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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."
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
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++;
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.
"...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.
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?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
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!
The Trinitron
Be dead and gone
Though large and dense
As beard, no defense.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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.
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.
Well, those are reasons why it failed. After 35 years of Sony trying to push this technology on us, they're finally giving up. Yet another failure in the same line as Betamax, MiniDisc, UMD, MemoryStick, PlayStation 3, etc. I don't give Blu-ray more than 35 years either...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
"The sets were both dense and large."
I"M dense and large, you insensitive clod!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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
We bought an HD CRT tv a few years ago. 34" widescreen weighing in at 200 lbs. We're always tempted to get a wallmountable plasma or LCD, but we do watch some standard-def TV every once in awhile, and you're right, standard def TV is pretty much unwatchable on the panels (IMHO). And the CRT we have gives a better picture than the plasmas and LCDs...black is, well, black, no "effects". HD is wonderful and standard def is watchable.
But if you want to buy it from me, you'll need to hire your own crane.
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.