Please Bring back CRT TV's Into the Production line Again! - Page 4

I'll consider buying a flat panel TV whenever they make it look attractive when it's turned OFF! I don't want my small living room overpowered with a 55" slab of matt black plastic. At least the last generation CRT TV's had attractive silver cabinets with metal speaker grills. Hell, I'd be first in line if they still manufactured wooden console TV's. My TV's are turned off 99% of the time, and I want something that will look attractive all the time, not just the hour or two a week it's turned on. Even when you buy the most expensive LED model out there, it still is nothing but a cheesy black plastic bezel surrounding equally cheesy matt black/gray plastic panel. Then there's the issue of durability and reliability. Bump against a flat panel TV a bit too hard, and you've destroyed it. If it needs service, forget it! Meant to be used for one or two years, then tossed into the landfill. Movie theater experience? No idea -- I haven't been to a movie theater since 1991.

In Africa and other parts of the world they are selling slimline crts with flatter tubes and shorter necks. Only in the us are they ripping us off with oversize laptop screens. Look up companies such as Samsung Africa. One link is below.


www.ameinfo.com/66528.html

Maybe someday they will make a crt small enough to hang on the wall. In the mean time Americans are going to fill a lot of landfills with their lcds and leds. Not to mention their old crts because they think they have something with these pretty little picture frames.

That article is from 2005. Nice try.

I have a Sony KD-34XBR370 1080i CRT and a Panasonic TC-P50U50 1080p plasma. Both TVs have been calibrated with AVS HD709. The only thing the CRT does (slightly) better is color fidelity, and that's probably due to it having higher white peak levels. Black levels and shadow detail are equal. Of course, the plasma has much, much more resolution, perfect 1:1 pixel mapping, and no geometry errors. Also thanks to its much faster refresh rate I can actually use the plasma as a web browser, whereas web text on the CRT is difficult to read.

The CRT has 5% overscan, cutting off part of scrolling tickers on some channels. When I go into the service menu to reduce the overscan horrible geometry errors show up that cannot be corrected with service menu adjustments alone. It would require taking the TV apart and placing magnets on the back of the tube... more trouble than it's worth to me.

And of course a 34" screen looks positively tiny compared to a 50".

FWIW, I have no image retention/burn in on my plasma, but then I have the contrast and brightness properly set.

All that being said I really do like my XBR CRT and still use it in my bedroom but technology has caught and surpassed it. When it comes time to replace the XBR it will not be with another CRT.

I saw that too but when I searched for Samsung slim CRTs I found a site for sales of them in India.

I'm browsing this forum on my phone and don't have my bookmarks handy, but however old his link is, he isn't incorrect. In the past year I've seen new CRT product from LG, made to market in Africa. The last time I looked, they had a dozen models of various sizes available, and it was on their corporate web site, not a forgotten old news blurb from another decade. As you can also see earlier in this thread, CRT sets are also still made in China, both for the Chinese market and abroad.

The thing to take away from this is, no matter how much cheaper televisions have become after the advent of LCD, a CRT is actually still cheaper to make, in fact it is more so now that certain markets (i.e. the one you're in) do not value them at all anymore.

FYI, the folks still making them call these "emerging markets," and their consumers just don't have the funds for what it takes to buy an LCD. So they are going from nothing to owning a TV by getting a CRT because they are cheaper to make.

1080p is the same resolution as 1080i non-interlaced, which might seem pedantic and trivial to point out, but to say it is "much, much more resolution" is erroneous in the least. Perfect geometry is a given with any functional digital display, but on that same token, perfect colour reproduction is the hallmark of the CRT and the real reason anyone still uses one today.

Here is where you really lost me. How is it that your plasma has a "much faster refresh rate?" It takes the exact same refresh rates as your CRT, or any other TV for that matter. If it is a "120Hz" or "240Hz" TV, you should be aware that there are no TVs that actually work with a 120Hz or 240Hz signal; what they rather do is to process a 60Hz signal to create new frames from interpolation, which harms detail and looks worse. A better, common use for 120/240Hz TV's is to eliminate judder from film sources on DVD or BluRay, but unless you have a plasma monitor (I have two of these), there is no way your plasma is working with a higher refresh rate. If you have an easier time reading text on it, that is merely due to the standard, age-old benefits of fixed resolution, digital displays, and very removed from the colour that a CRT provides. Nothing to do with refresh rate at all.

Technically you are correct about this, of course, but no consumer grade direct view HD CRT even comes close to displaying full 1920x1080. I know CRTs aren't fixed pixel displays, but as wonderful as blu-ray looks on my XBR, it pales in comparison to my plasma. I was confusing horizontal scanning frequency (which I believe is 33Hz on my XBR) with refresh rate.
Edited by Slosh - 3/10/13 at 1:03pm

'Cherry" is an appropriate term to describe an Edsel, considering the shape of the front grill... I'll agree - I'll take an edit room with a quality pro direct view CRT over the ones with LCD panels any day. The LCD panels just don't have the range. The only thing I like the LCD screen better for is being able to position it exactly where it's comfortable to view it since it's on a moveable arm. You can't do that with a CRT. At best, you can put it on a Lazy Susan to allow you turn it left or right. Unfortunately, you aren't going to get much tilt, unless you want it in your lap and moving it closer or further away is definitely out of the question.

Probaly the only thing I hate about direct view CRTs in the edit environment is how deep the bezels are. If the lighting isn't quite right, the bezel makes a shadow on the screen. However, with LCDs, one light source can glare across the entire screen, so each has their issues.

For the home, though, I want my LCD. My viewing environment isn't controlled enough to make a difference and I want a big screen without the bulk.

I'll take the quality of a Vizio for the price over a lot of other brands. I've never had an issue with them.

Of course, I question who is actually bothering to have them repaired in the first place. LCD TVs are generally a throw away item due to the small number of things that can actually be fixed and the low price of replacement. It's the same reason there's so little demand to repair shoes.

Perhaps that's a sign of some sort of fault with the customers who are bringing them in for repair.
Edited by NetworkTV - 3/10/13 at 7:52am

Don't forget to mention Auto dimming, which is inherent to plasma technology and cannot be turned off in the service menu, plus HDTV's are all plagued
with input lag, which isn't the case whatsoever with a CRT 'SDTV' I'm glad i never jumped on the LCD train as soon as they hit the market in larger
sizes back in 05'. TERIBBLE motion handeling, Awful black levels and viewing angles madefor hideous movie and gaming experiences. But the 'casuals' ate them up because
they were HD and thin! XP I will NEVER touch an LED or LCD ever again. The blur is just unecceptable, and even the better high end sets still can't deliver those amazing CRT blacks!
What good is HD when the picture looks as if it's dipping far below 480p when things are moving fast? You get HD when the screen is static, but when things are moving at a faster
pace for example in a video game, everything blurs like a vhs tape on crack... It's the lowest resolution of low imaginable, it's pure blurryness.

If i soley bought an HDTV for movies, it would be a 2013 Panasonic 60" S60 or ST60 plasma. I mean we're at a point now, at least with these panny's
where black levels have hit a mute point. But it still won't satisfy the picky purists, who continue to sit there and gush over their HD kuru's in HD la la land. Honestly, do these people
even watch movies, to ya know...watch movies, or just to sit there and gush over a pretty picture with impressive deepy inky blacks? You could replace my 60" S30 with a good 32" TUBE SDTV(with a component cable input)and i honestly wouldn't give a F***. The only reason i bought the panny 60" 2011 S30 is because of the Wii U. But now i'm dealing with 1 frame of lag, black levels(while good) that still don't match up to my crt, red push, auto dimming, effed up gamma(which causes detail crushing in custom mode) and image retention....
As far as i'm concered, HDTV's have caused a lot more negatives than positives in regards to gaming. It's a big mess. OLED seems like thee' technology to fix it all....Hopefully.

I agree that OLED seem like "THE ONE"... but it's taking so damn long! The other consideration is will OLED be user friendly and trouble free? My Sharp 27" CRT gives a brilliant picture (The three line digital comb filter makes it great) I've had it for 11 years now, never been repaired, not one lick of trouble. Not to mention my mother's 25" magnavox console, which ot this DAY still looks perfect and has never been repaired, ever... and it was purchased in JUNE 1979! I'd dare any LCD or Plasma equal that kind of service record or reliability. And black levels and motion blur are EXTREMELY important when you watch certain things. Because on stuff like this, inky blacks are paramount!

I say this owning two plasma monitors, they simply don't replicate all features of a CRT, either as well, or at all. If you need zero lag, or multiple resolutions, scans, syncs, etc.? Then you need a CRT. Now, likely not an HDTV, but still, this is something that no digital display does. And we've not even made it to the motion and colour of a CRT.

Every so often someone comes to this board for shits and giggles. A CRT may "pale in comparison," but you have to be clear what you are comparing. For almost anything new, obviously, an alternative that could be ten years old, possibly beat up, dusty as hell and in other varying states of condition, well you see where I am going with this, first impressions are going to be killer. But the gap is so wide for the things that a CRT does well, that even something beat up from craigslist can provide an image that far outstrips the free takeaway price that it gets routinely, and it's hard for any plasma to pale by comparison of pricetag. If you prefer your plasma, that's one thing, but that's not what this board is here for and it doesn't speak to what is at hand. You dig?

This is probably more due to non-interlacing, lack of pixel variance (size, shape, space, all tend to be inequal in smaller or greater amounts on a CRT, which can account for geometry, bloom of brightness/contrast and other inconsistencies), DPI and flicker than either resolution or refresh rate, horizontal or vertical. Computer monitor CRTs do a fine job with readable text, but for the above reasons, even a high quality VGA CRT monitor does not create as readable black-on-white text as a digital display LCD. It is more the nature of the tech, rather than superiority of implementation.

This isn't inhernent to "plasma technology." It may be inherent to a given plasma TV manufacturer's firmware, but there is nothing about dimming of brightness, contrast, or the so-called "floating blacks" that is necessarily attached to plasma image technology. This is a problem that has arisen with digital displays, and has affected various LCDs as well through the years. In an effort to make various products stand out against competition, some engineers had thought it might be a good idea to process images more than their neighbours' televisions, to make scenes more movielike, to provide better viewing under certain lighting conditions, smooth motion by interpolating (120/240Hz), or whatever other doodad of the month is popular. Normally you would want it to be turn-offable, but frequently, simple options like this get left out of first or early implementations, and that does not even factor in whatever hardware or firmware bugs can and do occur. I've got two plasma monitors that have no automatic dimming at all, however, nothing inherent with the technology at all.

I know you were speaking generally here, but I was directly comparing my Sony KD-34XBR370 with my Panasonic TC-P50U50 (FWIW each cost me $600, both of which IMO provide a lot of bang-for-the-buck ). You're not kidding about that. I also have a Sanyo HT-32744 direct view HD CRT that I couldn't even give away, so now it resides in my garage (and still produces a very nice, albeit small, HD picture).

These latest posts remind me of when my friend with a 40-something inch LG LED came over and saw the pic on my Panny CT-34WX50 and exclaimed "wow!" Ironically he's the one who got it for me for free after Kenwood-USA in CA didn't want it shipped back to them (was stored away but used years ago for a car audio show demo monitor).

If you can find an Edsol take it. Do you know what they aare worth?

Well you never know, there weren't a lot of certain models made like the widescreen HD CRTs so if one kept it mint for many years...

I'm shocked at what I heard my ol' '64 Bonneville wagon is worth even in its dusty and rotted tire state in my garage for many years - something around 5 grand. Most of the wagons got crushed for scrap longggg ago. And to think some classic car guy where I worked looked at it for me to give me an idea what it was worth and said "no one cares for wagons but I'll give you $300" and I proceeded to tell him to get lost. That was about 15 years ago but...

Don't forget the at that old school gun games don't work at all. A timing difference of a microsecond would throw of a light gun significantly. And no it's not just Duck Hunt, There are Gun Games for the NES, Master System, 7800, Genesis (which has 3 different gun standards), SNES (2 gun standards), 3DO CD-i Saturn, PS1 (2 types of guns) Dreamcast, Playstation 2, and Xbox, all using the CRT technology of timing individual dots drawn in nanosecond sequence by a CRT TV.

It wasn't until the Wii, PS3 and 360 that the nature of modern gun games changed. That's because enough TV's weren't CRT that it made sense to make a gun system independent of the TV. but there's one flaw they never accounted for. Infrared guns seem inaccurate, because the same lateral motion in inches or rotational motion in degrees is constant, not relative to the screen. So it's an exercise in moving arms to move a cursor, not pointing and shooting like a real gun. Try Ghost Squad for the Wii on a 10 inch TV and a 50 inch TV in "Cursorless mode" for bonus points. Those 2 extremes show it's not point and shot but move a fixed distance and shot. Also if you deadeye down the barrel of the Wii Zapper, the cursor doesn't follow your line of sight. How are you going to emulate these old games without a CRT TV, unless you add a cursor. And precise aims in Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, Point Blank, and House of the Dead would lose oomph

The solution to make a more accurate infrared gun is to place 4 Wiimote sensors on the 4 corners of he TV, so the Wii understands where your Wiimote is at and pointing towards relative to the screen, or have as a variable in Wii games Screen Width and Height (in either inches or centimeters, it's easier to read millimeters than 64ths of an inch but that's just me) and make sure that the wii Sensor is exactly centered and level and parallel with the top or bottom edge of the screen but placing flat sensors on a TV is easier, and less prone to aiming errors..

If there was only a way to retroactively play old light gun games on an HDTV with the original systems then it would be less of an issue. About 2-3% of my game collection are light gun games. I've got an experimental idea. All I need is a way to flash in or filter in a light with nanosecond accuracy. I don't know if there are any type of shutter/pigment that can allow a nanosecond of light through and filter out the rest.

I don't consider myself a picky video client, but games ceasing to work bugs me. All the rest of the discussions on whether CRT or Plasma or LCD or LED is moot because these old games no longer work. Until a new technology has nanosecond dot drawing, this issue will never be solved. I'm not arguing about a better picture, I'm arguing about games being lost to time once the last CRT disappears. These games are designed to last forever, especially the good ones. TV's carefully built in backward compatibility with being able to plug a BetaMax or Laser Disc and it still works. Light gun games were forgotten in this equation.

Even if CRTs were produced again they would likely only make HD CRTs which still do not support light guns. Modern SD CRTs would be ultra niche and I doubt any company could ever justify it. Even HD CRTs would be a niche market these days. Someone would have to start a company catering to a niche group of old school gamers and due to low demand the prices on the CRTs would likely be higher than larger LCD and Plasma sets. I too wish CRTs were still available but I don't see them coming back again anytime soon.

I remember the LAST CRT model I saw at Circuit City some 7 years ago. As I walked by it felt like a blow tourch and I was 2 feet away. I'm not sure of the tube size but it was pretty darn big. IIRC, it was marked down from around $5,000 to $2,800 and I commented to the sales guy about the price reduction.

He said: "It's the last CRT we'll ever see in here."

I went back to the front of it and gazed at the picture..... BEST image I had ever seen.(still is) Gave it a nudge....DARN ! Must have weighed well over 150#s. I believe it had a monitor-style cabinet.

Thoese were the days............
Edited by DEWEYS3 - 3/19/13 at 8:22pm

Here ya go, get out your rupees :

http://www.samsung.com/in/consumer/tv-audio-video/television/ultra-slimfit-tv/

I'm aware that CRTs are still available in developing countries. I should have been more specific and said produced and sold for the US market. I bought a new in box HD CRT a Toshiba 30HF66 in early 2008 so that should hold me over for a while longer.

I'm gonna shoot some ducks.
Only got $20 in my pocket
I-I-'m hunting.
Looking for a zombie.
This is 'kin' awesome.

Seriously, The thrift shop is the best place or CRT TV's. Most are well taken care of and will last. All I need is permission to buy one.

lol at this thread.

Geometry and convergence (even direct view suffer from this)
No bigger than 36" and those were massive, 4 people needed to move it. About 4' deep. I didn't test geometry on that set.

I can buy a 50" Pioneer plasma which has better connectivity, HD resolution, is only a few inches thick (and some LED LCD's are even thinner) Excellent picture quality and scaling. No optical or electrical focus, geometry, or convergence I have to worry about

It was a struggle getting a 28" CRT upstairs, but with 50" no problem at all, would be even easier if had a LCD. Plus you can wall mount them, and even upgrading from a 21" CRT to 42" plasma opens the room.

Good bye to CRT and good riddance!

Hello Best Buy as you go back and buy a new flat panel every few years!

doubt that, I bet many 1st gen lcd & plasmas still going on strong. Also CRT's fail, and they aren't cheap either.

I remember a CI telling me how much CRT guns are for a front projector. You could buy a whole new plasma TV for just one gun alone, a top end model (£2000)

Stop posting.

Good for you,im proud of you my friend!!

Er, I donated an early '80s 19" RCA to a local charity - old knob model and still had a great pic. '93 GE 27" is still working, use it as a Picture&Picture to my main TV. You mean they weren't cheaply made? Remember they had decades of a head start in design and manufacture.

'Direct View (single tube) CRT Displays' > not projectors.

and? At work we have a first generation Pioneer. Eearly gen LCD still worked when he upgraded. 32" to 50" plasma. I agree that early gen LCD's were bad, black levels especially. But now they're excellent, I was amazed at the depth of black, considering it's trying to block out light. I wouldn't tolerate early gen black levels, so I didn't get one.

Would you really keep a TV so long? I wouldn't. I had a 25", 28" CRT, 40" CRT RP, a few LCD's and two plasmas. Do you think with modern sets I'd hang onto that 25" CRT?

http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/Ambassador.jpg

I also go magnetic issues with CRT's. Out of alignment, PAL & NTSC flicker- I never liked the 100hz processing sets as they always blurred. My speakers used to effect the TV as well.

My mother's CRT is still giving a perfect picture, and it was purchased in 1979. No Plasma is gonna last that long. And CRT's are just more user friendly, you don't need a degree to adjust the picture. And of course, CRT's are easy to clean, and the glass screen makes for better optical clarity. You'll never see a camera or telescope with a plastic lens. The same reason I'll never buy plastic eyeglasses. Glass only.

God bless your moms 1979 CRT!!!!!!

CRTs are wonderful,i dont know how people can like this new stuff,its aweful compared to a CRT!