This TV is Frickin' HUGE | Nostalgia Nerd

[@Nostalgianerd]

Come and join me at Game On on the 29th/30th March nnerd.es/GameOn, it's going to be incredible.

[@chickenwings6172]

lol I had a 36 CRT my parents had a 50 inch CRT, so that 37 inch is small. lol I have a 32 inch now. i had a 20 inch in 1990 when i was 9. my parents had a 27 inch.

[@therackstar]

I just threw away my Toshiba 32 😭

[@llMarvelous]

I’d say this: plasmas are underappreciated… I’d don’t say they are better, they are just as cool Hundreds of thousands of little gas bulbs that produce plasma on demand, controlled intensely, 60 times per second I think that sounds very cool And they look just as lively as CRT, come on))

[@Ramdileo_sys]

Peter the biggest CRT (outside UK perhaps) was the Philips Dwide 32" 32PW6542/77..+... (your 34inch 4:3 is 69Cm wide) .... the with Dwide 32 is 32inch widescreen = 71Cm wide.. + the speakers bar at the sides.. was 100Cm wide.. and 54Kg of weight..... I have one for years.. and I absolutely love it... 720p through component.. SVHS imput..+. was a beautiful TV...

[@llMarvelous]

@rivet916 yeah I also thought about that, it’s a shame technology was so short lived Pioneer kinda made several very impressive models, that even NOW people hunt them and unironically compare them to OLED

[@EricGranata]

I remember being a kid in the 80s and being convinced that I had super hearing because I could hear a tv turn on/off from anywhere in the house.

[@warwagon]

Same! I could hear the high pitch of the tv a room away.

[@TubbyJ420]

Memories of walking down the school hallway in the 90s. As you walk past classrooms, you could 'hear' which rooms had a computer in them.

[@daveash9572]

Yep, me too. I was quite little at the time, and I even found that I could detect the changing echo of that whine if someone else was moving in the room, even when blindfolded.

[@Kwijibob]

It used to drive me mad. In the summer I could hear that high pitched ear piercing sound every time anyone on my street turned on their tv.

[@cjmarsh504]

Same here

[@cjc363636]

Thanks for the memories. In the US I was part crew of a news broadcast and we had BIG CRTs - Mitsubishi, IIRC - behind bookshelf covers that scissor lifted up and down to expose the screen for anchor interview segments. Took several big beefy techs to move those sets back in the late 90s.

[@reviewyourownadventure2083]

I had a 32" Advent flat tube CRT. It took 2 massive guys with no necks to get it into my apartment. They were struggling, bulging neck veins and red sweaty faces. They asked where I wanted it. I said to put it in the entertainment center. They hurriedly shuffled over to it and tried to get into the TV section. "Oh god! It won't fit!" yelled one of the guys. They panicked and sat it on the floor. They both took several deep breaths and told me I was out of luck. They weren't going to pick it up again. If I didn't want it in the floor I'd have to figure how to move it. They left. That TV kicked ass.

[@randomsomeguy156]

Did it stay on the floor?

[@freddykruger1118]

My girlfriend and I bought a 32 also had to bring up 2 flights of stairs. I was 120lbs back then and she was maybe 100lb. We got up the stairs

[@dutchcinephile1362]

😂 Nice story Every man's breaking point Very relatable

[@pesokpesok]

​@@freddykruger1118wow exactly the same story. Delivery left it in front of the building and me with my gf struggled to bring it up 5 flights (old bldng no elevator and i had top floor)

[@paper_gem]

I had a Sony 32" flat CRT. I could lift it on my own, but holy God, it was difficult. Of course, I can't do that anymore.

[@KarrierBag]

I have to say, I was very lucky as a kid along with my two brothers, our parents worked in and then took over (late 70's) a TV/ Radio sales, rental and repair shop so we always had the new stuff to try out like this over a weekend and sometimes through the week, my dad now 86 still messes around fixing TV's videos etc in his workshop.

[@MontieMongoose]

We had a 40" Mitsubishi TV in the US in the 1990s. My parents still had it until they moved two years ago. The thing weighed over 200 lbs.

[@volvo09]

I was about to comment that a conference room in an office I used to work at had a HUGE Mitsubishi TV hidden in a cabinet. The conference room was built in the mid 90's. I wanted to take the TV when the room was refurbished in 2014, but I had no where to put it and didn't have a truck. To be honest I liked my 32" Trinitron more, so that's what I held on to, but I wish I took that set now... I believe it was the largest CRT ever made. It was either the model your parents had, or it was 2" bigger... It was flipping massive. (At the time I had a 55" SD projection TV that a friend gave me, so this CRT really was big, I never thought they could get so big)

[@MontelWilliamz]

My friends dad still has his 40 inch Mitsubishi, he sits on his couch all day watching fishing shows. It took 4 of us to move it their upper living room to the lower one.

[@lemagreengreen]

I sorta hope many of these monster CRT's survived because they were simply an absolute bugger to actually dispose of due to the weight.

[@jondonnelly3]

Worth it's weight in Gold, probably.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

Fuck.

[@natecw4164]

I'll never forget when my dad came home and said "I need your help with something in the truck." 35" CRT Sony Trinitron. It weighed a metric ton. It was so bright. So big. So much nicer than those giant rear-projection tvs. It literally drew a crowd from our neighbors 😂 Ah the early 90s ❤

[@FrostyDog9186]

I had the 32” WEGA Trinitron and, yeah, same. It was awesome!

[@michami135]

A couple years ago, I finally got to swap out my in-law's 34 inch CRT for a 48 inch LCD. I had forgotten just how heavy those old TVs were! Then installing a bigger TV one handed really showed the difference in weight. BTW, when moving the old TV out, I had to pause to take a break. And I have a farm where I move bails of hay on the regular.

[@x-vector7245]

A couple of years ago my 32" Loewe Aventos gave up the ghost; carried it down the stairs with my brothers' help just to be sure. Not only did it weigh around 53 kgs, the weight was also very unevenly distributed with most of it in the front because of the glass tube. Then there were the hard plastic ridges on the bottom, which meant wearing gloves was basically mandatory.

[@AltimaNEO]

My friends brother had one of those. Man, what a massive TV. I remember going to his house to play Playstation 2 on it.

[@SmokeyWire56]

There's a 40-inch Trinitron as well.

[@NumptyMcNumptyface]

My favourite aspect of that TV is the amount of inputs it has. You can never have enough inputs.

[@irontobias]

My favorite aspect of that TV is 4:3

[@nilus2k]

These days you are lucky if you get three HDMI inputs

[@allentoyokawa9068]

favorite*

[@TarenGarond]

@@allentoyokawa9068 favourite*

[@zidanerick5851]

It's a shame it doesn't have component in however

[@belzebub16]

10:19 a lot of european market consumer TV sets in the 90s could actually handle NTSC just fine, I had a Sony KV-21 from '96 and when I got my first DVD player it could play all my imports in "real" NTSC (not 4.43 or PAL60) just fine!

[@richjames2540]

I run 2 Sony PVM sets as they run on 230v 50 cycles ac but also have SMPTE-C phosphors, switchable to IRE 7.5 and a guaranteed 6500K. Watching NTSC on UK or Euro domestic tv’s lacks the richness that a native NTSC set will give. I also have a mix if NTSC -M and NTSC-J equipment so I can easily switch the temp and IRE setting.

[@samholdsworth420]

It was always impossible to turn on the TV in the living room stealthily... That high pitched whine 😂

[@samholdsworth420]

We had a 32-in zenith crt

[@nilus2k]

It was the pain of us teenage late night Cinemax watchers.

[@samholdsworth420]

@mormacfey 😂

[@willissudweeks1050]

@mormacfeyThat’s hilarious but I’d worry the high pitch would cut through the fart haha

[@michaelfolino8414]

I still have my 36" Sony Trinitron and LOVE setting the sleep timer and falling asleep to that lullaby of a hum as it's like an old friend hugging you.

[@sogero2]

So much ASMR in this video! When the music swelled during an extreme closeup of the scanlines in Streets of Rage 2, I got something like a warm fuzzy and chills together.

[@KanawhaCountyWX]

Personally, as a 19-year-old, I don't mind the flyback wine. We used CRTs in my house for a long time, well after the HD transition, because analog cable existed for us until around 2017 and because we just couldn't afford to go HD for a long time, so it's actually reminds me of when I was very little. I wouldn't call it nostalgia because I'm not old enough to consider something nostalgic in my mind.

[@MyFriendlyPup]

HD was not expensive.

[@KanawhaCountyWX]

@@MyFriendlyPup when you're a family in the middle of rural West Virginia with an alcoholic mother coasting paycheck to paycheck, we couldn't exactly spend much money on a lot of things. All the technology we had was either hand-me-downs or thrift store fines. We were given our first HDTV in 2011, but even then we barely ever used it. The only reason we eventually were able to ditch the CRTs was because analog cable was finally shut off and my mother temporarily quicked her drinking habit.

[@fazejohncenachristogamerfaze]

I'm a bit younger than you and I also don't mind it really. It's something I got used to, before I hated it. My little sister still can't support *

[@croozerdog]

@@MyFriendlyPup it's relative bro, my mom still had a crt ~5 years ago. you cant buy a 300 dollar tv if you're living paycheck to paycheck

[@alexatkin]

Its interesting how everyone has different sensitivities. Personally it depended on the specific unit, some the whine was far more audible than others, but when I could hear it I found it very unpleasant. Although it was always kind of amusing at school being able to tell which classrooms had a TV on from the corridor, as the ones they used were stupidly loud.

[@_Frank_the_Tank]

Had a 36 inch Toshiba crt back in the early-mid 00s, I was a broke college kid and it was a free hand-me-down from a neighbor. Pretty sure my lower back pain originated from lugging that thing out of the neighbors house, into the back of my truck, and up a flight of stairs at my place by myself... I had one of them cheapo wooden tv stands with the plastic legs that screwed together, it worked fine for the small 19 inch crt I had prior, but i knew it wasnt gonna hold the 36 inch tank. Before tossing the tv stand in the trash i decided to pour quick concrete mix inside the hollow plastic legs and screw it back together, after that it was more then enough to handle the weight of the tv 😂

[@Lost_n_Found_1]

I've got a 32" Samsung CRT from 2005 in the corner of our living room. It sits atop one of those corner-shaped electric fireplaces, rated for the weight of course. I made sure our cable management was done the way we wanted when we got it into position, because there is NO accessing the back of this thing again until we move, lmao. I run a modded 3TB OG XBox on it. It's absolutely loaded, lol.

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

What a huge television! That thing is a proper beast! I have a 21-inch Trinitron and it strikes a good balance between size and convenience, but I do wish I’d gone for the 25-inch model. The sheer size of this is just mind boggling and I’d love to get something like this someday in a way, even though it’s ridiculously huge and would not be worth it.

[@Stock--Rosso]

I owned a 36 inch Panasonic TX widescreen, that came with it's own rock solid stand and used it for the PS2/PS3. I sold it 10 years ago like an idiot and regretted it almost immediately😂 Great video👍🏼

[@SuperCartoonist]

9:38 You're not supposed to connect composite if you have S-video connected because composite will interfere with S-video and like wise in vice versa. The picture quality will be off.

[@nneeerrrd]

But he's self proclaimed "prooo"! 😂

[@nBasedAce]

That vacuum tube is so big it must sound like a proton pack when you turn it on. 😅

[@thesidneychan]

So I finally learned today that the high frequency sounds coming from the TV is called the flyback transformer. Back then no one knew what I was talking about. I always hear it as an indicator that the TV is left on. This is especially helpful when the screen is on standby or black, or muted in the other room, so I'd know to properly turn it off when other people didn't realise it's still on. And when I turn it off, there will be a short buzz, and what I think are sounds of dust or lint sticking to the TV via electrostatic, which sound like tiny prickly raindrops, then complete silence. The flyback transformer pitch sound is also present in some modern flat screen TVs if I recall.

[@darthwiizius]

You can tell when the flyback is on it's way out because it increases in volume as it degrades. People still using high end CRTs should get it replaced now before it goes and potentially damages more on it's way out.

[@eDoc2020]

It _can_ be the flyback transformer but on most modern TVs (80s maybe) they're fully potted in epoxy. You're more likely to be hearing the deflection yoke which is part of the same circuit.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@darthwiizius Also, they should do it now while there's still a few shops that repair TVs still in business.

[@darthwiizius]

@@eDoc2020 Flyback repairs were standard mate, we used to carry them out routinely. I can still get service packs for most models that were sold in the early noughties, further if I search out redundant stocks or/and put the packs together myself.

[@darthwiizius]

@@SmallSpoonBrigade Very good advice. Even tubes for old CRTs can still be found if theirs' is going, there's still some stocks being held by 3rd party service stockists.

[@nbrown5907]

Service Merchandise was similar. I remember thinking it was so cool to have your purchase show up on a long conveyor from the warehouse lol.

[@buffaloditka]

I think Service Merchandise would be the equivalent to this store mentioned at the beginning.

[@henrymca]

We also had a similar store up here in Canada, it was called Consumers Distributing

[@krad2520]

We also had BEST that operated on this same model

[@MrDuncl]

Having stuff stored out the back meant they could store far more stuff, stacked floor to ceiling, in a smaller shop. Our local Argos closed during the pandemic and is now an Emporium type place. It is interesting to see where all the stuff was stored (two large floors behind the small retail area). p.s. If people want to flick through old Argos catalogues Google Retromash Argos.

[@eijentwun5509]

and CONSUMERS ws also like this.

[@PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

Your intro is exactly right. I could always tell when someone was watching tv the second I walked into the front door. I could hear that wine all the way across the house.

[@mymomsaysimcool9650]

My son just had dinner with us and we played SWBattlefront split screen on our 56 inch tv. He said “Remember playing this on a PS2 with that monster 38inch Tube tv? God that thing was heavy.” Recalling when we had to haul it off when it died.

[@TheNuje]

In Canada, Consumers Distributing was exactly like Argos. I don't know if the USA had a more popular equivalent, but either it wasn't a huge hit there, or they had something else. That assumption is based on their being more locations in Canada than the USA at their peak (total, not per capita). But I fondly remember receiving the catalogue in the mail whenever. I don't remember if it was annual, or more frequent. But we'd get it, and go through the games and toys sections as kids, of course!

[@MrDuncl]

Google Retromash Argos to browse through some old Argos catalogues. Argos was a big hit here in the U.K. as they were usually one of the cheapest retailers yet had a good range.

[@sterlinsilver]

There's a car dealership i went to not too long ago that had a silver 40" CRT TV in the break room. Nobody knew if it worked or not but everyone was just scared to move it lol

[@emmettturner9452]

Sony KV-40XBR800?

[@sterlinsilver]

@@emmettturner9452 no it had a curved screen

[@mr.jamster8414]

@@sterlinsilver mitsubishi?

[@sterlinsilver]

@@mr.jamster8414 I think that was it

[@turnski]

This was our family TV in my childhood 😂 I remember when my dad ordered it my mum was not happy as we really couldn't afford it. After watching a film on it once she let us keep it 👌 plenty of Super Mario 3 and streets of Rage was played on this beauty! Huge nostalgia this video thanks for making me smile

[@Vuusteri]

Funny how today every TV under 50'' is considered tiny, while in CRT-era everything over 30'' was humongous.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

I recently got an enormous 36" CRT for my vintage game room. And a 40" computer monitor for my home office. (Of course, the CRT is 4x3, the home office display is an ultra-wide, so its vertical height is quite a bit smaller than the CRT.)

[@MysteryMii]

TBF, 30” for a 16:9 display is quite different than 30” for a 4:3 displays since these are being measured diagonally.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

@@MysteryMii When I got my first HD player (an HD DVD player, as a Christmas present when I asked for a regular DVD player because mine had died, and I wanted something to tide me over until the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war was decided, oops.) my TV was a mid '90s 25" CRT. (Yes, still. mid '90s CRT at the time the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war was going on.) My 23" 1080p computer monitor was a bigger display for widescreen content. So I temporarily put it immediately in front of our proper TV for watching HD DVDs.

[@nanaki-seto]

30+ inch crts were large as they were 4:1 not 16:9 so they had a much larger size top to bottom. I have a small 32 icnh smart tv just a 1080p screen im going to re home in to a old 25 inch console tv one of these days got the tv in the basement. I just need to take the time to gut in totally and carefully cut it and make it shorter so the 32 incher fits and looks good. I might even use the space behind the screen to build a custom pc in just something lower end for media only

[@syncmonism]

I know right? Also, I think the number they used didn't even represent the actual viewable diagonal area of the screen, though maybe that was only with computer CRT displays. When I was a kid, I thought 27" was really big for a TV. Now I'm using a 32" computer monitor, and 55" is often the SMALLEST size that many models of TV actually come in.

[@albinklein7680]

I still have the 1973 Telefunken PAL Color TV from my grandmother. It was the first color TV in my neighborhood back then. I clearly remember the finale of the 1974 soccer world cup. I was five years old and the living room of my grandmother was packed full with people from our neighborhood watching the game. I was extremely lucky about ten years ago when I found a BRAND NEW Crt for it in a basement of the father of a friend who passed away. The picture and colors that thing produces are totally mind blowing.

[@samio3907]

Watching this after LTT's 2000" screen is wild! Time for some retro CRT love ❤

[@MySpeed12]

My father had a Big Blaupunkt PiP CRT TV from '93 I believe, it could display a tiny window on another channel while you watched a different channel (pip - Picture In Picture, Cable!!) We still have it but hasnt been used in ages since he passed, just didnt throw it away it was his pride and joy! That thing needs a whole table for itself

[@thebossman80s]

My dad bought one of those in 99 and we had it till we moved 10 years ago. It still worked perfectly but it was too huge to take it with us so we just left it with the new owners of the house. I wish i still had it to play old games consoles on. The sound system was unbelievably good. I believe there still out there in the wild and still working. One of the reasons i left it was because i assumed it would stop working soon as it was getting old and i thought it couldnt be repaired so i thought why bother lugging it around but it would probably still be working to this day had i of just kept it. As you can tell im still not over it 😢

[@clack1]

Your parents did a what a lot of people did in 2007-2009. They just left the TV at the house because they had gotten too old to move stuff around themselves. The owners come in and just trash it because they were usually younger people with no appreciation for em'.

[@100Bucks]

So the TV was like the sword in the stone. You're not moving it 😅

[@laceybarbee5553]

Im so sorry. Im sure the tv distribution system will get you another crt TV

[@Ramdileo_sys]

Peter the biggest CRT (outside UK perhaps) was the Philips Dwide 32" 32PW6542/77..... (your 34inch 4:3 is 69Cm wide) .... the Dwide 32 is 32inch widescreen = 71Cm wide.. + the speakers bar at the sides.. was 100Cm wide.. and 54Kg of weight..... I have one for years.. and I absolutely love it... 720p through component.. SVHS imput... was a beautiful TV...

[@paulrippcord506]

My parents only had 36 inch Sony Trinitrons/WEGAs and I distinctly remember my dad breaking his arm when we failed to stop it from coming down a moving truck ramp. The stand they put it on was this massive thing made of welded steel with a wood facade. I love CRTs but generally speaking I’m happy we moved to to LEDs.

[@TubbyJ420]

It wasnt a size upgrade, but my mom replaced her 27" Trinitron with a 27" WEGA. i could lift the Trinitron myself, no f-ing way i could lift the WEGA myself. I swore off ever moving it again. When the WEGA eventually was replaced with a 50" plasma, she hired someone to haul the tube away. I wanted no part of that lol. Now, i love my projector. 130" screen, small little 10 pound box come moving day.

[@paper_gem]

Yeah, same here. CRTs are cool, but I'd rather have an LCD, or OLED display. Although i like the small CRT TVs. I still have a 13" CRT TV.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

"LED" isn't a display technology as such. Except for OLED.

[@xxtravdamanxx]

​@@joojoojeejee6058 um, yes it is

[@joojoojeejee6058]

@@xxtravdamanxx LED is a backlight technology. OLED is a display technology.

[@sicedice]

Used to sell, deliver and install TVs like this back in early 90s. Took 3 people super sized box with a Sony 52", delivered bigger, some had to be removed from the box to get through the door. Sony TVs were always 20% heavier than a normal TV.... To be honest Philips weren't far behind in weight. At that point boxes were cardboard , polystyrene and wooden struts. Philips were the main ones doing 100htz screen, Sony kind of did one, Panasonic did one , but Hitachi, JVC and awia , never got to see any of those at the shop, Philips was a main seller in 100htz Still got my Sony 40inch and stand.

[@MarileideSoares-z3n]

Noice

[@GraveUypo]

the moment someone said flyback transformer whine, my tinnitus started making the exact same sound. there's a CRT on inside my head now, thanks.

[@CDRaff]

My first "real TV" as an adult was a 37" Sony Wega Trinitron CRT. It was hellish to move around, but it instantly made my place the place to hang out.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

I recently got a 36" Sony WEGA - the last 4x3 model they made. It is HD, and has an HDMI port. It also weighs over 230 lbs/105 kg. I had to get it from my garage up to my "loft" above the garage where my vintage gaming room is. That… Was interesting. Had three teenagers to help, and it was still a pain. (Literally, I strained my back in the process and was in pain for a week.)

[@Nilboggen]

LOL yeah I was going to comment at least you are getting a good price per pound

[@meh_lady]

That’s exactly the one we had! It’s an absolute beast. My in-laws still use it to this day LOL.

[@ebridgewater]

"HD"

[@irontobias]

I picked up a 30" Samsung tx-s3082whx/xaa at an estate sale for the price of free - as long as I hauled it myself; luckily it's "only" 120lbs, but unluckily it's plagued by all of the issues of those models with poor geometry and discoloration 😢

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

@@ebridgewater It’s at least 720p. Going to 1080 doesn’t seem to improve much, but small text at 720p is still very readable.

[@barsaf9989]

We had a VERY similar TV in the states. Toshiba model 3357db. Speakers on the side and a matching stand. All black and the stand had nice glass doors on the front. My parents must have bought it used back in the early 2000s, because we were not wealthy. Boy I loved that TV growing up and I wish they still had it. 😁

[@cooperschwartz318]

0:01, it’s the Deflection yoke, scanning 525 lines, 30 times a second, producing a 15.75 kHz tone

[@budrekot]

625 lines PAL in the UK, 25 ifps.

[@lovemadeinjapan]

Still dont understand why they call it 15kHz, correct rounding would be 16kHz.

[@jasonvaughn3478]

Sony sold a 40" 4:3 CRT when I worked at a home theater shop back around 2003. It was over 300 lbs by itself without the stand.

[@MisakaMikotoDesu]

My Grandparents had a 40" Mitsubishi. I remember it very clearly. It even shocked you if you pushed the power button for some reason. Still don't know why.

[@laceybarbee5553]

Maybe it wasn't grounded properly?

[@angelleonardgonzaleszuniga6572]

Es la estarics de esas tv crt al ser mas grande al prenderlo ese estatica actuaba como iman y se sentia al prender😂😂😮😮

[@salibaba]

Wow, blast from the past, we had the smaller size of this, 28” from memory, the same cabinet, the THUNK from the tube on power up!! We had the rear speaker set for it too. I know my dad changed to the widescreen Toshiba almost exactly the same from memory too. I think my uncle had the 37” but he was a showy tool so we paid it no notice.

[@namco003]

Largest CRT TV. So i'm an arcade game tech/collector(30 years), and I prefer CRT over the replacement of LCD/HD. I'm not a purest, but I play rhythm games, so my reasons aren't the same as a lot of people. I had not one, but two 36 inch GATEWAY CRT monitors. HUGE. Heavy AF, and I had people help me get it into one of my arcade cabs, which is fit perfectly(Gauntlet Dark Legacy Atari Alpha 36 cabinet). The reason i HAD two, was the arcade machine the first one I bought was in fell in the truck, due to a friend not securing it properly, and I bought a second one used, and broke the tubes neck the same day I bought it, while trying to install it.

[@lovemadeinjapan]

Plasma?

[@wu17]

i grew up with 21& 35 inch crt and i would say that the 35 is so ginormous looking while sitting in the center of our living room. but in 2004 we shifted to viera 50 but it was not imposing looking compared to our old tv with its own rack

[@TheRealRobG]

I bought a 36" flat screen Sony WEGA CRT TV in 1999 which cost - yes, £1999. It had a 16:9 screen, and was perfectly flat - much nicer than the typical goldfish bowl TVs of the time. The glass is about an inch thick at the front (to resist the vacuum) and weighted close to 100KG. I only got rid of it about 5 years ago, and it was still working perfectly well then. Got a DVD player to go with it. Amazing home cinema!

[@edwardfletcher7790]

In 1988 I was manager of Audio/Video Dept in a large store in Victoria, Australia. Mitsubishi had just released a 37" (93cm) CRT TV (model CT-37XX, the largest in the world, which retailed for AU$8499 ! This was a LOT of money at the time, the price of a new Daihatsu small car ! It had a black wood case and weighed 90kg (198lb) and needed a special reinforced AU$249 stand ! I was gob smacked when I sold 2 of them in the first month, the sales commission was excellent 👍😁

[@Argoon1981]

And the best thing about high quality CRT's, is that they where almost true HDR machines, without any of us knowing, their black levels were/are deep, if they updated the electronic circuitry to display HDR images, the cathode-ray tube (CRT) itself would be perfect to display them. Only HDR OLED is truly reaching and surpassing the tube.

[@wright96d]

Not really, no. CRTs do not get bright enough for HDR.

[@GraveUypo]

@@wright96d some would qualify for HDR 400. i have a 32in widescreen CRT with hdmi that if you play with the gamma to make things LESS bright and only leave the highlights bright, it really does look like HDR

[@ricenoodles632]

Most TVs before the 90s did not achieve that level of blackness. Cheap small sets from the early 2000s still had those light grey tubes which produced horrible black levels. But the colours were extremely vibrant.

[@SimonWilkie]

A brilliant and welcome return to some of your best content made. Nostalgia at its best. Thank you

[@Leeki85]

This TV has height of 45" 16:9 TV. For some reason it's the height that is most important for us when we judge TV size. Anyway from TV this size I would expect at least VGA input. It would be a perfect display to run 2048x1536 at 100 Hz. I have 19" CRT monitor that is capable of such resolutions and modern operating systems like Windows 10 looks absolutely gorgeous. Just you have to set scaling to 200% to simulate 1024x768 resolution. High-res CRTs have both HD sharpness and analog smoothness. It's like a future that we all wanted but it never came.

[@kaitlyn__L]

My bet is the deflection circuitry isn't fast-enough for those kinds of resolutions. Possibly the phosphor size as well. Some TVs of this time struggled with even S-video output from a laptop, with text being smeared. Only Japan really had high-res CRTs available in the early-90s, it took until the late-90s early-00s for those to come to Europe. (Can't speak for America.)

[@piotrne]

5:17 "Which allows input and output" - wow, incredible, you could record a broadcast from your TV. What a time in human history.

[@S7tronic]

I had a 40" Grundig CRT I bought from pub back in the late 90's, absolute nightmare to move..I still miss playing Silent hill on PS1 on it.

[@YudaHnK]

Silent Hill on a CRT, in the evening. 😱

[@waltergabriel3694]

I used to be a TV repairman, i remember these sets very well, nothing beats the sound the softness of the colors and that ozone smell of high voltage.

[@TinyMaths]

God, you just made me realize; Argos was/is an odd place really. It's like online shopping, but you go and collect the goods yourself. But you're not shopping online from your home, you're shopping online from inside the store; and in the old days, no computer, but the catalogue, and that little green box with the keypad and the digital display, with the dot matrix, where you entered the code to check your item was available and, fingers crossed, your item was in stock; I always felt anxious hitting that button, because it felt like a game of chance; your guess was as good as mine as to whether the thing you wanted was even there.... strange thing that was; but we were so used to it.

[@dglcomputers1498]

and before they had the stock checkers and you just hoped they had it in!

[@kaitlyn__L]

I hadn't thought about "sorry, we'll have to order it in - can you come back next week?" in years!

[@bitsnbobsbobsnbits368]

I miss the crt TVs, the depth on them almost felt 3d, hdr glow on them was unreal, you really felt involved in the content, I remember swapping out my 28inch Sony vega for a flat screen in 2004 and it looked absolutely rubbish, ended up taking it back thinking it was faulty, even today modern TVs struggle to give you that unique look

[@TheSteveTM]

I picked up a CRT off of Facebook Marketplace a bit over a month ago. From the pictures, I could tell it was a Sony Trinitron, had S-Video and Component inputs, and was in really good shape. Less than $100. Sold. Went to pick it up and realized this was the biggest CRT I'd ever seen. 36 inch screen. 220 lbs... Managed to slide it into the hatchback (just barely fit in the back of the GTI face down), where it sat for like 2 weeks until I could actually get one of my gym buddies to help me move it to the house. Got it into the house where it promptly slipped out of my hands, broke a glass coffee table on the way down, and fractured my hand. It's been sitting on the floor in that spot for a month now until I can get some more friends to come over and lift it onto a very stout cabinet as its final resting place. NES looks great on it though.

[@mramaretto114]

the struggle is real, will be a great conversation piece in your home

[@herpyderpyderp]

were you able to set it up now? hope your hand is better.

[@TheSteveTM]

@@herpyderpyderp Yep! Hand is good and TV has been lifted to its final resting place in my living room :-) It looks great and I'm working on getting a MiSTer kit to play on it

[@herpyderpyderp]

@@TheSteveTM that's great to hear, i love stories like these

[@kevinh96]

I had the 32inch version of this TV for a few years, it was replaced with a 47 inch Panasonic rear projection set in around 2001. It took two guys and me to carry the Toshiba from the Currys van up the flight of stairs to my flat and we had to unbox it in the hallway as the box was too wide to fit through the living room door. I had to enlist the help of a friend when I wanted to move it around if I rearranged the living room. I could move it on my own but shoving it risked a hernia. These days although awkward, I can at least lift and move my 55 inch LG TV on my own when I need to.

[@kidsalex13]

Sony's KX-45ED1 was even bigger

[@patrickradcliffe3837]

Did you see the young gentleman that saved one from resturant being demolished?

[@kidsalex13]

@@patrickradcliffe3837 yes i did, that was awesome, i want one for myself, i just dont want to have to go to japan lol

[@ZeroWind2014]

When i was a kid, i used to had a big 4:3 CRT at my dads room, but it changed when they bought a smaller tv and bring the big crt to my sister's room. And few years later they donated or sold it to my Grandmother's place

[@ian3314]

I, for some strange reason, can smell this tv screen. Smells like ozone and static.

[@Tmp2k]

I remember going to the TV shop with my dad to get a new TV. I was adamant we needed a wide-screen TV as it's the way things were going. He ended up buying this exact TV because "even with the black bars on it was a bigger picture than the wide-screens". We had this TV for years, it was an absolute beast. I have no idea what actually happened to it or how they got rid of it. Gutted really as I'd love one of these now.

[@clubcyberia8572]

Frank would be proud! (Franks 2000 inch tv)

[@stewydoo]

Wow, 2000" 😮 bet you could watch The Simpsons from 30 blocks away on that thing!

[@jpgoat5488]

Brilliant! I've got an old high end Sony CRT 28" for my retro gaming. Pictures beautiful, & the sound is better than any flat screen TV I've ever heard

[@LandisSeralian]

I have a 36" RCA F35100ST sitting on the floor in my gaming room right now, that thing is super heavy and the screen is taller than the HDTV I have sitting right next to it. There's just something amazing about huge CRTs.

[@reptilez13]

I know of a giant Trinitron widescreen CRT that is in a basement still that is used because it's so heavy they can't really move it. It has handles built into the side. If I had to guess I think it's somewhere between 36 and 40 in but it's a widescreen CRT so it's hard to compare other than to an LCD. All I know is it's so heavy it takes multiple people just to move it across the room

[@IanDarley]

We used to own a massive 4:3 Toshiba until around 2000 that was so large, you could turn it around via the remote control, it had a motorised base. A guy that I worked with at the time had an even bigger one with a fully flat screen that was 16:9, it must have been 38-40" but I wouldn't swear on that in court.

[@BillC-64]

In Canada, we had Consumers Distributing. We would get a catalog in the mail, and go to the store and fill in the slip, and they would get the product from the back. The catalog was our internet.

[@CineSoar]

I had a 40" Sony Trinitron, bought in the late 90's and sold early 2,010's (a friend had one, that was 2, or 3 inches larger and oddly, given the small percentage difference, you could tell at a glance it was unquestionably bigger). I once hoisted it up into an entertainment center, by myself, which I consider one of the riskier things I've done (considering the non-zero chance of being up close and personal, with an enormous implosion of the glass CRT). I rolled it into the room on a dolly and set it on the floor. Then, I stacked books to the width and depth of the TV base, and half the height of the shelf. The position of the TV, books and shelf, formed a triangle, of which I knelt in the middle. First, I tipped the TV onto my knees and chest, and got a the best grip I could underneath. Then, I slid the screen up my body, until it was high enough to clear the books. Next, I shuffled my knees, rotating, until the TV was hovering over the books and tilted the TV back upright, on top of them. I repeated this maneuver, starting at the book height, which allowed me to get hand-holds better suited to placing it on the shelf, that were not available on the floor. Finally, with the weight resting on my hands, hips, and chest, I raised up on my knees, and shuffle-rotated, until I could place enough of the rear of the TV's base on the shelf, and slide the TV home. For time-period context, I watched a lot of South Park, the "Lost" series, Mythbusters, and all of the Motorcycle-builders shows on that TV. When I sold it, I used still frames from "American Beauty" to demonstrate that it still had good picture.

[@DamienNightmarish]

PAL version of Sonic song is so sloooooow. Anyway, love the TV and the place you are is amazing. Looks very cool to play in a place where you can see the street so near.

[@JamesSmith-qs4hx]

Father Leonard E. Feeney (1957) had the best description of television.

[@Mdyck69]

In the late 90s our family tv quit. My mom worked at Sears and we picked up a Sears Branded TV. I think it was a 37". It has a 'super woofer' on top plus the option for surround sound speakers and such. I was a pretty bulky kid as I was pulling wrenched working on cars and such so I could bench press over 250lbs in grade 12 and even this tv was something I'd consider VERY heavy. I could physically lift it but I was definitely a 2 person deal. We had went from a standard 21" up to this so it really felt like living in the future. Funny enough my best friends family won a runner up prize for a local lottery and got a 61" projection tv. I have a 65" now but even at that it feels miniscule compare to that old projection tv. Just the mere presence of these over sized objects were like charicatures of reality. It truly was a time

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

I still keep a 34" hitachi I managed to save/rescue from Goodwill while they were still accepting and selling them. One big reason? Rail shooters. A lot of tv and display makers brag about how fast they can make their panels, but not one of them will ever work with _any_ of the light guns out there. "But there's the Sinden--" "I'm gonna stop you right there." The problem with the Sinden, is it's $400 USD, and only works with Duck Hunt on real hardware. It does eff all for the other light gun games on the NES, or really any other platform. I'm talking House of the Dead (Saturn & Dreamcast) I'm talking Time Crisis 1/2/3 (PS1/2). I'm talking Confidential Mission (Dreamcast). I'm talking Silent Scope (Dreamcast, and the port on OG Xbox). Decades of great rail shooters completely ignored. That's my gripe. Why emulate them if I can play them on the real console with their associated gun? That's the gripe.

[@rancosteel]

All my CRT’s from the 90’s were Proton’s. They used them in a lot of 90’s films. Great quality with all ebony stained cabinets and black brushed anodized control panel doors.

[@blakegriplingph]

"We'll be having one hell of an electric bill."

[@sergeant_cross_]

It's just a joke, but it's actually not true: I own a 40 inch Loewe CRT and I measured the power consumption: 160W while watching and 15W standby. My 4K 55 inch TV does 150W while watching and 30W(!) on standby. So yeah, CRTs are way less worse on power than most people believe

[@DethMetalGuitars]

I have a 32 inch Toshiba and move it around my house by myself. Love it so much I bought a second one. I did try and snap up a 36 inch CRT from the side of the road once, and I had to get my brother in law to come help me load it up and test it out. When it had too many problems to be work keeping he was kind enough to help me put it back where we found it.

[@namco003]

As an American who grew up loving British TV shows and humor, the catalog store, I never knew that was a thing. The not looking at others while browsing the catalog, sounds so British LOL!! It does sound a lot like the American catalog magazines we would get at home, but we didn't have stores like that.

[@MrDuncl]

Google Retromash Argos to look through some old catalogues.

[@kaitlyn__L]

A lot of people felt so awkward about standing in the corner with the catalogues, they wrote down all the numbers at home (Argos sold and posted these catalogues too) and hurriedly transferred them onto that special slip 😂 Also: people stole the tiny ballpoint pens they provided, as they were the perfect size to fit in a car glovebox or centre console.... so at some times of year there'd be like, one pen in the whole corner with everybody awkwardly sharing!

[@mipmipmipmipmip-v5x]

Amazing how much innovation they put into the screen technology. The contrast indeed looks great.

[@masterkraft4746]

I had one massive SONY CRT like that in 2010. It was gifted to me by an ex-gf, she kept it from a mansion her mother sold. I finally moved it to my apartment, bought a Genesis second hand with Streets Of Rage 2 and we played the hell out of it with my friends. I attached a huge Pioneer club-grade stereo pair to it. It was like going back in time as if we were millionaires playing the Genesis lol

[@frankowalker4662]

The last CRT TV I had was a Toshiba 32 inch wide screen. I gave it to my sister in 2011, (her youngest was 5 back then and her TV had blown up), the TV was old and tired by then so I was upgrading to a new flatscreen TV. I still miss the old thing. But it was so heavy LOL.

[@dvdmike007]

My friends rich parents had this! I hooked my LD player up in 96 and we were loving it

[@dextermorgan1]

I had a LD player too! I was 24 at the time. I bought the Circuit City demo model. Good times!

[@Viteaification]

the sound on that thing is incredible. i also totally forgot about the static that would generate when you turned on a crt. it really is the small things...

[@mitchellazevedo6637]

I am the proud owner of a Sony FD Trinitron WEGA KV-36XBR450 36" CRT with DRC horizontal and vertical line doubling, two component and three S-video inputs. The Neo Geo CD through S-Video absolutely shines on this TV set.

[@cutchyacokov]

I've got a 36" Trinitron from a few years later. Due to the flat glass needing to be thicker it's a whopping ~115Kg (spec sheet says 233lbs). My friend and I tried to move it up icy steps in the winter when I first got it, nope. It's a little worse for wear and has hit the ground several times hard but it still works.

[@henryokeeffe5835]

Also flyback transformers can cause distress to fingers!

[@dragonheatgaming5005]

you only ever make that mistake once, christ it felt like i have been kicked in the chest by a horse

[@blakegriplingph]

And a one-time ticket to oblivion.

[@daveidmarx8296]

Two months ago at an Estate Sale, I picked up a very similar Toshiba (36A42), which despite the 36 in the model number, had a screen which measures 37 inches. It also came with a similar stand (that had a cassette recorder and a DVD player). The cost for everything?? Two dollars. And yes, I definitely needed help loading it into my car and carrying it in the house.

[@Nostalgianerd]

Please follow Barcadia at; instagram.com/barcadia.bar/ facebook.com/barcadiaaracde/ twitter.com/barcadiabar

[@akiraokami]

it's kind of funny, back in the 90s we had a much bigger living room than we do today, yet in my mind the TV we had feels like it was absolutely massive. But my father was a cab driver struggling to make ends meet, so we always bought everything second hand so I can not imagine that we had a particularly big TV. Meanwhile today we have a 70 something" in the much smaller living room, and the TV feels absolutely tiny. What's even funnier is that in my gaming room I have a 28" CRT and a 50" OLED and despite the fact that they're practically next to one another, the OLED still feels tiny compared to the CRT

[@EastyyBlogspot]

I would love to see a crt but made with modern tech

[@MadsterV]

I rescued our old 35" (I think) Toshiba from my parents who wanted to get rid of it. It needs new condensers but I can't find anyone willing to work on it, so I may have to do it myself eventually (and I don't know how). It looks very close to that but no stand (that looks GREAT) and bevel is different, speakers are a bar at the bottom. It's just as massive and way too heavy to carry by one person.

[@Robertsshed]

Ferguson had a 38 inch CRT.

[@MrAwol007]

i had that tv 1997/98 it was massive but it failed no sound after 2 years :(

[@Robertsshed]

@@MrAwol007 Was it the 4:3 one? I lusted after that. All the home cinema magazines raved about it because it was big enough to show a film in letter box without losing too much of the image.

[@MrAwol007]

@@Robertsshedyes 4:3 aspect and my first movie on it was airforce one it was indeed epic

[@Calvados656]

Ugh... I have back problems and just thinking about trying to lift a CRT TV is enough to make my back ache. Much as I would love to have one for older consoles I would definitely be paying someone else to lift it.

[@TravelatorH8r]

I'm a bit of a sound geek so fun fact, a lot of these speakers on these TVs sound so great because of the TVs Mass. Mass is the only thing that decreases sound decibels so if you put a bunch of bricks on top of a speaker box or behind it, that speaker is going to sound punchier with more bass and natural sounding mid frequencies because you're hearing the sound from the speaker and you're also feeling it being absorbed by the mass so the listener experiences more contrast between Peak frequencies and silence

[@Patrick_AUBRY]

For us Canadian, its call Consumers Distributing or "Distribution au consmmateur" in Quebec. Never knew it was British too, still not surprise...

[@jefftaylor4953]

The 40" Mitsubishi was quite the sight in the US! I remember being blown away by a CRT that size...so long ago. Great video, thanks!

[@RaithSphere]

I remember my grandmother getting this TV, was blown away by just how massive it was and that remote was a total unit

[@winsoxuk]

I worked for Toshiba when that set was out and it also has SVM (scan velocity modulation) which sharpens up the switch in between black and white when the beam scans

[@winsoxuk]

If memory serves me right if you're in picture mode 3 scan modulation turns off so you will see a difference in sharpness

[@ddespair]

I remember my opa (grandpa) had a huge crt, I think it was a Toshiba? But it could display every frame of what the tv was playing in order as it happened like a checkerboard. I don’t know why anyone would want that feature but I played with it all the time. It could also show you every channel in the same style of a frame from each channel in a checkerboard presentation. (Edit, now that I think about it, it may have been a Mitsubishi)

[@ljqbeqyxt]

haven’t been able to watch for a bit, and WOW the place looks SO COOL, incredible work!!

[@ryanm8322]

Love this, I remember lugging old 36 inch Sony Tv's up stairs with roommates thinking how crazy it was, until we turned on the N64 or PS1 and were blown away! Game night was always at our place...! Question, I love your setup but are the windows always open like that? I couldn't having bright sun or nighttime neighbors looking in my house all day long without an other option! Cheers!

[@Choralone422]

Back in 1992 my parents bought a Toshiba CX32621 32 inch CRT TV which also came with a matching stand. It was unique as it had side mounted speakers that looked like ears. I can still remember playing tons of NES, SNES and TurboDuo on that set! That TV was an absolute beast for it's time! My parents paid somewhere around $1000 US and my friends were jealous. I can remember there was an issue with it when it was 2-3 years old it had to be taken back to a shop for warranty repair. The shop sent out 2 men to retrieve it and they had quite the time getting it out and later back into the house after it had been repaired. The shop entirely loathed when 1 day after it had been returned a teenage me rather forcefully plopped down on the floor in front of the TV, it shut off completely and would not turn back on! A repair person was summoned again and luckily found that only a fuse had let go. The TV continued working properly until early 2004 when it died for good.

[@MrMoogle]

I had a big ass 34" CRT when I moved into my first apartment. My parents upgraded to a rear projection set and gave me the CRT. That thing was a nightmare to move around but it looked fantastic! I think it was an RCA if I recall.

[@schnitzilla1982]

I remember riding home from my friends house after dark and being able to tell whose TV was on in each house by the high pitched sound from the tubes.