One advantage of modern TVs is how slim they are. It’s so crazy to me now how much space those old TVs took up. You just had a big TV stand sticking out from the wall.
And CRTs are unbelievably heavy in comparison, making them a bitch to move at all.
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That anger when the specs didn’t include the screen bulge in the depth measurement and now you can’t close the armoire door after carrying that shit 50 feet from the car.
The screen bulge alone in that pic is at least 3 times wider than my TV. It’s amazing what 2 decades of technology can do. Now, if we could just figure out how to make an LED TV than didn’t have a network card…
They do make non-smart TVs, you just have to know where to look.
Often the non-smart hospitality TVs don’t have the more advanced features you’d want for a home TV like HDR and the like, but I gotta admit that one looks quite decent. Can’t see any Dolby Vision support though.
Don’t look up Hospitality Mode, unless you want to end up on a list.
Put some clothes on, please.
Thanks for pointing it out. I didn’t even notice.
I distinctly recall Sony’s 40" Trinitron CRT weighing over 300 lbs. The 32" was ~200 lbs.
Yup. That was the last CRT I ever owned. Thing was a tank and took two people to carry it.
I’m pretty sure we had a 32". And that was MASSIVE for the time.
I have a 27" Trinitron and could barely get it into my car by myself. Probably my best curb find ever.
Edit: 108lbs. And 900 US dollars new, in the year 2000; equivalent to $1,750 today.
even Flatscreen CRTs were not that slim :/
I’m using an old console TV that I’ve modified to hold a flat screen. I literally have a home server and a sound bar built into it the space that was originally just the tube and there’s still enough space for my full grown ass to climb inside.
Yeah, but you could use them as a shelf.
Put stuff on top of them (just be careful when watering the plants).
You can also store cats on top of them, they like the warmth.
Just beware when you change to a flat screen and the dumbass cat still tries to jump onto it.
And if it breaks, it literally implodes.
Not always, sometimes it gives pretty {dangerous} purple lightning in the back of the tube.
Just in case anybody is stupid enough to believe this, there was nothing radioactive in old CRT-based TVs. And they sometimes had black cases but weren’t a “black box”.
They worked by bending a beam of electrons that hit phosphors in the screen, which is cool enough that saying stupid BS about “radioactive” is unnecessary.
CRTs can emit X-Rays, but they are properly shielded so they never leave the tube.
The X-Ray scare mostly came from a line of GE TV’s in 1968 that had improper shielding and had to be recalled.
Radioactivity and X-Rays are tangentially related, but they’re not at all the same thing.
One is from a decaying material and the other is from controlled electron beam, but they are both radiation emitters. People are just more familiar with the term radioactive and think it is the catch-all term for a source of radiation.
The electron gun in a tv and in an xray machine are pretty similar and without shielding, you will still get hit with radiation even if it isn’t strictly radioactive, but rather another type of radiation emitter.
One is from a decaying material
Specifically radioactive decay.
the other is from controlled electron beam
So, not radioactivity.
Radiation is a really vague term. It’s just energy moving in the form of waves or particles. Sunlight is radiation. Radio waves are radiation. Microwaves are radiation. Wifi is radiation.
Radiation can be dangerous in a few ways. Something can be very bright and blind you, or it can cause you to heat up too much. X-rays are an example of ionizing radiation, that’s dangerous because it can break apart molecular bonds, causing damage to cells. That’s why you can get skin cancer from ultraviolet radiation. X-rays are a shorter wavelength than ultraviolet light, so there’s more potential cellular damage per photon.
But, radioactivity is dangerous not just because of X-rays, but primarily because of alpha and beta particles, and because of even higher energy particles like gamma particles / rays.
So, just because there’s one type of ionizing radiation that can come from a CRT-TV that is also peripherally associated with radioactive decay doesn’t mean that there’s any connection between a TV and radioactivity.
That would be like saying that an atomic bomb causes a huge explosion, and a fertilizer bomb also causes a huge explosion, so a fertilizer bomb is a nuke.
This isn’t me arguing against you because I know very little about the difference. But when I started reading I thought this was a Unidan copypasta 😂
Yes the humor was in the vagueness
beam of electrons
Let’s say it cooler: they were particle accelerators you pointed at your face.
Also, massive glass vacuum bottles that could implode if mishandled.
And with massive capacitors that could electrocute you if mishandled.
And heavy enough to seriously crush your foot (and possibly implode and electrocute you) if mishandled.
And the static electricity felt really neat on the back of your hand if you put it close to the screen.
They were so fucking cool, and we took them for granted, and now they’re gone, and life is significantly less cool without them.
But by fuck was their capacity to put out a clear image mid. But their screen size on the other hand …extremely limited
TVs, maybe¹. CRT monitors, though? They were great. And mostly didn’t care about what resolution you threw at them.
- It’s a big maybe, though. Live TV? Sure, but that was more on the extremely low resolution signal than on the screen (HDTV would’ve looked great on a CRT). But games? They were fantastic for games, though. Artists designed their images with CRT’s natural blur on mind, and now we need complex filters and at least a 4K monitor to replicate the original look.
What game is this?
First one is from Final Fantasy 6, second one from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
If you squint, you can make the right side look like the left side. Kind of amazing. Instantly increase resolution with this one weird trick.
They looked amazing for games designed for them, specifically because they blurred the pixels. If what you want is crisp lines or vivid colors, CRT works against you
And heavy enough to seriously crush your foot (and possibly implode and electrocute you) if mishandled.
Sometimes. Other times they were little portable things.
I mean, sure. But even this little 4’’ “pocket” thing, for instance, still weighed 1.2Kg… that’s a damn dense (and expensive) brick to drop on a toe…
1.2 kg isn’t very much, especially for a dense piece of electronics.
If you look at the history of iMac computers, when they went from CRTs to flat screens they only dropped 6 kg from 15.7 kg to 9.6 kg. Since then they’ve focused on making them lighter and lighter, but it’s not like the CRT was the majority of the weight.
they did emit x rays but most of them was blocked by the leaded glass
Barium glass.
Leaded glass was only used for the rear of the tube (or amber monochrome displays), the front glass was barium infused for colour CRTs.
Radioactivity and X-Rays are tangentially related, but they’re not at all the same thing.
I like this comment except for the fact it seems needlessly hostile
Someone not knowing there’s a difference between “radiation” and “radioactivity” doesn’t make them stupid.
No, just ignorant. Very ignorant.
It’s the equivalent of knowing the difference between “poisonous” and “venomous”
For the vast majority of people it doesn’t matter. Maybe they learned in 8th grade, but they forgot, because it never came back up.
Not really. Radiation is something you encounter every day. Radioactivity is something you probably never encounter. Most people except Australians rarely encounter poisonous and venomous animals.
Poison is something you encounter every day, too. Not poisonous animals, sure, but poisonous substances.
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I’ve never had a CRT TV that lasted more than ten years.
All of mine did but got increasingly quirkier over time. Sometimes you needed to hit it on top to get the picture looking right. Audio got crackly. The component cables needed a fine touch to display the picture correctly.
That sort of fun stuff.
Sometimes you needed to hit it on top to get the picture looking right.
Ah yes, percussive maintenance.
It took skill to do it right. If you hit it too hard, it got worse, so the smack needed finesse.
My parents black and white set from the sixties was like that. They refused to replace it until the mid eighties.
The soup pot we used to whack the TV with when it cut to static has outlasted the TV and the channels displayed on it.
Good old cracked solder joints and corroded switches.
I got a CRT from 1983 a few weeks ago. Still works fine, just needed a little color adjustment.
Never having owned a CRT television (LCD was king when I became an adult) I have to say that that looks fucking sick. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a bulky one until now.
Retro games look better on them and there’s no emulator that has ever pulled off a sufficiently convincing simulation for me. They also render dark colors better than most high end TVs. If you play a lot of old games, it would be neat to have a small one. The big ones, however, weigh a metric ton and are at least as deep as they are wide, and they’re extremely front-heavy. Those aren’t worth it unless you plan to build an entire arcade cabinet around it.
True. This one is a 10" model and it already weighs a fuck-ton, and it’s quite deep and takes up a lot of space. But I really like how old games (especially PS1 and PS2) look on it.
I wouldn’t go higher than 14" models because of the weight.
Non-Sony models aren’t too heavy, especially 27" and below. My 27" CRT is more than managable for me to lift up by myself over my head.
Sony included thick steel magnetic shielding around their tubes, making them significantly heavier compared to other brands.
I always thought this one looked cool when I was a kid https://crtdatabase.com/crts/samsung/samsung-gxe-1395
I’ve never had a CRT fail on me.
In the late 90s to early 2000s they made cheap plastic crap, the circuit board could break if you pushed the power button too hard
And during their last years a lot of cheap CRTs were built, especially those VCR combo units, most of them all died very quickly.
I think that’s some major rose-colored-glasses thinking. They did break. A child with a magnet could also cause issues, at least on older ones (I say having been said child).
Circa late 1980s I remember our dad brought home a degauser from work, hey anyone remember what a degauser is? It was a magnetic box (VERY STRONG MAGNETS) with a tunnel to slide a cassette tape through, to erase the cassette tape. Well I don’t remember which of us family members decided its storage place should be on top of the TV but what a fun science lesson that turned out to be 😄 If you moved the magnet around the TV in all different places, the distortion on the screen would follow wherever the magnet was, and IIRC the screen distortion wasn’t permanent. The screen went back to normal when you removed the magnet from the vicinity.
IIRC It messes with the beam guides. I’m not sure if there are cases/designs in which it would cause permanent damage in color TVs, but I seem to think I managed to permanently tint our older one green somehow.
IIRC it does cause damage if done repeatedly, but doing it once or twice probably wouldn’t do much.
TVs have their own degaussing coil built-in, it’s the short buzz you hear first when the TV is turned on.
If the metal frame around the front of the tube becomes strongly magnetized, that’s when the distortion is “permanent”, meaning it’s not permanent but not really feasible to fix.
We tried with magnet, no where as strong as the ones you’ve mentioned, but still, it messed up the image. It was fun.
I dropped mine down the stairs, the implosion from the vacuum tube was pretty impressive.
Oh I wish I experienced that
I had some unshielded noise speakers that would change the color when swiped across the screen in one direction. And cleared it when swiped the other direction. Fun times!
I will forever remember using the magnet that came with this old Klutz book near the TV in my parents’ room when I was around 10 and noticing the rainbow pattern it made in the picture. And then, after further investigation and experimentation, noticing those colors stopped going away when I moved the magnet away. And then, never speaking a word of it. For, like, 40 years.
When Bill Burr’s Netflix cartoon show put a similar bit in an episode it finally dawned on me that lots of kids must have messed up their parents’ TVs with those magnet wands.
The TV wasn’t permanently messed up, you just needed to degauss it.
oh so thats what degauss does
Yeah Gauss a unit of measurement for magnetic flux density. It’s not just there to make a BOING noise and briefly mess up the picture.
Well now I’ve got a plan for when I get a chance to time travel!
Klutz books were truly amazing. I had that one and several others, and they were incredibly formative for me.
they will record you anyways and store the recordings and transcripts long enough that if a future owner of the TV ever connects it, it’ll upload all that shit it’s stored.
and they know what wifi networks and hardware addresses are nearby so those recordings will be associated with your location even if it uploads them from another physical location.
these things are all advanced wiretaps that should probably have their antennas permanently destroyed.
You just typed all that on the biggest wiretaps of all.
Summit for Lemmy on GrapheneOS is a wiretap?
Firefox with ublock, noscript, and privacybadger on cachyOS is a wiretap?
cuz I posted this from one of those two.
It’s all a wiretap at this point in my head. I think it’s just a matter of how much effort and time a (probably government) entity wants to take to track people down or grab someone.
Like the NSA didn’t build a gigantic data warehouse in Utah to not fill it with a database of every person they could.
I’m sorry you feel so defeated that you can’t even appreciate folks who are still fighting where they can.
NSA can’t warehouse data that never gets generated in the first place.
I hear you, and I desperately hope I am wrong about my feelings on the matter to be honest with you. I fear I am not though.
The AI 20 years from now cross referencing every possible point of data to deduce every single identifiable feature to pin you as the guy who forgot to pay for the gum is going to have a field day with this post.
I see you have decided to take LLM company CEOs at their word when they tell you how amazingly powerful their products are.
Calm down son, it was a joke.
Fun fact: These TVs also had a self-defense system built in. One wring move with a screwdriver and they’d throw you across the room.
The very first thing you have to learn for crt repair is how to safely discharge a capacitor.
Modern smart TVs: data pls 👉👈😊😊😊
Crt tvs broke all the time.
I know, right? I’ve gone through like 4 in my lifetime and I haven’t owned any in over a decade lol
Remember when the tube started to go and you had to leave it on all the time or whack the side of it when you first turned it on for the day, until it warmed up?
Rose tinted glasses.
Yep. In fact I just met an 80 year old guy today that spent his career repairing tvs. Sure were a lot of tv repair men and shops for tvs that never broke.
CRTs did break. And they did suffer from burning.
Just buy a non-smart modern TV, you won’t need a replacement and it won’t connect to the internet.
Please tell me where I can get a modern high-res TV that is NOT smart. I have tried but cannot find them anywhere
Your best bet would be a commercial display. Though it’ll be double the price, at least, and you’ll need an hdmi switch and a soundbar more like as not.
I recently bought a Thomson TV that’s HD and with no smart features at all. The only downside is that the image contrast is not the best.
Thanks for the tip, I might get one of those :)
Enjoy! I’ve also bought their Google TV stick (same brand, I think it’s re-branded as ONN in the US though). It works well and I can just switch it in the future, without replacing the TV.
Just buy a tv, then don’t connect it to anything. But likely that you are going to connect something smart to it, so it doesn’t matter.
It is possible to put it in a VLAN that is unable to talk to the internet. This is fine, but I wish I could just get a TV that doesn’t have this tracking functionality to begin with.
Dumb tv’s are still a thing but they are priced insanely high
What are you using to watch on the tv?
Give me one specific example of a non smart modern TV that has a decent quality panel please.
There are some that have very little connectivity. They are very expensive commercial units made by Sharp and even Samsung.
Have seen Samsungs hostility TVs, but only resource on them I could find was their own official store pages which are woefully void of any info I actually care about
We have a mix of commercial samsung and sharp TV’s for signboards. Both come with a proprietary signboard system but I use Pi5’s and google slides to manage them all. Every great now and then I have to reset something.
What’s a quality panel? You mean you can’t natively get clear resolution on your TV? Doesn’t sound very smart to me.
You know there are more variables that contribute to the quality of the TV than the resolution? Like how bright it gets or how accurate it’s colors are and what it’s color space coverages are… Or how deep the blacks are or if the pixel response is decent. I guess people draw the line at different places and most probably don’t care at all… I do, but I also consider my privacy as a variable here. I am in a niche group of people that are completely underserved as I have looked and have not found… So if someone claims they know of some I ask them for their wisdom.
but CRTs could be more easily repaired. burn in is still a problem on modern OLEDs
You can a modern tv way way easier. I do it all the time. And you don’t risk electrocution or exposure, and it can be done in about 15 minutes for most issues.
Don’t buy CRT or OLED. Problem solved.
There was a time when CRT TVs were so cranky and reliably in need of service that your local drugstore had a rack of replacement tubes and even a tube-tester machine. You could pull a bunch of tubes from your set, test them at the store, and buy a replacement for whichever one was bad.
I run a valve (tube) amp as my daily driver for audio and yeah, you do have to have a screw loose in this day and age. They’re a lot better with modern passive components but modern valves are pretty hopeless in terms of longevity. For EL84s you basically have to buy old Soviet military stock (thank fuck Gosplan was so hilariously inefficient) or your amp will burn through them fairly quickly.
On the other hand if you look after them will probably outlive you. The valves are consumable components but the transformer is literally a big chunk of iron and copper, and they’re dead simple to work on usually. Modern capacitors don’t dry out and turn into resistors nearly as readily too.
The way CRTs work is absolutely amazing. You’re basically watching a ray gun shoot you and it’s so quick it looks like a picture. It’s an absolutely wild marvel of engineering.
I repair arcade games and often mention to curious onlookers: “Fifty years of putting miniature particle accelerators in every home and business!”
All I want is a brand new CRT that I can connect my PSOne to, so that I can play Point Blank 1-3 again.
Man of culture I see
I would love for CRTs to be manufactured again, but that instutitional knowledge is probably long gone, as is the equipment that produced it… so making them again would, probably, be a trillion dollar ordeal.
I think there was an art exhibit or something where they manufactured some new CRT TVs a couple years ago so apparently it’s doable on the small scale. Biggest problem is the current economy especially in the US simply couldn’t support small scale manufacturers like that long term.
