I said to myself i’ll never have a tv
Our TV was from the early '70s and when you turned it on if you weren’t at least 10 ft back the hair would stand up on your arms. I’m sure that thing was definitely giving you a suntan.
Let’s not pretend that crts ware better than modern TVs. The picture was shit, the ratio was 4:3 and they had the size and weight of a small car. I can deal with a little upgrade once in a while. And that’s not even true as I haven’t seen a TV that needs upgrades yet.
To be honest, I prefer 4:3. I like how square-ish it felt. /srs
Can’t believe my mother sold ours for a dollar 😭🙏
i love crt i just dont have space anymore :( i do have a few just nowhere to put it yet
They’re not really radioactive, they emit some X Ray that is absorbed by the lead window that is in front, making them harmless.
must be the LG TV debacle, they are selling AI tvs now too.
I think that’s some major rose-colored-glasses thinking. They did break. A child with a magnet could also cause issues, at least on older ones (I say having been said child).
I had some unshielded noise speakers that would change the color when swiped across the screen in one direction. And cleared it when swiped the other direction. Fun times!
Circa late 1980s I remember our dad brought home a degauser from work, hey anyone remember what a degauser is? It was a magnetic box (VERY STRONG MAGNETS) with a tunnel to slide a cassette tape through, to erase the cassette tape. Well I don’t remember which of us family members decided its storage place should be on top of the TV but what a fun science lesson that turned out to be 😄 If you moved the magnet around the TV in all different places, the distortion on the screen would follow wherever the magnet was, and IIRC the screen distortion wasn’t permanent. The screen went back to normal when you removed the magnet from the vicinity.
IIRC It messes with the beam guides. I’m not sure if there are cases/designs in which it would cause permanent damage in color TVs, but I seem to think I managed to permanently tint our older one green somehow.
“if you go reaching inside me I might just decide to kill you” -CRT
“I accumulated a little bit of dust in me so I decided to start a fire” - my CRT 1996
i finally got mine out of storage and set up
it turned on 3 times and the kids got to see the static. they got to hear the super high pitched wine
but now it doesn’t respond to anything 😭😭
I’ll try to get it fixed one day 😓
While it may not be related I have a CRT monitor that did something kinda similar and which I think I know what it is so I’ll give a suggestion. It may legit just be one of the internal boards or whatever equivalent that controls power and may just need to be resoddered or otherwise replaced.
i hope so!
The only thing that modern TVs beat CRTs on is weight.
I’d rather have my 200lbs behemoth CRT back, than to have a smart TV thats just gonna die in 3 to 5 years, just like the last one, and the one before it.
This is just stupid. Size, weight, picture ratio, picture quality, sound quality, compatibility, functionality. A modern TV is better at literally everything. Don’t just blindly agree with something just because it’s on a meme.
Size is also one. Modern tv can scale the length and height up without scaling much of the width. Dumb TV also doesn’t need internet to update. Pretty sure smart tv doesn’t need update as well. It’s not that CRT is the best, we just forgot how to make a good LCD tv.
I’m sure manufacturers remember pretty well too, they just don’t want to.
I will, however, kill a houseplant placed atop me.
Projector is the best non-smart TV in 2026, the name brand projectors (ViewSonic, BenQ, Phillips, Optoma, Epson) are often either non-smart or just come with a streaming stick you don’t have to use.
And how would You use one during the day?
Just in case anybody is stupid enough to believe this, there was nothing radioactive in old CRT-based TVs. And they sometimes had black cases but weren’t a “black box”.
They worked by bending a beam of electrons that hit phosphors in the screen, which is cool enough that saying stupid BS about “radioactive” is unnecessary.
beam of electrons
Let’s say it cooler: they were particle accelerators you pointed at your face.
Also, massive glass vacuum bottles that could implode if mishandled.
And with massive capacitors that could electrocute you if mishandled.
And heavy enough to seriously crush your foot (and possibly implode and electrocute you) if mishandled.
And the static electricity felt really neat on the back of your hand if you put it close to the screen.
They were so fucking cool, and we took them for granted, and now they’re gone, and life is significantly less cool without them.
And heavy enough to seriously crush your foot (and possibly implode and electrocute you) if mishandled.
Sometimes. Other times they were little portable things.
But by fuck was their capacity to put out a clear image mid. But their screen size on the other hand …extremely limited
Someone not knowing there’s a difference between “radiation” and “radioactivity” doesn’t make them stupid.
No, just ignorant. Very ignorant.
CRTs can emit X-Rays, but they are properly shielded so they never leave the tube.
The X-Ray scare mostly came from a line of GE TV’s in 1968 that had improper shielding and had to be recalled.
Radioactivity and X-Rays are tangentially related, but they’re not at all the same thing.
One is from a decaying material and the other is from controlled electron beam, but they are both radiation emitters. People are just more familiar with the term radioactive and think it is the catch-all term for a source of radiation.
The electron gun in a tv and in an xray machine are pretty similar and without shielding, you will still get hit with radiation even if it isn’t strictly radioactive, but rather another type of radiation emitter.
One is from a decaying material
Specifically radioactive decay.
the other is from controlled electron beam
So, not radioactivity.
Radiation is a really vague term. It’s just energy moving in the form of waves or particles. Sunlight is radiation. Radio waves are radiation. Microwaves are radiation. Wifi is radiation.
Radiation can be dangerous in a few ways. Something can be very bright and blind you, or it can cause you to heat up too much. X-rays are an example of ionizing radiation, that’s dangerous because it can break apart molecular bonds, causing damage to cells. That’s why you can get skin cancer from ultraviolet radiation. X-rays are a shorter wavelength than ultraviolet light, so there’s more potential cellular damage per photon.
But, radioactivity is dangerous not just because of X-rays, but primarily because of alpha and beta particles, and because of even higher energy particles like gamma particles / rays.
So, just because there’s one type of ionizing radiation that can come from a CRT-TV that is also peripherally associated with radioactive decay doesn’t mean that there’s any connection between a TV and radioactivity.
That would be like saying that an atomic bomb causes a huge explosion, and a fertilizer bomb also causes a huge explosion, so a fertilizer bomb is a nuke.
This isn’t me arguing against you because I know very little about the difference. But when I started reading I thought this was a Unidan copypasta 😂
they did emit x rays but most of them was blocked by the leaded glass
Barium glass.
Leaded glass was only used for the rear of the tube (or amber monochrome displays), the front glass was barium infused for colour CRTs.
Radioactivity and X-Rays are tangentially related, but they’re not at all the same thing.
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I like this comment except for the fact it seems needlessly hostile
In case anyone is a fan of CRTs near Columbus OH, I highly recommend the Early Televison Museum https://www.earlytelevision.org/
If you are in akron Ohio, the bomb shelter has an antique TV room. And a Delorean for some reason.
The some reason is probably just that they have a Delorean and want to show it off. Damned near every museum I’ve been to has had at least one random shit exhibit, the natural history museum in my county has a whole ass exhibit dedicated to mining within the county because they just kinda started to acquire old mining equipment at some point.
The y also have a yugo and an early minivan. It’s a weird fucking shop and it’s great.
Oh shit, I wish I knew about that when I lived in Ohio
