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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."
My sony monitor is from 1993 and it is still working. In fact, I am looking at it right now, typing this post.
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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
thats nothing we've got an old sony tv thats at least 25 years old now, picture tube still working great (gain is only up half way) and its had at least a hundred thousands of hours viewed on it.
I've also got a Diamondtron-based monitor (a supposedly licensed version by Mitsubishi, although I was always under the impression that they made it after Sony's patent ran out). The faint lines (two in this case) aren't distracting in themselves under normal use. However, they *are* a minor nuisance when you're using Photoshop and you have to check to see if it's a genuine scratch on the image or just one of the bars.
I'm not sure what you mean by "they got more obvious with time", though. In what sense?
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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.
Oh... and one other thing. The TV still gives a picture as good as the day it was bought after approaching 15 years of (almost) continuous use, and I've *never* had it serviced or repaired in that time.
Sure, it's *relatively* heavy and moderately bulky, but that's not the same problem with 14" portables as it is with those horrendous large-screen CRTs. I'd pay to have my TV repaired over one of those cheap LCD portables any day. There's something I just hate about the look of them, particularly the matt-finish ones.
Yeah, I know it cuts down on reflections, but it just looks horrible for TV, and I don't like the colour on cheap LCD TVs. Maybe the way CRTs work sits better with (and covers up the flaws better than) cheap LCDs when used with existing standard-def TV signals- that could be because until recently most displays were CRTs, and the system was designed with that in mind.
Whatever.... that Sony's a damn good TV, even when (*especially* when) used with my digibox's RGB SCART signal.
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I feel obligated to post at this time:
Although my fiance and myself have given up cable (Family Guy is broadcast, w00t!), she comes from a family where the TV is just ON. I hate it, but the typical procedure for 5 years ago went like this:
6AM - Dad wakes up, turns on TV, watches weather and traffic report, leaves TV on, takes shower
7AM - Dad checks TV again for report, Mom wakes up, views report on TV (report is discussed between Mom and Dad), takes shower, Dad leaves for work
8AM - Mom fixes breakfast (and lunch) for kids (who watch cartoons), gets ready for work.
9AM - Kids watch TV until time to leave, leave, mom takes them (leaves TV on)
10AM - Mom comes back, views weather/traffic, finishes getting ready for work, leaves for work, TV is turned off
2PM - Mom comes back from work, turns TV on, watches soaps, eats potato chips
3PM - Mom picks up kids (leaves TV on), takes kids home from school (kids watch Simpsons or whatever)
4PM - Mom watches something on TV, cooks dinner, Kids play games or HW, or whatever
5PM - Dad gets home (dinner better be on the table!), TV is on news while dinner is consumed
6PM-9PM - TV time with family, smoking, leisure time, possible do some home repairs (TV stays on, don't worry)
9PM - dessert (watch a movie?)
10PM - kids go to bed, Dad stays up and watches news
10PM-12AM - Dad falls asleep while watching news, Mom wakes him up at midnight to get him to come to bed, turns TV off.
So, the TV is off for 10 hours, daily (6 hours during the night, 4 hours as both parents work). 14 hours of TV, daily. No, I am not kidding at all. Yes, her parents smoke, drink, and lounge about the house gaining weight and killing themselves. Sadly, I am not kidding.
PS - weekends are actually worse, TV is on for 18 hours (6AM to midnight). Also, 2 years her mom quit her job (she doesn't like working), and added those 4 hours back in for a total of 18 hours daily. It is not even fair to compete under these circumstances.
PSS - the TV is on during Christmas (in case you wondered)
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.
actually my sister has hers on 24/7.She has been paralyzed for several years now and it freaks her out for the house to be "too quiet".Mom doesn't mind as the shows help keep sis from getting depressed,and since I don't have to live with her I say anything that keeps her spirits up is great.There are a lot of lonely people out there and for them the constant chatter of television seems to help.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
CRTs still beat most flat-panels in terms of color, because they inherently have a logarithmic response that is very close to that of the human eye, but flat-panels have an intrinsic linear response. In order to accurately mimic the logarithmic curve, either an exceptionally high number of bits is required, or tricks need to be played with the illumination or driver circuitry.
Cheap flat-panels have fewer of these tricks implemented, and generally keep the bit depth low to reduce data bandwidth and allow cheaper components in the electronics, so their color reproduction is not very good.
It's common for people to assume that flat-panels are better than CRTs in every respect. It's simply not true. They are better in terms of size, weight, sharpness, and (usually) power consumption, but CRTs are better in terms of color and frequency response. Moving to flat-panels involves trade-offs, as does pretty much everything, it's just that popular opinion is that these trade-offs are worth it, even if they don't consciously realize they're being made.