I watched the Richard Pryor movie Bustin' Loose, which came out in 1981. In one of the early scenes they are in a TV store & one of the TV's on display is a 42"-45"-ish flatpanel TV. The way the picture on the TV washed out, made it looked like it was a RPTV, but it was no thicker than any flat-panel made today.

I though LCD & Plasma panels weren't available to consumers until the early 90's?
Were there any TV's made like that back in 1980/1981?

No.

That is a front projector that has 3 CRT tubes and a mirror in a box that sits on the floor just in front of and pointing up at a curved and down facing screen. My neighbor had one of these in the early eighties. We had a much larger front projector screen with the RGB CRT tubes, but it was in a coffee table sized box about 5' from the screen.

There were none. There were, however, some very small LCD's, many not much larger than a postage stamp. The largest of those that I know of was a 4". All had very low resolution.

There were also very large venue displays that were used in sports arenas and the like. These were two different technologies which were Black & White (incandescent bulbs) and Black & Orange (Neon glow bulbs). Sony also did a full color display called a Jumbotron which used Red/Green/Blue incandescent bulbs. These displays were very low resolution, often below 480i, and often with strange aspect ratios such as square. They were also maintenance nightmares and were often seen with bulbs stuck on or off.

Early flat panel computer displays also existed in monochrome neon orange color. I used such at the University of Illinois in the late 1970's, they were called PLATO terminals. These were large screens (about 25" square) with an orange neon matrix and a rear 35mm slide projector that allowed you to load high resolution photographic slides and use animated pointers. You could observe the slide, watch where the professor was pointing, and listen via a telephone line to the audio lecture. These were used for sharing the same professor with remote campuses.

Those neon-orange displays you were looking at were plasma (AC and DC type were the largest displays in the early to mid 1980's. EL (electroluminscent) were also out in 1983/84 time frame. LCD were really small and monochrome until super-twist was introduced to the world at SID in 1985. Active matix monochrome emerged a few years later. TFT got its start in 1989 with 4" displays and 10.4" TFT was introduced in 1990.

All I remember were the giant Front Projection tv's built into a huge wooden box. Those things were MASSIVE! First time I ever saw Raiders of the Lost Ark was on one of those things. Great experience! HORRIBLE viewing angle.

Early flat panel computer displays also existed in monochrome neon orange color. I used such at the University of Illinois in the late 1970's, they were called PLATO terminals. These were large screens (about 25" square) with an orange neon matrix and a rear 35mm slide projector that allowed you to load high resolution photographic slides and use animated pointers. You could observe the slide, watch where the professor was pointing, and listen via a telephone line to the audio lecture. These were used for sharing the same professor with remote campuses.PLATO was 1975 and was 512x512 AC plasma display

LINK (http://www.sid.org/archives/0%20-%20Plasma%20pdf%20Exhibit%202.pdf)

....yes, and as an undergraduate I was able to attend lectures from a remote campus using a terminal in the basement of an undergraduate dorm in 1977. The "plasma" was neon gas, the orange color was quite recognizable. The real bandwith problem was the "fast" dial-up connections of the time, 300bits/sec was normal and those with 1200bits/sec "4-wire circuits" had bragging rights. The high speed links in the DARPANET network used for E-Mail were then running at 4800bits/sec.

My commodore 64 started out with a 300 baud modem files of 50-100k download tilmes were measured in hours.

....yes, and as an undergraduate I was able to attend lectures from a remote campus using a terminal in the basement of an undergraduate dorm in 1977. .

1977? lol. I wasn't even born yet.:D

First Major Screen Credit: Who Done It? (1956) ... Benny Hill remained a number-
one syndicated TV attraction into the late '80s, at which time his series was
transferred to cable TV, .... His first appearance on television was in 1949 in
Hi There. .... What other british comedy shows were similar to benny hill?

yeah, they had them back in 1936:
http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content07/shape-tv.jpg
http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content07/shape-clear.jpg
http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content06/aurora-vision-wells.jpg

1977? lol. I wasn't even born yet.:D

And I was eating formula... or possibly mother's milk :p

That is a front projector that has 3 CRT tubes and a mirror in a box that sits on the floor just in front of and pointing up at a curved and down facing screen. My neighbor had one of these in the early eighties. We had a much larger front projector screen with the RGB CRT tubes, but it was in a coffee table sized box about 5' from the screen.Probably an Advent Video Beam, one of many inventions of Henry Kloss, the inventor of the closed acoustic bookshelf speaker system, hifi cassette recording (using Dolby B, which he collaborated on) , and who was the "K" in KLH. When I was a kid I almost had my dad talked into buying one. Almost :o .