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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.
| tantalor wrote:
| > 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.
| neilv wrote:
| 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?
| kcb wrote:
| 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?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| ~~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.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| It's the equivalent to an old sports car that was
| impractical when it was first released, but the pinnacle of
| its time.
| rjmill wrote:
| 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.
| rasz wrote:
| > 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.
| gyomu wrote:
| The sad reality is that there are countless more things in
| the world that belong in museums than there is museum
| space/staff to properly take care of it.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Or money. Note the Living Computer Museum basically
| collapsing after Paul Allen's death.
| walrus01 wrote:
| This was, sadly, a conscious choice made by Allen long
| before his death. Same as with his airplane and tank
| collection. He had plenty of time and legal advice to set
| it up with an endowment that could allow for its
| continued yearly operational budget and chose not to do
| so. His heirs don't care about his personal toy
| collection so it's been sold off.
| ghaff wrote:
| The same thing basically happened with Malcolm Forbes'
| collections. It's perfectly normal for heirs to just not
| value things you've collected in the same way you did.
| int0x29 wrote:
| Which is why if you actually care you create an
| independent and well funded organization before you die
| so your heirs can't sell it all off.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| Would that really be better than letting your family sell
| it to the highest bidder? The only real concern I see if
| its value falls below the metal it contains or the mover
| breaks it. If a family cannot sell and does not value it
| then whats the point of keeping it?
| ghaff wrote:
| On any thread where the topic of various "collectibles"
| that surely someone wants comes up, there are tons of
| people who are "you can't just toss it" but somehow thy
| never want to take them off your hands themselves.
|
| I totally understand the impulse but it's just not
| realistic to preserve everything.
| Onavo wrote:
| It's like the computer history museum that closed
| Onavo wrote:
| *Living Computer Museum
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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.
| philistine wrote:
| Ultimately, Indiana Jones does not exist. Only collectors.
| msephton wrote:
| Exactly. The idea alone is worthless. The guy in the video
| has the idea and executed on it.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| 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.
| thousand_nights wrote:
| 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
| jonny_eh wrote:
| 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!
| unscaled wrote:
| > 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 soniLi Shi Zi Liao Guan (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
| mrob wrote:
| 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.
| to11mtm wrote:
| Good point TBH.
| Springtime wrote:
| 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).
| geerlingguy wrote:
| And that high frequency whine that many people (myself
| included) can hear, that gets infuriating after a few hours
| of a TV remaining on.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| And the elephant in the room (literally): A moderate-
| sized CRT weighed a TON, burned through power, and took
| up substantial desk real estate.
|
| They definitely have their perks but I only own one CRT
| for retro gaming, and I wouldn't trade any of my newer
| monitors or TV's for a bulky old tube if you paid me.
| Hardest conceivable pass please.
| jpsouth wrote:
| 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.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| 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.
| macintux wrote:
| I nearly collapsed while moving my CRT out of the house. I
| have no recollection of the size, but putting it on my
| shoulder by myself was a terrible idea, and I'm very lucky
| I didn't injure myself.
|
| Nothing could persuade me to voluntarily go back to CRTs.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| The only really good reason I can see to use a CRT is
| because you want to fix/rebuild one of the old 1980s
| vector arcade games (like Tempest or Star Wars) and want
| it to be a truly authentic reproduction.
| philistine wrote:
| It's even easier than that. You can get a 43-inch LCD for
| 300$. CRTs, with their inherent complexity, can NEVER
| compete on price.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Yeah, I left out the price aspect. Forget a 43-inch CRT:
| how about a 85-inch CRT? You can get an LCD (or better
| yet, OLED) TV this size easily for not that much money.
| But it's basically impossible to even make a CRT this
| size, and even if you could, it would be so expensive,
| heavy, and large it would be completely impractical. Lots
| of people now have 50-85" TVs in their living rooms, but
| those are all impossible for CRT technology.
|
| However, the OP was trying to claim CRTs are superior
| because of latency and refresh rate for gaming
| applications, specifically, so I was just focusing on
| those aspects. The refresh rate part is silly; high-
| refresh-rate LCDs and OLEDs are common now. The latency
| part might have some validity, but compared to all the
| other factors it's really not that important.
| mrob wrote:
| For maximum motion quality the refresh rate needs to
| match the frame rate. Modern gaming LCDs can beat CRTs in
| refresh rate, but only a minority of games support such
| high frame rates. For any given refresh rate the CRT will
| always have better motion quality.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| 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.
| mrob wrote:
| The difference isn't subtle. This is perfectly sharp and
| clear on a CRT, but blurry on an OLED:
|
| https://www.testufo.com/
| fallous wrote:
| 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.
| karashi wrote:
| 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.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| And those cameras don't take up a good part of the room!
| giantfrog wrote:
| That's not a conflict of interest, it's just an interest
| to11mtm wrote:
| > 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.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| 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.
| cheema33 wrote:
| 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?
| alibarber wrote:
| Being able to physically mess around with something I'm
| passionate about, and learn and share info about it -
| without any of the overhead of actually storing the thing
| or the logistics behind it or whatever is something I
| actively seek out. Heck, legit museums charge entry for
| that.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Getting a chance to work on this unique device is probably
| its own reward for them.
| eboynyc32 wrote:
| Oh god who cares!!
| LastTrain wrote:
| 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.
| nharada wrote:
| 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
| hbarka wrote:
| You're overthinking it. Sony is no longer the same Sony.
| nothacking_ wrote:
| 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.
| noprocrasted wrote:
| 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.
| romanhn wrote:
| 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.
| consumer451 wrote:
| 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
| sapphire42 wrote:
| This is a great story, but why does content that is clearly LLM-
| generated continually make it to the HN front page?
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| 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.
| bane wrote:
| 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 f
| _cking 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.
| rconti wrote:
| 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.
| reason-mr wrote:
| 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 ..
| pansa2 wrote:
| Widescreen? If so it's likely a Sony GDM-FW900 in disguise -
| would probably sell for a couple of thousand nowadays.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 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.
| pansa2 wrote:
| 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).
| binary132 wrote:
| 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.
| ascorbic wrote:
| 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.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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.
| thomasfl wrote:
| Buy CRT displays now! In a few year they will be sought after
| collector items.
| donatj wrote:
| We're well into that territory already. Go on Marketplace and
| try to find a decent Trinitron for less than $200
| metadat wrote:
| Why must the vacuum be made out of lead rather than e.g. steel?
| Edman274 wrote:
| 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.
| metadat wrote:
| Got it, thanks!
| natepeters wrote:
| 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".
| agiacalone wrote:
| Frank had a 2000" TV. You could watch The Simpsons from 30 blocks
| away!
|
| (This is a Weird Al reference)
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