My local Best Buy went into a major restoration at the TV department area, buying new wall-mounts for all the flat-panel TVs. The CRTs are being put aside with most of them being marked "clearance/closeout" on the boxes. I asked the sales associate why the restoration and the clearance signs marked on most of the CRT TV boxes, and she said that they are eliminating all the CRT TVs on the shelves by the end of this year (December), and beginning in January 2007, all Best Buy stores nationwide will not carry CRT TVs. It is stated by the policy. She said that CRT is an obsolete technology and nobody is buying them.

Because of what she said, I can say that this is officially the last year you can buy CRT TVs. It's sad...

Be prepare to see many unwanted CRT TVs winding up in dumpsters in the next few years.

That is indeed sad, since I have yet to see ANY non-CRT set with any kind of decent picture. The buying public is evidently the biggest bunch of pushovers and fools.

Charles

I'm not surprised at all a by that.
I work for Costco and we too only have a small selection of CRT sets, mainly ones with DVD/VCRs mixed in. They're right; it is an obsolete technology as far as the "new" consumer is concerned. Similarily, Costco doesn't sell any stand alone VCRs, prerecorded VHS tapes, or film cameras, and very limited amounts of film.
It's all about market forces, especially at Costco which only sells fast moving items and has limited product depth by design.
We don't sell stereo components or vacuum tubes either. :lmao:

The DLP sets seem to have the best picture in my opinion of the new non-crt sets...however on all of them seem to have artifacts that make motion look jerky and especially the LCD's don't seem to look as good.
Even the cheap CRT sets seem to look better to me than the LCD's.

Speaking of film, I wonder how long it is before 1-hour photo labs in places like the grocery store become obsolete? I have not seen anyone use a film camera (except for disposables) in years.

In just a few years our old sets will be the only way to see a decent picture...wow. Maybe someone will reintroduce new crt models once people have forgotten how old fashioned they are. Sorta like turntables?

My wife still uses a film camera; I offered to save up and get her a digital but she likes what she has now. I suspect I would have a devil of a time finding a replacement film camera for her these days.

I agree, of course, with the CRT picture quality argument...

But this is one of the last places I expected to be reminded of my days working in the Video department at Best Buy. Thanks a bunch. ;)

That is indeed sad, since I have yet to see ANY non-CRT set with any kind of decent picture. The buying public is evidently the biggest bunch of pushovers and fools.

CharlesHave you looked at ANY??? And I don't consider myself a pushover or fool by any means. There are some very nice looking plasma, LCD, and DLP sets if you go into a BestBuy and look around. Part of the problem is size. If you can show me a 45" widescreen CRT HDTV that will display a progressive image and look anywhere near as good as my Sharp 45" 1080P LCD I'll buy it.

Have you looked at ANY??? And I don't consider myself a pushover or fool by any means. There are some very nice looking plasma, LCD, and DLP sets if you go into a BestBuy and look around. Part of the problem is size. If you can show me a 45" widescreen CRT HDTV that will display a progressive image and look anywhere near as good as my Sharp 45" 1080P LCD I'll buy it.

With all due respect, YES... I have owned several of them, and never found any that could match a CRT. The only thing close would be the DLP projection sets. The last non-CRT set I brought home was a Panasonic plasma 1080p from Costco. I hooked it up to our digital HD cable, and it was poor on the non-HD signal and marginally OK on digital HD. But no matter what I did, it still had that pasty VHS tape appearance to the picture. And as Chad says, when a baseball shoots across the screen, it moves in a Dit-Dit-Dit pattern and not a smooth motion. And ANOTHER gripe: has anyone noticed the power that the LCD and PARTICULARLY the plasma sets suck up??!! It's unbelievable. More than a CT-100 with leaky filters!!!!! And in the summer, you better put the plasma or LCD outside the house facing in through the window... The heat belching out is more than a furnace. Ok, that's enough testimony, I suppose :thmbsp:

I like new gadgets, and I truly do not have a prejudice against new TV technology. The thing that kills it for me is true life experience. The same is the case with all these people with their hybrid cars. Nice toy, nice gadget. But my 1984 Camry turbo-Diesel that I paid $400 for is roomier, faster, and gets better mileage (58 hwy per sticker, and I get 65 hwy with my style of driving). So I am not going to buy a hybrid car, nor a non-CRT TV any time soon. But if & when they become superior to what I now have, I will reconsider :music: !

Charles

Man, I'm gettin' old

From what I have seen both Plasma and LCD displays look awful when fed anything other than a digital signal at their native resolution. When fed the right signal they can look good from the right distance, but not noticably better to me than a good CRT fed by analog RGB video especially at the kind of distance I usually watch from.

Admittedly I've only seen the lowend models on display at various discount stores (Right now even if I saw one that I liked I couldn't afford it so I haven't been looking).

I watch and play too much old stuff to put up with a poor picture when using the majority of my gear that only outputs analog video.

At the distance I usually watch from I can see the screen door effect around the individual pixels. That said, I've always sat closer to the TV/monitor than most people
I know and I've been doing it for so long that a 21" at arms length or a 27" at 3 to 4 feet is normal to me. A film projected on a cinema screen looks fuzzy and just "wrong" to me.

I just assume that other people literally see things differently to me as I can't accept that everyone buying Plasma and LCD sets is putting up with an inferior picture for the
sake of having something shiny and new.

I take it this means that to further the sale of flat screen technology, parts for late model CRT sets will be in short supply. I bet when my 2005 Samsung 27" CRT HD set needs service I will have a hard time finding chips, flyback and other proprietary parts. I don't like projection sets. I've never seen one I thought had a picture worthy of the price tag. Plasma looks great but has longevity issues. LCD seem to me to be the best compromise between price, reliability and performance. I looked at LCD sets just yesterday at Wal-Mart (just curiosity, no plan on buying) and the trouble spot for me is the seemingly flimsy stands to which they are mounted. One wrong move and it looks like it could tip over. I'm not big on wall mounting. I like to move my sets around sometimes. With two small children, that is a recipe for disaster.

There is nothing else for it. i will just have to restore my Zenith roundie and get a digital converter set top box.

That is indeed sad, since I have yet to see ANY non-CRT set with any kind of decent picture. The buying public is evidently the biggest bunch of pushovers and fools.

Charles

I know. I've seen an HDTV LCD TV at Radio Shack and the picture was the worst I've ever seen! My 1982 Zenith could run rings around that thing. Best Buy to me, I don't know how anyone else here perceives it, but it seems like it caters to the under 30 crowd who wants the latest things. I dunno, maybe me turning 40 this year might have a small part in that, but overall, I feel like an old geezer when I walk in there. :)

BTW, last year our stove went and we needed a new one. Best Buy, like most other stores, do have discounts on stuff that is slightely cosmetically damaged. We looked at such a stove there and decided to look at Lowes; instead and we got a new stove with no defects for a price that was less than at Best Buy.

Chuck

DE KA3WRW

The DLP sets seem to have the best picture in my opinion of the new non-crt sets...however on all of them seem to have artifacts that make motion look jerky and especially the LCD's don't seem to look as good.
Even the cheap CRT sets seem to look better to me than the LCD's.

Speaking of film, I wonder how long it is before 1-hour photo labs in places like the grocery store become obsolete? I have not seen anyone use a film camera (except for disposables) in years.

Well, I worked at a photo lab at a drugstore from Sept 2004 to July 2005 and there are still quite a few people who use 35mm, at least here in the Pittsburgh area. I had my huge share of disposables as well and of course we took care of digital customers. I think 35mm will be around for some time although films like 126 has been discontinued but I think 110 is still around.

Chuck

DE KA3WRW

I think I mentioned earlier about the time I was at a sports bar that put up a bunch of plasma-screen sets. I had just stopped staring at how bad the picture was (oversaturated reds, pixelated, VCR-quality sharpness) when a guy walks up with his buddy and says "Man, what a nice picture on that TV!" :withstpd: Then again, just about everybody I know is happy watching a totally screwed-up picture.

On an individual level, I could care less since I have a few good CRT sets to watch. BUT my other gripe (as stated before) is this stupid 16:9 aspect ratio! This has got to be something pushed by the lazy cameramen's association, or something!

In real life, do you scan back an forth across "the action"? Or do you focus in on movement at the center? And other than OLD epic movies like Ben Hur, which was made especially for a widescreen, when is this widescreen ratio optimum?

When Micheal shoots the Turk and the crooked cop in the Godfather, am I looking at a man standing with a gun, (lending itself to a "taller" ratio) or looking to see what some guy in the background is eating? When some politician is giving speech, am I watching his/her face to see the nose grow, or should I watch the secret-service guy 10-feet off the podium pick his nose?

Most anything that is televised/filmed, with the exception of 10,000 Roman soldiers running down a mountain, lends itself to a nearly square aspect ratio. Now anytime somebody speaks, stands, drives a car, etc. the camera is going to have to pull back an asinine distance to frame the shot, and include a bunch of stupid stuff in the background.

Yes Carmine I agree with you. The widescreen formats were a novelty thought up in the 50's to try and give theatres an edge over TV...and it does give certain movies extra realism...but especially for TV shows shot indoors I think it's silly. And...too often people have the 4:3 picture stretched out to fill the 16:9 image.

I dunno, maybe me turning 40 this year might have a small part in that, but overall, I feel like an old geezer when I walk in there. :)

Join the club :sigh: ... It's coming for me in March. Once in awhile, I will take one of those Realistic Lifetime gold-pinned tubes into the Radio Shack to see what the 17-year-old Iranian salesboy will say when I ask for him to replace it, and if he doesn't believe it's bad, please test it on the Micronta Tube Tester... :D

Charles

BUT my other gripe (as stated before) is this stupid 16:9 aspect ratio!

Yeah, I gotta agree with that. I was just thinking about this the other day as a matter of fact, and wondering if I was the only person who actually prefers the 4:3 aspect ratio for TV displays... Even computer monitors are going "widescreen" these days, which seems all the more puzzling to me (though I can understand some advantages to a wide-aspect display on a small laptop where you want to shave off some depth from the casing size)

Once analog NTSC goes off the air, I wonder if the TV manufacturers will even still offer sets with a 4:3 aspect ratio...

Plasma and LCD have yet to impress me on picture quality. I think everyone is so hyped up on the idea that it is "FLAT" rather than actually looking/comparing the picture to a crt. Clearly the crt's will win. The only plasma that I've ever seen that was outstanding was a screen made by HP. I saw it at CEDIA last year and what made the biggest difference was the processing speed. No jerky movements with color and clarity that I've yet to see on any screen. But most average consumers have no idea what they are looking at anyway.

Plasma and LCD have yet to impress me on picture quality. I think everyone is so hyped up on the idea that it is "FLAT" rather than actually looking/comparing the picture to a crt. Clearly the crt's will win. The only plasma that I've ever seen that was outstanding was a screen made by HP. I saw it at CEDIA last year and what made the biggest difference was the processing speed. No jerky movements with color and clarity that I've yet to see on any screen. But most average consumers have no idea what they are looking at anyway.

I agree that nothing beats a properly adjusted good quality CRT, but that's far from what most people have. The way most people use their TVs, Plasma, LCD, and DLP often actually have a better picture. When you have the contrast at maximum and the color way too high, CRTs tend to bloom and defocus. At least other display technologies don't suffer from that. They can deliver the eye scorching brightness people demand better than most CRTs.

Here's a question for the group....my 1992 Panasonic 20" just bit the dust -- short in the CRT, making an out-of-control brightness in the picture. Looks like overexposed, purple film stock or something. What would you buy as the replacement? Given that the 20" CRT set is going the way of the do-do, time is apparently limited for finding one. I'm not yet on the flat-panel crowd, as with the rest of the board. Any suggestions before I start the hunt?

Thanks!
HA1156w in TX

Two words. Used Sony. OK four. Check flee bay.

Hmmm....from what I've read in other threads, I thought Sony had poor picture tube life, especially in the 26" sets. Is there a particular cutoff date that I need to keep in mind?

Thanks!

Hmmm....from what I've read in other threads, I thought Sony had poor picture tube life, especially in the 26" sets. Is there a particular cutoff date that I need to keep in mind?

Thanks!

Sony CRTs have never been outstanding as far as life is concerned. They stopped making the 26" sets about 20 years ago, so there's not too much to worry about unless you're looking for something that old.

I wouldn't seek out an old Sony unless you have the time to find one with a good CRT. 80's Sonys were great when new, but they usually looked tired after 10-15 years of hard use.

For a 90's TV, a Sony would be an excellent choice.

Just use your eyes and don't buy it unless it has a good picture. The usually symptoms of a bad CRT are poor gray scale, poor focus, poor contrast, and the picture flashing on and off.

And adding to the tips from Andy, which I agree with, you should perform the cold start test on any Sony, new or old. With the TV totally cold (been off at least a few hours, and preferably unplugged, turn it on and watch carefully how the picture first comes on. It should pop on within 5 or 6 seconds, and fade into full brightness and good focus very quickly. If it kind of gradually sharpens from a blurry, off-color picture over a period of a minute or 2, the CRT is about shot. And as Andy pointed out, a LONG delay in "popping on" after you already hear audio, and/or the picture flashing black & back on will indicate a very weak CRT on some Sony sets, including the XBR sets of the 90s.

Charles

For a 90's TV, a Sony would be an excellent choice.

Not so sure about that, if the pro models are any indication. We've got some pro-model Sonies at work that can't be 5 years old yet and they've already lost guns. Blue and red go first. Granted, they're on 24/7, but so are our Belgian-made Barcos, which still look terrific.

And I saw a mid-'90s 20" Trinitron at a thrift recently with a weak blue gun. I can't think it was a fluke.

[1] Let's see... YUPPY CAR PRIUS: Fossil fuel => reciprocating engine => electric generator => battery => electric motor => wheels.

How stupid is that? How can that chain be efficient? Is there creative engineering there somewhere!?

MY CAR YARIS: Fossil fuel => reciprocating engine => wheels.

Hmmm.
:scratch2:
It costs less, has to be more reliable, is more powerful, weighs less, and averages 39 mpg.

Hmmm.
:scratch2:
What would the mileage be for one of those pipsqueak hybrid vehicles if it used its reciprocating engine without all that other junk to drive the wheels directly...?

[2] My first sight of a plasma TV was in an up-scale store. Breathtaking. The price tag? My first house cost only $2000 more, and it was on a lagoon.

Then I moved in closer and saw all those little plasma pixels. I don't know how they spec 'em (and quite frankly, I don't care) but any standard dot-pitch technique has to be embarrassing. They're not small, they were huge.

Plasma sets have perfect convergence; from there on, its downhill, IMO.

[3] CRTs: They're certainly through as a consumer product. The old RCA Lancaster CRT plant where the 15GP22's were made closed this year for a reason.

Hmmm. :scratch2: Talk about poor 15GP22 reliability. I Wonder if some fifteen-year-old today will be able to find a working 2006 plasma in fifty years.

[4] CRTs: I think HD helped -- it didn't cause it of course, but it is a factor in the downturn of the CRT. You've probably seen pictures of my 38-in. wide-screen CRT set. It weighs in officially at 216 pounds, and that doesn't count the base and all the HT gear in there. Thank goodness it's on hardwood flooring and the rug rolls back so I can slide it out.

[5] I'm with you Chad. If I had to buy a new set it would be a DLP. Especially now that they've broken the 720p barrier.

[6] and finally, wide-screen formats: A hi-def ATSC image can be, and usually is, highly pleasing when in its 16X9 (1:77 or so) aspect ratio. Can't appreciate a DVD though in 2:35 or whatever ratio. FILL UP MY SCREEN for goodness sake! It's what I paid for! And I'm not cool with having you burn in my CRT with your half-assed odd-ball aspect ratios from a movie house release.

Pete

kx250rider brought up a very valid point regarding the latest TV technology effectively being shoved down our throats: excessive power consumption. The proliferation of plasma and LCD sets have significantly contributed to a 4-6% increase in electricity demand...an increase not attributable to national economic growth. Toss in the vexing problem of maintaining efficient power factor caused by millions of computers left on 24/7, as well as the fact that the US power grid is right "on the bubble", and we're mixing up a recipe for electrical disaster. Rolling nationwide brownouts/blackouts, anyone?

I have yet to see ANY non-CRT set with any kind of decent picture.

Charles

That is exactly why I intend to hold on to my two 19" CRT sets, as long as they work as well as they do now. (Both sets have excellent, razor-sharp pictures, despite being seven and 11 years old respectively.) I already have digital cable, so when the FCC outlaws analog telecasting, all I'll have to do is call the cable company and have them install a new ATSC cable converter. I'm willing to tolerate the blank spaces above and below the picture, as long as I can get the same cable channels I'm getting at this time. Who knows, maybe by then the technology will have advanced to the point where cable operators will have SDTV cable boxes, for people such as myself who still own and use analog sets. There are already SDTVs available (from RCA/Thomson), so I don't see why Motorola, the major cable box manufacturer, couldn't make a SDTV converter box, which, after all, is just a TV set without the video/audio circuitry and CRT.

The FCC forced digital TV on us, pure and simple--just made an arbitrary decision to shut off all analog TV, first by 2006, now the cutoff date is some time in February 2009. Most people I know don't care about that anyway; in fact, I don't think many people outside electronics are even aware of the cutoff date or even know the difference between digital and analog. They will probably find out what's going on when they turn on their analog TVs with antennas/rabbit ears, and find out they cannot get the stations anymore they had been getting for years. I do not think this is a nightmare scenario or something being blown out of proportion; I think it could and probably will happen in a great many cases when the analog TV stations go off the air for good in 2.5 years or so. Remember, there are still literally millions of analog televisions in use in this country today, some of which are relatively new and a great many of which are still usable even though they have a few years on them.

Everyone is going to discard their analog TVs en masse in 2.5 years and go out to get new flat-panel HDTVs as soon as the analog stations gasp their last breath? Nope, it won't happen--unless the sets are ready for the landfill anyway. As the old (?) CRT sets go bad from defective CRTs, flybacks, etc. and are put out for the trash, they will of necessity be replaced by FPs as more and more stores discontinue CRT sets, but as long as the existing sets are still out there and still being used, there will be a market for standalone ATSC set-top tuners and cable boxes. There is no reason why any analog TV in use in this country today cannot or will not work with digital signals; just use an outboard set-top ATSC tuner to replace the set's own tuner. The TVs video/sweep circuits don't care what type of signal the signal chain presents to them; they will work just as well with digital as with the present NTSC system. The only difference will be the 16:9 aspect ratio which, simply put, means that a TV picture transmitted in HD will not fill a standard TV screen vertically. I see this more and more on the networks (broadcast and cable) as we get closer to "HD-Day." The small window which pops up in the lower left corner of the screen proclaiming "Presented in NBC HD" (as well as similar notices on ABC, CBS, PBS and cable), etc. at the beginning of prime-time programming is a constant reminder to everyone in this country that NTSC's days are numbered, regardless of whether the viewers know anything about the changeover (or, for that matter, what "NTSC" means) or not. Even the NBC television station in Cleveland (channel 3) proclaims in huge letters before its newscasts that the latter are being presented in HD; the station recently moved to a new studio/office building and retooled their entire operation so that everything broadcast over that station, network as well as local, is transmitted in 16:9 high-definition. The other network stations in town (5, 8, 19, 23, 25, 43, 61) aren't making that much noise about HD, but I think they are retooling their operations for the new technology nevertheless. By February 2009 they will have to be transmitting in HD digital anyway, so they won't have a choice; it will be digital or nothing.

Some smaller TV stations, mainly independent UHF operations in smaller markets, faced with the forced conversion to HD, have gone off the air permanently in the last few years, claiming the conversion would be far too expensive; if I were a betting man, which I'm not, I'd bet those stations aren't doing all that well financially as NTSC analog operations. I think such stations may be just breaking even as it is. The conversion to HD would bankrupt them in days or weeks if not sooner, IMHO, especially if they are operating on a shoestring advertising budget.

Great. I have a 36" CRT that weighs about like a Volkswagon, and it's a little too large and obtrusive for my livingroom. I've been wanting to get rid of it and drop down to a 32", but I wonder if I'll get any takers now. Maybe I'll find a perfectly good 32" at the same landfill I take my current set. :sigh: I wonder what those broadcast adapters will cost?

There have been times I've been impressed with the picture quality of HDTV, other times I have been really disappointed in it. I never noticed the motion issues until recently, which I seem to see on at least a few of the more expensive sets now. That's the only problem I've noticed on the more expensive ones, but it's a glaring one once you're conscious of it. I'll have to see more higher-end sets to make a final judgement, but so far I'm not that impressed.

That is exactly why I intend to hold on to my two 19" CRT sets, as long as they work as well as they do now. (Both sets have excellent, razor-sharp pictures, despite being seven and 11 years old respectively.) I already have digital cable, so when the FCC outlaws analog telecasting, all I'll have to do is call the cable company and have them install a new ATSC cable converter.

You may not even have to do that. Nothing will prevent cable companies from continuing to use NTSC for as long as they want. They can simply convert ATSC local channels to NTSC at the head end. I think we will see more and more channels move to digital cable, but I doubt analog cable will disappear completely for quite some time. ATSC will never be used on cable systems because it's much less efficient than other modulation systems such as QAM.

Andy is correct in cable land it's a QAM world today. We already take broadcaster's 8VSB send it out on 256 QAM channels for the channels we offer in HD. I don't see cable ever using anything with a lower payload such as the current over the air standard.