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Yeah, that wasn’t allowed. I had a portable at one point, and it got like two channels…
Does anyone want to talk about the price is right?
Yep that and massive bulky air conditioners the bane of my young back.
I had one of the first hdtvs. Well it was HDTV Ready I think it was marketed as. It was essentially just a 36in 800x600 crt monitor. Had to pair it with a special directv receiver. I think it was a RCA MM36110 and the damn thing weighed nearly 200 lbs. Needless to say I’m pretty sure I left in the house I sold because it was just too damn heavy. I have a 55inch TV that feels like a toy compared to it.
https://dn721608.ca.archive.org/0/items/manualsbase-id-145505/145505.pdf
My last two CRTs were 32 and 75 inches (that one was a beast and took up the whole room) I love lcds now
“You mean I get this 21” monitor for free if I can carry it down five flights to my car?! Thanks mister!” - Me as a child
80s kids: You can pick your TV up?!
I just bought RGB to VGA adapters for my consoles instead (and S-Video to VGA for the earlier 90s consoles that didn’t support RGB/VGA without a mod chip).
It was a lot easier to haul a 19" CRT monitor over a 25" CRT TV, due to not only being smaller, but having fewer circuitry as well since you don’t need a tuner. The image was a lot sharper too for obvious reasons.
<ADHD-induced tangent>
Speaking of which, some of my best memories as young adult involved bringing my XBOX over to my cousins’ house, borrowing my aunt’s monitor, and bringing it into the living room for some 6-player Halo action. All you needed was two consoles, two copies of the game, two screens, and an ethernet switch—or just a crossover cable if you were playing offline (since wifi on consoles wasn’t a thing yet). Four of us would play on the monitor, and the other two cousins would share the TV (cause again the monitor could put out a higher resolution than the TV, so it was better to have the most people on the monitor instead of splitting it 3v3).
It was a lot easier to coordinate and kick ass in online matches, when the team is all in the same room and can see each other’s screens. It was the best time of my life and I miss it dearly. I’ve never had that much fun in a video game since.
</tangent>
I found 3 crts in my attic when I moved into my house and almost died bringing them down the ladder
If it were me they’d still be there!
In 2000, at around the point when most well off people were transitioning to flat panel TVs, I inherited a large 32" CRT from a friend of mine. They were upgrading and wanted to get rid of their old CRT.
I said I’d take it and use it for my treadmill so I could watch TV while I walked.
The thing weighed 100lbs!!! I had to build a reinforced stand to lift it up in the air and I nearly killed myself hoisting it up and having it nearly fall on me multiple times! And the thing took up so much room … I think it occupied almost the same amount of floor space as the treadmill.
The dangerous thing about these things is that they were big and lopsided … it’s like lifting a huge kettle ball but all the weight of the ball is only on one side and the rest of it is empty air. It was really easy to just drop the thing because you lost balance with it. Or even worse, throw your back and some muscle because you were trying to save it from falling over while you held it.
I had a 32" and it had a flat screen meaning the glass wasn’t curved but it wasn’t thin. It was also higher res than 480p, it was a transitional model before flat screens rolled out. It weighed 160lbs! I was moving it carrying it by myself and had to rest it on my thighs for a few seconds. They were bruised for a week.
Flat CRTs were probably even heavier than curved ones because the glass has to be thicker to hold vacuum with a less structurally-efficient shape.
My dad an en excellent 24" Panasonic he got a few years agter he died. We moved it across the Midwest 6 times from 95-2010 until we finally replaced it with a 42" led after moving to Kansas City. So my brother and i got to take it downstairs and play Halo Reach and Black Ops on it. They might have been heavy and a bitch to move, but they were awesome TV’s that could take a beating.
That was the thing with these old heavy CRTs … they could take a beating … they could also give a beating.
but did you ever play 4-player Mariokart64 on a…
GoldenEye. No screen-lookin.
We used a splitter and covered half of each of the screens with paper.
Because I was so naive at the time I couldn’t figure out why my brother’s friend KD always knew where I was…
No Oddjob.
I still have a TV exactly like this I keep around for my NES. My N64 is always connected to my main TV.
I played 4 player Conker’s Bad Fur day on a TV slightly bigger.
It was the best multiplayer
I had one of the last Bravia cathode rays made. It was 38" and colossal. The move from one 3rd floor apartment to another 3rd floor apartment (no elevator in either case) convinced me to switch. I gave it away to an old buddy who thought I was exaggerating when I said bring 3 people.
Sony Trinitron. Heaviest fucking TV I’ve ever encountered.
I’m a 90s kid and I still am moving my CRT around like this
If you don’t yet own a sony trinitron, buy one while you can still afford it. These things are skyrocketing in value rn
They’re already hundreds and sell quickly on my local second hand markets =( I’ve given up
I found one of these last year for $150 cad. https://crtdatabase.com/crts/sony/sony-kv-24fs100
Don’t give up!!
I had a CRT in college (2008-ish) that looked pretty much identical to this. More than 32", maybe 36"? It was 720i and had component inputs, no HDMI. Lots of Smash Bros (N64) and Halo 3 was played on it. Good times.
Customer not understanding the difference between a triplex and a splitter.
Pretty sure splitters were allowed as long as they didn’t split into another home
Yeah, didn’t they usually not even allow for individual channel selection? I remember my grandparents having one for their basement TV. We had to watch whatever the adults were watching upstairs as kids.
Sounds like they split the signal after the cable box. The original Duplicate Screen.
Well yeah, otherwise you would have needed another box and who had money for that?
I mean I think people are talking about old school basic cable where your TV was the tuner, no cable box needed unless you wanted a guide and DVR
You’d need a separate cable box to watch something different in another room. All channels were sent down the same cable, and the set top box decoded the stream and tuned to the right channel.
I haven’t had cable in a decade, but I doubt that’s changed much.
Wow, that sucks.
It sucked at the time for sure, but thinking about this now gives me only happy feelings. Very nostalgic for a simpler time.
I’m pretty sure it’s still that way it is today if you don’t have multiple set top boxes.
Not where I was.
