Best Buy's final year selling CRT TVs in stores...
 

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. ;)

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.

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

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.