19" to 21" 4:3 flat-screen televisions?

Tegger wrote in news:XnsA1896C5C8A87Ftegger@208.90.168.18:

To clarify: I meant that size isn't an issue to the extent that 19" televisions are available everywhere; they're just all wide-screen, which is not acceptable to my mother..

Where are you located?

I have a 36" Sony WEGA flat-face CRT receiver I'd be willing to swap for a decent 40" LCD replacement.

Tegger formulerede spørgsmålet:

Take a big (cardbox) box, cut a hole in aspect ratio 4:3, paint it to look like the TV she bought in 1955 and put a modern TV inside.

Does she want to squash the picture together, miss the left and right part, or letterbox-format with bars at the top or bottom.

Or tell her to grow up and accept the fact that one cannot always get what one likes.

Leif

Per Tegger:

How about an analog TV with an add-on digital tuner?

I've got a Sharp Aquos sitting right next to me and a couple of digital tuners in the closet somewhere.

Philadelphia PA area... USA.

If you REALLY want this, just get a 4:3 monitor that has DVI input, and connect to a digital component tuner (some DVD recorders have such a tuner builtin, and there are some cable boxes that do this). I'm guessing you want an ATSC tuner (US broadcast), and will require a HDMI to DVI cable to wire it up. Audio is a separate issue, as is the programming of a suitable remote control.

Typically, you get to choose letterbox or cropped or scaled screen when this kind of lash-up is done. Customer choice...

You didn't say what country you were in, but Goodwill, Salvation Army stores, pawn shops all have a BUNCH of used TVs for sale cheap.

Thrift stores currently have a wide selection of 4:3 CRT televisions at low prices. Usually there is not a guarantee, but there is usually an outlet near the TV shelf, and they don't care if you plug it in to see if it works. Most of them will not have digital tuners, so you may want to bring your own signal source to check the picture - an add-on digital tuner, a DVD and a DVD player (or use one of the DVD players the store probably has), etc. Some problems a CRT TV can have won't show up until it warms up a little, so if it initally looks good, run it for 15 or 20 minutes or so.

Otherwise, I vote for the "4:3 computer monitor and tuner box" that has been suggested. newegg.com offers a variety of 19" monitors starting at $105. They also have a TV tuner that will probably talk to most of them, Kworld SA295-Q, for $110. Your mom will have to use the remote; there are no up/down/volume buttons on the tuner box.

Standard disclaimers apply; I don't get money or other consideration from any companies mentioned.

Matt Roberds

Yes, plus maybe better yet, Freecycle.org has frequent such tv's that people want to give away, and usually they work fine. It's just that they bought a newer tv. Freecycle takes occasional requests too, so that someone who is thinking about getting rid of something, esepcially to someone who actually wants it, will sometimes reply with just what the person wants.

In and around Baltimore, there are now a half-dozen groups of Freecycle. I'm subscribed to 4, but 90% of the activity takes place in one of them that has half the membership of two of the others. I don't get it. We're not talking about the whole population but only those who joined Freecycle.

BTW, do you mean flat screen or thin screen? Late model CRTs were almost all flat screen, but they stilll had a deep cathode ray tube behind them, 16" more or less. Thin screen means LED or LCD or plasma or something, just a couple inches thick. I have a computer monitor, found it out front of my house in a neighbor's trash waiting for the garbage man, that has the aspect ratio you want, 14" screen, and they must have made tvs like that too, so if that's what you want, you have to say "thin screen".