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Obituary For the Sony Trinitron
An anonymous reader sends us to Gizmodo where, to honor the passing from production of the Sony Trinitron, they've done a timeline on the development of television. "After 280 millions tubes sold, Trinitron will be officially dead this month. Few Sony inventions have had the same gravitational pull as their Trinitron display technology... Trinitron became synonym of the best quality TV sets and computer monitors in the planet... Sony became the king of TV, with more than 100 million sets sold by 1994, to later fall under the weight of plasma and LCD technologies."
The sets were both dense and large.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
That's the one thing that bothered me with trinitron monitors as they got more obvious with time.
My first First Post?
I still have my 10 year old sony and it works fine :)
-- pravin
Too few technologies have the -tron suffix nowadays. It works with everything, so why not use it? This is the future, dammit!
Can someone explain to me why geeks fall in love with their gadgets despite the flaws? Aren't we smarter than being brand loyal sheep? Hey I'm sure there were some great Trinitrons but there were also some very defective units shipped from what I've read. I only ever owned one - a 15" computer monitor that's lasted almost 15 years and is still working at my mother's house but on its last legs. It was the most expensive monitor I've ever owned and was greatly surpassed in quality by a cheap (at less than half the price) CTX 17" monitor about 3 years later. There are plenty of bits of equipment that are classics because they don't get outdone, but for me this monitor isn't one of them. This is just about blind brand loyalty and the triumph of modern marketing over common sense.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You mention flaws, I remember TWO Trinitron's I've had, and they both had a faint line across the middle of the screen. This was, apparently, a "feature". I can't remember the reason, but it was bloody annoying when you had a largely white screen.
Minor flaw aside though, the two I had were bloody good.
They were stabilising wires to prevent the aperture wires from vibrating in the presence of loud sounds, which would cause the image to flutter and distort temporarily.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You're right, these are "features", and if you had got a trinitron screen without them, I would have been very surprised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitron#Visible_Support_Wires
c++;
I remember the day when I got my first Nokia monitor with Trinitron technology.... The screen was heavy and took a lot of space, but hell, the quality of the image was just incredible for that time... My games never looked so good.... Gotta love Sony.
Rip...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Bitch about CRT's all you want, God knows I do. Those bastards are heavy, awkward, and should never be larger than 17". I had an old 21" I lugged around. Madness!!! But they were durable. You could bludgeon a hippo to death with one and it would still work. LCD's? The damn screens are too fragile. Put a layer of glass over the front for protection, I'll accept the weight penalty.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Yes there where two visible lines, but (for me atleast) if you was actually concentrating on the job at hand, such as coding you never noticed them. To me having a much sharper display with less eye strain was worth it.
My 19" was the last Sony product I ever purchased, their LCD screens just seem expensive and not much better than the competition. I guess they do not manufacture their own panels.
This piece of home electronics was engineered and built phenomenally. Not a single problem in 11 years. The picture is great, too.
Since I can't really tell the difference by watching high definition video on HD TVs and normal DVDs on my set, I don't think I'll be upgrading anytime soon.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"...too later fall under the weight of plasma and LCD technologies."
As someone who just bought an LCD TV and is trying to figure out how the hell he'll get his 250lb 38" Hi-Def Sony CRT to his sister 400 miles away, I find this statement just a little ironic. The damn thing weighs more than most people.
Though, I also have translucent diagonal lines that run across the screen that remind me of a CRT projector than needs its edges blanked. And the pincushioning has always been off. And on a cold day, I have to turn the contrast waaaaaaay down to keep it from shutting itself off. But aside from that, best $20 I ever spent.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Sony won't cry over dumping Trinitron for a long time, but eventually the videophiles will be paying the kinds of money the audiophiles are, for home theater with the greatest CRT technology. If it's not derived from ideas used in Trinitron, I'd be surprised, which would leave Sony to wonder why they didn't go for it first.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ok , you can't get a 50" CRT and they suck up electricity like its going out of fashion, but for picture quality you still can't beat a good CRT so its a shame that the trinitron tube is being discontinued because IMO it'll be some years yet before LCDs and Plasma picture quality matches it.
As a "diehard CRT fanboy" I'd like to pay my respects.
About 9 months ago, I finally caved in, I fought tooth and nail to the bitter end, from forum to forum across the web, valiantly defending the honour of CRT vs LCD in the great debate, I held on long, much longer than most of the die hard CRT junkies, there's few of us left.
I am a man who had slowly given up PC gaming I finally bit the dust, accepted a good price for the sale of my old 22" trinitron (philips 202P40) and accepted the new Dell 2407 WFP HC model into my life also at a great price, it was a combination I couldn't refuse.
Sure I loved the desk space saved, I loved the crisp text in the native resolution, hell even in games I didn't mind non native resolution honestly, once you're playing, it doesn't matter.
Also the monitor was appealing to look at, it came with USB, CF, SD and other such ports, it was sexier, it was lighter etc etc!
Still.. to this day as a die hard CRT fanboy, I can not use that Dell 24" LCD in dark (DARK!) games, like Doom, like Oblivion, the black levels, despite what the 'forum people' tell me! are STILL not good enough.
I seriously do not exaggerate for a second, when I say widescreen Oblivion, the sides of the monitor - with it's huge width, tight viewing angle and so on, combined in to the 'perfect storm' of shimmery, nasty black levels, which made the walls in the caves of Oblivion quite honestly impossible to look at.
I felt as if 'sleep' as in my eye - I was constantly rubbing it to get the shimmery light sappy stuff from my eyes out.
Obviously though... it wasn't really in my eyes to begin with.
I love my LCD for so many reasons but for so many others, I still hate it.
Co-incidentally the night of this news article, it's in a box behind me now, being re-sold to someone else.
Sure I'm typing this on a 19" LCD but I don't intend to play games on it, I'll wait for something with REAL black levels, with REAL viewing angels, something actually, genuinely superior to the CRT I so foolishly sold for my the LCD.
(100hz at 1600x1200 no less!, it was a good CRT!)
Yes CRT has it's flaws, yes it's heavy, no it's not ultra crisp but that almost gives it a 'free AA' feel to be honest
Sure they are rare now but if one feature hasn't been surpassed it's by far the black levels, by a long, long way!
When you can plonk me down, in front of a widescreen LCD and I can say the picture surpasses my old CRT - then I'll be a happy man.
So long trinitrons, alas - we knew thee well.
It's not really the Trinitron brand itself which is the big deal, it's the concept of an aperture grill CRT in general. It's a big deal technologically, and luckily for all involved Sony's patent expired in the 1990s.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
We have an old Trinitron, which we acquired as a result of an elderly relative passing away. We don't have the instruction book. It's model number is KV-2092-UB. The Sony website knows nothing about such a model. What I want to know is; is it new enough for s-video to work over its SCART connection? Asking here because I obviously don't trust Sony enough to give them my personal details which is a requirement for asking them. Anyone know?
FGD 135
I never understood why so many people loved their shiny Triniton monitors. Don't get me wrong, the technology made for GREAT televisions, at least at standard PAL and NTSC resolutions (and typical viewing distances), but as a high-resolution monitor, the two lines(*) across totally spoil it for me. It's like buying a shiny new LCD and having not just one bunch A LOT of dead pixels right smack in the middle third of the display.
I've accidentally ruined the experience for at least a few new Triniton owners who had not previously noticed the lines. When someone points them out to you, it's apparently quite hard to ignore them again. For me, the lines were always just too much of an annoyance.
(*)For anyone interesting in knowing *why* there are these fine lines across a Triniton display, but not on most other conventional CRTs... go read up on aperture grille vs shadow mask. I was going to whore myself for some informative karma, but the Wikipedia article with images shows it better than I can tell it, so go read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_grille
The fine lines are shadows cast by "tension wires", necessary to stabilize the hundreds of vertical wires that make up the aperture grille. Shadow mask CRTs don't require these tension wires because they don't have the vertical wires (or strips). Instead, basically a bunch of holes are made in a sheet. This results in:
- More stable display (sheet with holes in it versus wires or thin strips).
- Slightly more accurate geometry (greater symmetry)
- Less overall brightness (the sheet with holes blocks more of the electron beam, resulting in a "duller" image).
- No shadows from tensioning wires
The last point is, of course, the kicker... and the reason why Trinitons make for awesome TVs. In a computer monitor, however, the brightness isn't needed and the drawbacks of Triniton technology outweigh the benefits, IMNSHO anyway.
In a Triniton TV, the tension wires are basically impossible to spot from a normal viewing distance. On a large Triniton computer monitor with high resolution and a good graphics card (good DAC), the wires are basically impossible NOT to see.
Trinitron tubes are still in use by pro video editors as monitors. My school's visual arts program uses trinitron tubes as monitors (besides two large LCDs used for the actual editing, timelines, etc), and with good reason: CRT technology is STILL just plain better than LCD tech for a couple tasks.
Many of a geek's fond (or not) memories are tied to pieces of technology. We're allowed to reminisce about the old days, old technologies, old brands, etc. It doesn't make us blindly loyal to the brand. If it did, by now we'd all have PS3s and Sony Bravia TVs or whatever they're called.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
280 million Trinitron displays equals how many billion tonnes of lead and other human-unfriendly substances?
These products are dead and (soon to be) buried but they're not going anywhere. Rather than being mildly nostalgic we should take this as an opportunity to look forward to the next generation of displays and ask ourselves the questions that really matter; what impact does the manufacture have, what happens to these materials once they reach the end of their short life, do these valuable materials really need to be entombed forever?
I don't want a Sony Trinitron cocktail when I take a drink from the tap!
I sat down at a Hot Desk this morning and my late arrival meant that all the desks with the pristine 19" NEC LCD screens are gone. The monitor on my desk is a 21" Sony Trinitron in the off-white that old PC plastic goes.
The picture quality is awesome and I get around the two lines problem by taking my glasses off and sitting further back from the monitor. Plus I forgot about the "doinkzzz" noise you get when you fire a CRT up.
It's not a 'feature' - more a necessary limitation of the Trinitron design. Of course due to brand loyalty and all that, these horizontal lines got elevated to a mark of quality and indicated a genuine Trinitron tube, blah blah blah.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I have four GDM-5011P 21" Trinitrons made by Sony for Silicon Graphics in their trademark 'granite' finish. STUNNING build quality. They're about a decade old now but even with my three Samsung 244T 24" LCDs, I still find myself using the Trinitrons quite regularly. Crisp, clean and fantastic color.
Very strange. I picked up an old Sony 15" Trinitron monitor about 7 years ago. It was the best quality small screen I ever saw. Substantially better than my Belinea 19" monitor I bought a year before that. The text was vastly sharper and the colour much better. Despite the size difference, the sharpness meant it would more easily display any given resolution. Around the same time I actually bought a cheap 17" CTX monitor for my parents. Because of their eyesight, they preferred the bigger screen, but in my opinion the Sony was much better.
One of my mates bought a 24" widescreen Trinitron, and until I got my Dell 3007WFP, it had been the best monitor I had ever seen.
Back in the 80's, I picked up a 15" Trinitron TV/Monitor at a garage sale for 25 bucks. The exterior was pretty beat up, but it still worked like a charm (and had quite a few years on it already). I used that thing for at least another decade, finally giving it away to a friend, still producing a sharp, clear, well-balanced picture. That's how they used to make things.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
I still have an old 17" Trinitron monitor which I use for an elderly PC hooked up to a weather station. Just for fun a few weeks back I hooked it up to this PC, alongside the LCD monitor: I was amazed at how vibrant the whole thing was, the reds in particular were really vivid. I just has to fire up Doom for some old-school action - it's just not the same on an LCD panel.
It'll all become irrelevant in the next decade or so anyway, as people will forget what a CRT monitor could offer. I don't plan to throw that Trinitron monitor away though, not as long as it still works anyway! Maybe in 2018 I'll be able to wow people by showing them what we used in the dark ages...
Jeez thanks a lot folks! I've got a 20" Dell Trinitron that I've had for LONG time (still just as beautiful and crisp as ever). Never thought of those 'wire' lines as a problem or, more importantly, ever really notice the damn things. Until now.
Mine died in like 3 years. However my "no name" CTX monitor that I got with my Dell Pentium II box has been going strong since roughly, um... since they came out with Pentium II CPUs.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
My main monitor is a 19" Dell-branded Trinitron CRT.
It's wonderful. It looks like it's at least a decade old (I bought it at First Saturday a few years ago, so I don't know when it was made), and the picture quality blows any LCD out of the water.
This is why I avoid LCDs--the picture quality can never compare to a good CRT. I have to use an LCD at work, and I'm so happy when I get home, because it means I can use a monitor that doesn't suck.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
The year under the Watchman should be 1982 not 1992.
Perhaps because some of those gadgets with some of those flaws hang around longer than some girlfriends/spouses?
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Right when CRT screens above 21" for PC monitors became price value worthy, PC makers stopped selling them. Now your monitor costs more than your PC. So when can we see a corresponding price drop in LCDs. A year ago the 25% drop year over year for the previous few years came to an abrupt halt and prices have remained stable for more than 12 months.
Thanks for the 'upgrade', dudes.
I have a 20" Sony Trinitron I acquired used 21 years ago. The picture is still great. My wife keeps hoping it will die at some point so she can buy a better-looking TV for the bedroom, but it refuses to die or degrade. It is proof you can build good, reliable, lasting technology if you want to.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Few Sony inventions have had the same gravitational pull as their Trinitron display technology...
That's because a Trinitron weighed as much as a small neutron star...
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
The best CRT I ever owned in terms of picture quality was a 19" Trinitron. It's still going strong on one of my other PC's though I've long since switched to LCD's on my primary boxen.
The thin line through the middle vanished for me after about a day. The brain has wonderful abilities to filter some things out. The crispness of the picture and the depth of the colors was fantastic compared to my NEC and CTX CRT's.
Over the last 16 years, I've owned 2 trinitrons - a 27" I had for about 9 and a 36" I had for about 7. They were amazing. I never had any trouble with them until the last one died this past September, leading me to my 46" Samsung LCD. They were excellent TVs. Great picture quality. My main gripe is they weighed about 4 tons each and were extremely bulky. They were a total bitch to move, especially the 36" one. I don't miss them, because my newest TV is fuggin amazing, but they were great, at the time.
It was a revelation - I remember when I saw my first trinitron. Up until then color TVs were washed out blurry affairs, barely superior to black and white - the trinitron brough real, sharp color into the home. The trinitron made watching porn far more exciting! The jump in quality was like going from VHS EP to upscaled DVD.
I've got a 27" Sony about 16 years old, bought used. It is truly massive - I seriously would not trust one of those wobbly particle-board entertainment centers not to collapse under its weight. Impossible to move, especially since it feels like about 80% of the weight is in the screen, making it very lopsided.
Still running good and looks great though...and 2-tuner PIP TVs went out of style for a while, another great feature.
Equate it to a pet. You could get a new puppy to replace your 10 year old dog. It would run twice as fast and maybe even learn new tricks, but it takes time to build the bond you had with the old one.
Trinitron was invented to avoid paying royalties on the original shadow-mask design. They ended up with a cleared, brighter picture than the original.
I suppose nowadays somebody that didn't invent anything would have patented "sending TV pictures in colour" and everyone would have had to pay royalties to them.
I have a trinitron-tubed TV, which I bought in 1993. The picture quality is still excellent, I'll keep it till it finally breaks down.
I also have a Sun-branded 21 inch Trinitron monitor for my home PC, which I bought second hand in 2000. The picture quality on that is still excellent. The minor annoyance of the aperture grille support wires is more than made up for by the great contrast, responsiveness and colour that this monitor displays. My computer desk might have a permanent bow in it from the weight, but I'm also keeping that monitor until it dies, it's superior to any LCD that I've seen so far.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
PS3s and Sony Bravia TVs
Both of which are also excellent, high-quality increasingly popular pieces of equipment.
E pluribus unum
I own a 19 inch professional / optically flat / CPD-G420 Sony Trinitron monitor and paid about $700 new for it in it's time. Sure it's heavy and sucks up some desk space but the image quality is amazing for a monitor. Runs at an insane 1440x1080 @ 90 Hz. I've had people comment that it seems like an LCD if you don't notice the size of it. I use it heavily for photography work. I think sadly most folks believe a CRT is terrible because they've never owned a high end series CRT.
Nowadays to get an equivalent LCD I'd probably need to sink my money into a +$1000 NEC professional LCD panel which is still weak on the response speed. (With LCDs usually fast panels mean poor colour and vice versa). I still haven't made the switch yet because I'm not too thrilled about paying more for less in some senses. And while an LCD may use less energy, I'm not so certain that the actual switch is good for the environment either. I remember reading a few years back that if you don't need to upgrade then don't because the environmental damage to build the new equipment is pretty extensive. (Not to mention disposal).
As a side note my dad got a 32 inch FlatTube Wega Trinitron TV for $350 on sale a month ago. For that price you can't even get an equivalent Plasma or LCD. It weighted a tonne to get it home but wow, is the image quality unbelievable. I'm personally sad to see this technology go. I still think LCDs or Plasmas are a compromise. Until OLEDs or even the patent burdened SED if ever becomes mainstream, I think we'll loose out on image quality.
Much as I despise Sony (goddamn their rootkits and DRM), I have to give the Sony Wega TV line kudos. They were easily the best bargain on the U.S. market just a few years ago. They were the only line at the time that did 16:9 anamorphic squeeze (thanks to the innovative Trinitron screen) and their picture quality was top-of-the-line--and all at a price that was on par with everyone else's cheapo models. I bought my Wega 27" inch in 2002 for around $500 and it blew away the much pricier Toshiba models at the time (which had good picture quality but couldn't do anamorphic). Even now, after I've went to HDTV, I still use it in one of my bedrooms. For years the thing ran virtually 24 hours a day and the picture is still as sharp today as when I bought it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wow - my vaio developed keyboard problems after 2.5 years and this is probably why. Specifically, the problem I have is that the numeric keypad values suddenly become the default, so instead of getting "o" when I hit the "o" key, I get "6", and so on. Holding the blue 'fn' key and hitting 'o' gets me 'o', but that sucks. I'd forgotten why I quit using that laptop until I pulled it out the other day to use for testing.
creation science book
It wasn't just for vibration damping.
The heating caused by the electron beams hitting the aperture grille would cause the grill wires to expand slightly. If they weren't mechanically fastened together, the grille would warp out of shape enough to cause problems with convergence and purity.
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Got 2 Trinitron 21" tubes on my desktop at home & work. Wife has one also. Got the 3 at home used, dirt cheap. People giving them away because they got their LCDs.
Personally I prefer the image on CRTs over LCDs. They are great for CAD & IMO gaming as well. Plus I require the screen to be the same distance from my eyes so the only thing an LDC buys me is clutter space behind the monitor.
So keep buyin your LCDs & I will keep a lookout for people dumping their Trinitrons! Now if I can only find the storage place for all these monster monitors....
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Who foresaw that the maker of these CRT screens would dare put rootkits on so many computers? Currently, the word "rootkit" is not considered a word by my spellchecker, but I am sure that future spellcheckers will include "rootkit," and its popularity and inclusion will be another Sony innovation : P
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
not that you are wrong factually to be concerned, but you are wrong to think
1. people think the way you do in general about waste
2. people will be converted to thinking the way you do any time soon
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm just glad to see Sony unable to milk the cash cow anymore at their poor customer's expense. In the LCD world they're just an average competitor, even if they keep charging you extra for their "premium" badge, which isn't all that premium anymore.
...when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Or when it craps out, whichever comes first. I've had a 21-inch Diamondtron (Gateway-branded) since 2002, and it continues to be the best monitor I've ever seen in terms of picture quality. It's the first CRT I've ever owned that could display fully-black blacks AND appropriately bright colors without having to manually change contrast levels. I barely notice the little gray wires; unless the screen's displaying something fully white I can't see them at all. LCD/plasma displays are still coming into their own. Plasmas have problems with burn in and are dreadfully expensive, and LCDs have lousy black display, but these problems are phasing out. Still, I won't be giving up my 60lb behemoth until it gives me a good reason to.
Rest In Peace, Trinitron. I don't remember the last monitor I had the wasn't a Trinitron.
After sixteen years of service, my still-working Sony CPD-1302 monitor is moving on to the Great CRT Heaven. It was my first computer monitor (aside from the TV's that I used with my Atari 800 back in the 1980's). I purchased this monitor used in 1992 along with a Macintosh IIsi. It had a slightly burned-in screen and a 9-pin VGA output (for which I searched a long time for an adapter to a 15-pin VGA connector). It served as my only monitor for many years until I acquired an Apple 17" Studio Display (also a Trinitron). For the last few years, it has served as my server monitor for a couple of OpenBSD boxen that ran my household network until yesterday, when I finally replaced their functions with Mac OS X Server running on a couple of old iMac DVs.
The only other CRT monitors I have are from my old eMac (a shadow mask), and the monitor I purchased for my music production station, a Power Mac G5 with a LaCie electron 19 blue IV (also a Trinitron). Of course, my television is also a Trinitron, a Sony KV-32FS100 that's about 5 1/2 years old and still gives a fantastic picture in 16:9 mode with its 480i component input driven by a DVD player or my AppleTV. If I could have afforded it in the past year, I would have replaced the 32FS100 with the KD-34XBR970, that last of the Sony CRT HDTVs, but my money has been going to more important things, since the 32FS100 has such a wonderful picture I can't justify replacing it until HD discs and players become the norm. I dread the day when I will be forced to buy a non-CRT television.
I will use my Apple Studio Display and my LaCie until they bite the dust, although the LaCie may be replaced for the music production tasks once LCD monitors drop enough in price to justify them. As it is, even 3 1/2 years after I bought the LaCie for $250, I'd have to spend at least two to three times that price to get an LCD with an equivalent or better resolution and picture quality.
Sony Trinitron. The king is dead! Long live the king!
I'm always amused to hear folks complaining about the relatively short life they get out of various products with moving parts by comparing them to something with none. For instance, last week a co-worker was complaining that his washing machine died and part of the complaint was something like "my TVs last 10 years, but this washing machine only lasted six." Hello! You're wearing out the moving components of your washing machine every time you do a load of laundry--there's nothing in your TV to wear out.
Well built/tested consumer products that don't have moving parts (like Sony TVs) will last a very long time. I always appreciated the quality of Sony products, though their odd formats and some of their antics of late have put me off the brand. I had a Sony radio that lasted almost 15 years and at the end of that time when I gave it away, it was still going strong.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I have a 2005 XBR model, 1080i native with an HDMI port, QAM and all the candy.
It's "only" 36 inches and weights 225 lbs., but it's got better color than any LCD I've seen. It's also got a much better response time. Oh, and it only cost $300. CRT HDTVs are a great bargain on Craigslist if you don't mind hauling the huge beasts around.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
... those two ambiguous hairlines running horizontally across the screen and all. I got my last trinitron two years ago at a great bargan, a 27 inch model bought specifically for fighting games. At the time, all the flat panels were having a difficult time with input lag, a no no for fighters and many other types of gaming. But my trinitron looks awesome whether displaying television or me kicking ass at Street Fighter Third Strike. When I entered the industry as a broke teenager, I wanted a trinitron monitor sooo badly to play Everquest on. A television to math was just out of the question outright. Then I finally got my Trinitron and realized that there was no way my video card could output at it's highest resolution. That was an awesome problem to have, and to fix, as I saved up and got my other target acquisition at the time, a Geforce card. It kinda makes me feel nostalgic, looking back and remember that era of electronics. The trinitron was definitely an icon for gamers and AV enthusiasts.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I am a long time professional technician specializing in many of Sony's product lines. The Betamax was not "killed" in 1988 like this claims. It actually was phased out of production in 2001 and at that point, the ED-Beta was the last machine. I'm inclined now to look into Sony and find out how much of this is correct but that part of it makes me question some of the other info.
In an aside; I actually owned not only a Sony KV-1310 from new but also a Betamax SL-7200. This was some great stuff!!!
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
I could not help but note the irony: that the end of the best of the uber-heavy CRTs is due to "'the weight of plasma and LCD technologies.'"
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
It's hard to believe that people could accept something like a designed-in visible support wire. They obviously weren't going after graphic artists
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I have a 25 year old 14" trinitron which I still use on a daily basis, which has never had a repair done on the tube itself (just the tuner), and still looks as good as it did in 1983! For a time it was my color computer monitor for my Commodore 64, Apple ][ and IBM PC AT, back when color monitors were too expensive or weren't readily available.
Every TV I've had since then has either died or had the tube electronics fixed multiple times.
I've always had (still have, in fact) several trinitron based monitors for my computers that had the best picture available IMO. I only took the leap to LCD 1 year ago due to nothing more than display size. What are the odds that LCD will still work in 25 years?
There was a period during the 90's when the market got flooded with cheap Trinitrons. The tubes were fine but the drive circuitry sucked. Perhaps that what you had.
My Trinitrons are all still going strong. I VASTLY prefer them to LCDs despite their humongous bulk. This picture is a good reason. Look at it on an LCD and a good Trinitron and the difference is night and day. Contrast levels on the Trinitron show details that are completely lost on LCDs.
The Trinitron was:
;o)
1. The first TV I noticed had better everything that most others, if not all. Better picture, better glare / reflection resistance, better stability, etc.
2. The first TV I aspired to buy. It took a long while, but in 1995 it happened.. after a few Toshibas and Sanyos.
3. The last TV I had. When I went front-projector with lcd, I sold the 35" trini to a co-worker, who still uses it.
4. The densest, most massive thing per given volume I've had the "pleasure" to move.
The Trinitron is what I'll think of, when I think of an old-school CRT tv.
You shall be missed. But only in the nostalgic way. These days I don't measure my screens in inches, I do so in feet
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Cable ready tuners? Composite input? Component input?
Less pop references, more tech please.
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Define quality. How long did the replacement monitor last? I'm betting it's an ex-monitor by now?
You'd have lost that bet. I use 19" CRT LG brand monitors day to day, but that 17" is still running fine on an older machine (when I bother to boot it). The case could use a good clean but apart from that its in prime condition.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
In a world where most people consider MP3 encoding to be equivalant to CD quality, I guess it's not surprising to find so many people who would not think twice about turning down a Trinitron monitor in favor of a entry level Dell monitor or a cheap TV from Best Buy. Worse yet, how many people have you found running LCDs at non-native resolution... it's awful!
There's a much greater difference between low and high end TVs and monitors than there is between the equivalent shadow mask vs Trinitron monitors, so if picture really matters to you, solve the quality problem first. I'm a real stickler about monitor quality, comparing shadow mask vs Trinitron monitors side by side whenever I've had the chance and not once have I preferred a shadow mask monitor, unless the Trinitron had lower resolution or refresh rate. The difference was not huge in some cases, but shadow mask usually gave me the impression of having a more "muddy" feel. I'd rather see a wire once every 6 months than have 365 days of slightly fuzzier text.
But that's me and there is some subjectivity involved. Whie I can find the tension wires when I try, in practice they have hardly ever been noticeable. Maybe in a new word processing document with the entire screen white, or image editing with largely flat white background, but never beyond that.
Flat panel display technology is still trying to make par with the viewing angles, colors and longevity offered in CRTs. Give it a couple more years and maybe those deficiencies will be worked out with laser TVs, large OLEDs, or whatever is next.
This technology was invented by Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley, perfected by him at Dumont Labs and then the patents were licensed by Paramount Pictures to Sony. So Sony did pay for patents anyway and probably wouldn't have minded paying RCA if they had thought it was a good technical option.
obviously, there are still companies making vacuum tubes (for guitar amps, audiophiles, etc.) but was the crt the last vacuum tube on which serious r & d money was still spent?
when i think of mainstream and state of the art electronics (retro stuff notwithstanding) i can't think of any modern electronic devices that use vacuum tubes except for the crts found in computer monitors and televisions. this announcement seems to be mark the end for the vacuum tube - this is not just the passing of what was once the best video display technology, but also the final passing of the vacuum tube, once used in every electronic device ever made including the first digital computers.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
What you're talking about is probably the result of your eyeballs bouncing. Try it again, only this time instead of clearing your throat crunch on some celery sticks. (or some celeron chips if you have really strong jaws)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Sorry, I meant that as a joke- hence the winking smiley. For extra marks, try this out with an LCD monitor.
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