CRT replacements for the future?

[demogo]

Ran across this posting on another site and thought I'd share it.

I'm not here as much as I used to be; apologies if someone else has already posted it here.

The Impending CRT Display Revival Will Be Televised

Until the 2000s vacuum tubes practically ruled the roost. Even if they had surrendered practically fully to semiconductor technology like integrated circuits, there was no escaping them in everythi…

hackaday.com

 

[TheShanMan]

Interesting! Thanks for sharing.

 

[ArcadeTechGW]

Seems overly optimistic to me.

Tubes were essentially dead by the mid-1990's, not 2000.

The plasma TVs were the "bomb" of the day, but screen burn from those idiot channel ids hurt them.

OLED is the current affordable king display. I was watching The Expanse on a Bravia today, and it looked great.

 

[WadeLanham]

I haven't read that yet but plan to, but I disagree about tubes being dead in the 90's. I can think of 2 people in my family that bought large flat tube TV's in 2003, and I remember being amazed at an HD widescreen tube TV at a vacation home we visited in 2007. I also remember buying a 21" CRT for our kids playroom, and they weren't born until 2007. I think your memory might be off by about a decade? Seems like panels of any type were just starting to appear in the 2000's decade. And CRT's hung around for a while after that.

 

[CharlieG]

Yep, I unironically purchased a new 19" CRT television in 2000, and a new 25"-ish flat CRT television in 2004. Didn't get my first flat panel TV until 2007, although most computer monitors had been flat screens for a while by then.

 

[MaximRecoil]

Seems overly optimistic to me.

Tubes were essentially dead by the mid-1990's, not 2000.

The plasma TVs were the "bomb" of the day, but screen burn from those idiot channel ids hurt them.

The world's first commercial plasma TV wasn't even released until 1997, and it cost as much as or more than a lot of new cars and trucks did at the time (about $15,000). In the mid 1990s CRT TVs still had a nearly 100% market share.

 

[obitus1990]

Yep, I unironically purchased a new 19" CRT television in 2000, and a new 25"-ish flat CRT television in 2004. Didn't get my first flat panel TV until 2007, although most computer monitors had been flat screens for a while by then.

I don't think I bought my first panel (plasma) until 2008. And I remember buying my parents a 30-something inch flat screen TUBE in 2004.

 

[purpleibby]

Don't forget the last of the PROPER arcade games(TeamPlay , 20 year reunion/class of 81 ect.), were released in the early 2000's with wells gardner crt monitors.....

 

[JamBurglar]

I haven't read that yet but plan to, but I disagree about tubes being dead in the 90's. I can think of 2 people in my family that bought large flat tube TV's in 2003, and I remember being amazed at an HD widescreen tube TV at a vacation home we visited in 2007. I also remember buying a 21" CRT for our kids playroom, and they weren't born until 2007. I think your memory might be off by about a decade? Seems like panels of any type were just starting to appear in the 2000's decade. And CRT's hung around for a while after that.

100% correct. Back in the early 2000s TVs were just starting to switch to 16:9 format with increased resolutions (480P, 720i, etc.) and there were still many tube TVs being sold. I bought a fairly large HD tube TV (4:3 aspect ratio) around 2004 because it offered the best picture quality for the buck at the time. I think it was a 1080i but don't quote me on that. As the tubes started becoming less and less popular, things started moving into 1080(i and p) resolution projection screens TVs and LCDs. This would have been mid 2000s. Plasmas were around but they were seen as higher-end models. That transition was happening from the early 2000s to around 2010 when LCDs got so cheap and big that nobody really wanted to fool with the heavy tubes or bulky (design flawed) projection models.

 

[RetroCJT]

Yeah I was born in 2003 and used a remember the family buying several new CRT's before finally switching to an Olevia 342i LCD in about 2008.

 

[TheYeti]

Sony's KD-34XBR970, released in 2006, is widely cited as the last high-end consumer CRT TV to be sold in North America.

Pretty much the pinnacle of CRT technology.

16x9 HDMI input @ 1080i.

I remember seeing one of these in person and the picture was really stunning for the time.

 

[WadeLanham]

Sony's KD-34XBR970, released in 2006, is widely cited as the last high-end consumer CRT TV to be sold in North America.

Pretty much the pinnacle of CRT technology.

16x9 HDMI input @ 1080i.

I remember seeing one of these in person and the picture was really stunning for the time.

View attachment 850991

View attachment 850992

This may have been the one in the vacation home I mentioned. It was an HD, widescreen CRT. Probably weren't many variations made so that might be it. I was really impressed with it back then.

 

[cdjump]

Sony's KD-34XBR970, released in 2006, is widely cited as the last high-end consumer CRT TV to be sold in North America.

Pretty much the pinnacle of CRT technology.

16x9 HDMI input @ 1080i.

I remember seeing one of these in person and the picture was really stunning for the time.

View attachment 850991

View attachment 850992

I had a slightly earlier version of that tv. It had dvi and not hdmi inputs, iirc, it was 720p, talk about one heavy tv. Took 2 full grown men to move it.

 

[obitus1990]

Total clickbait BS article though... there will be no new CRTs, as the author readily admits near the end of the piece.

"Restarting a mass-manufacturing production line for something like once super-common CRT TVs would require a major investment that so far nobody is willing to front."

 

[WadeLanham]

Total clickbait BS article though... there will be no new CRTs, as the author readily admits near the end of the piece.

"Restarting a mass-manufacturing production line for something like once super-common CRT TVs would require a major investment that so far nobody is willing to front."

But that's not what this thread is really about, it's about everybody telling ArcadeTechGW that he's wrong.

 

[demogo]

But that's not what this thread is really about, it's about everybody telling ArcadeTechGW that he's wrong.

Should I rename the thread title to reflect that?

 

[Mattspad]

But that's not what this thread is really about, it's about everybody telling ArcadeTechGW that he's wrong.

Should I rename the thread title to reflect that?

2/3 of klov would need to be renamed then

 

[bobbyb13]

Except that all it might take is some BitCoin or AI billionaire retro gaming enthusiast kid to think it's worth it to do!

Total clickbait BS article though... there will be no new CRTs, as the author readily admits near the end of the piece.

"Restarting a mass-manufacturing production line for something like once super-common CRT TVs would require a major investment that so far nobody is willing to front."

 

[pboland]

100% correct. Back in the early 2000s TVs were just starting to switch to 16:9 format with increased resolutions (480P, 720i, etc.) and there were still many tube TVs being sold. I bought a fairly large HD tube TV (4:3 aspect ratio) around 2004 because it offered the best picture quality for the buck at the time. I think it was a 1080i but don't quote me on that. As the tubes started becoming less and less popular, things started moving into 1080(i and p) resolution projection screens TVs and LCDs. This would have been mid 2000s. Plasmas were around but they were seen as higher-end models. That transition was happening from the early 2000s to around 2010 when LCDs got so cheap and big that nobody really wanted to fool with the heavy tubes or bulky (design flawed) projection models.

100% agree. People tend to forget that the official switch over from analog to digital TV didn't happen until 2009 (at least in the States). That is why flat panel TV's didn't become ubiquitous until 2009-2010 time frame.

I remember buying a TV in 1999 at a very large furniture/electronics store (Roberd's Grand). I ended up purchasing a Floor Model RCA 32" CRT for $1300.00 (still have and use it weekly for console gaming). There was only one flat panel TV on display at this place and everyone stared at it because it seemed so futuristic. The price of the TV was just over $10,000.00. There is no-way the average person back then was buying a ten-thousand dollar TV. If you could, that's awesome, but I could not.

 

[alfonzotan]

Last new tube TV I bought was a $90 Walmart Black Friday special in 2000. Turned the tube into a color vector FrankenMonitor a few years back.... but the first really big purchase I made as a grown-up was a 35" Panasonic, 12 months no interest from Montgomery Ward, in 1995. $1,200 IIRC.

First flat panel was a 50" Panasonic in 2005, and I still don't even want to think about how much it cost... but it still works, and still looks great.