What would they have been? 2 inches? Or even less?

I used to have a Sony Watchman (portable TV) with what must have been a 1.5" CRT. I've seen smaller but I forget in what.

...

Of course, viewfinders. They made some tiny ones for those, including color.

I worked with sub 1 inch magnetic deflection CRT's in the early 80's, as well as electrostatic deflection sub 1 inch tubes, which were rejected because of shock and vibration performance.

The images were injected into an optical viewfinder system for military equipment.

I have a camcorder with a viewfinder that's a CRT. I can actually play movies in the camcorder and watch them through the tiny CRT. Seems to be full NTSC res too which blows my mind.

The smallest ones I know of are the 1/2" round B&W tubes in the camcorder viewfinders. As far as TV sets; the Panasonic 1.5" in both B&W and color. A lot of mfrs made sets with 2" tubes. Philco used a 2" round tube in the Safari portable of '61.

Charles

I have a camcorder with a viewfinder that's a CRT. I can actually play movies in the camcorder and watch them through the tiny CRT. Seems to be full NTSC res too which blows my mind.


That's probably the Panasonic 1.5" color tube! Kinda rare. Came in high end RCA, Panasonic and Hitachi Camcorders in the mid 80s.

Charles

I remember seeing a website on someone's homemade wearable computer project. He used a B&W camcorder viewfinder CRT as the display and managed to resolve 640x480 on it.

I've often thought of picking up some of the many dead camcorders that pass through the junk auction to play around with those little CRTs, but I have too many unfinished projects as it is.

I do miss my little B&W Sony Watchman that was stolen from me years ago. I used to play Atari games on it sometimes just for the hell of it.

That's probably the Panasonic 1.5" color tube! Kinda rare. Came in high end RCA, Panasonic and Hitachi Camcorders in the mid 80s.

Charles

Likely, as my camcorder happens to be an RCA. Dunno when it was made, but it takes full size VHS tapes, runs on a 12 volt battery, and records in color... Actually no wait. The viewfinder is black and white...

It doesn't see much use as my digital camcorder is much smaller, records at a higher resolution, and I can directly manipulate and edit the video it shoots on my computer.

That's probably the Panasonic 1.5" color tube! Kinda rare. Came in high end RCA, Panasonic and Hitachi Camcorders in the mid 80s.

Charles
I have a fairly high-end Panasonic camcorder from the late 80s with a little 1.5" colour display - I didn't know that they were so rare!

I got it a couple of years ago for the price of a chocolate bar with a bag, tapes, RF adaptor, charger and leaky batteries. A quick re-cell soon sorted that, and I actually use the camcorder a lot.

Hi MunkeyQ,

Could you please tell us the model number of your panasonic camcorder

Are you sure it uses a CRT and not an LCD?

Thanks! in advance

Here is my "Snake TV" which i built in the early 90s from a JVC color LCD viewfinder. The processor box includes a PAL/SECAM decoder, H/V sync extraction, video clamping & DC offset adaptation to drive the LCD.

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

The world's smallest homebrew cathode ray tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgCqsNhanSo

- Eckhard

...

I got a 1EP2 "Heads-up display" CRT from Fair Radio Sales that was NOS from the '80s, I guess some sort of military over run..Little guy looked like the ass-end of a portable TV CRT, except it never "belled up" into 5, 9, or even 13"...I sent it to some guy on the R-390 line, I don't know what he was gonna do w/it, & he never e-mailed me back after he got it. Swine... Think I paid $5, maybe 10 bux for it, had NO use for it, just it was kewl...

Here are a couple of photos of the 1.5" CRT used in the National (Panasonic) TR 1010A. I've placed a ruler in the pics to give an idea of scale. I'm surprised by the size of the deflection coils. I guess they were enlarged to reduce the deflection current drain on the batteries.

These TV's are jam packed together and access to individual components is difficult without taking the entire electronics assembly from the case.