After discovering how heavy the Rank Arena screen was, I've been looking around. Were all CRT widescreens so heavy they required two people to lift them?
Indeed, were they all so big? What were people living in ordinary sized homes meant to use?
Sylvia.
Well, I guess it depends on how strong you are! ;-) But, yes, widescreens tended to be bigger screens and glass is heavy! I had a 27" that weighed close to 100 pounds. But, my 22" CRT monitor weighed 75 so this seemed about right.
I think it sort of comes with the territory. E.g., imagine a *small* PROJECTION TV (???) Doesn't really fit the "Projection TV Market".
I suppose, though projection is/was a technology to allow big screens. Making a small one would just be silly.
Whereas wide screens are about image geometry.
Still, you could be right in practice. The early technology adopters (and in Australia, at least, widescreen CRT TVs they came long before
16:9 TV broadcasts) wouldn't be into buying something small, even if what they were buying was too big for where they intended to put it.Shame though, 'cos it means there are no small widescreen TVs being sold by people who upgrade for no better reason than that they can.
Sylvia.
Yes. Though how small is small? :-/
Exactly. Just as folks buying projection TV were looking to "make a statement" (bigger is better).
I suspect there are also manufacturing economies that come into play. I.e., it may be cheaper to build a 24" 4:3 screen than a 24" 16:9 screen!
I see we have similar motivations! ;-)
I think if you are looking for that image shape, you will end up having to chase down a "small-ish" LCD or plasma display when folks migrate to larger ones (or OLEDs).
Well, if you wanted to replace a 4:3 set with a widescreen one before widescreen became common you'd likely want the same size 4:3 picture on the widescreen as you had before. Which makes the widescreen one much larger and heavier.
That's assuming you want a 4:3 picture displayed in the correct aspect ratio. Which many don't seem to care about.
4:3 is 12:9, so a 16:9 is only 33% wider. However, I suspect that the tube is a lot more than 33% heavier.
People are strange like that. Some (including my now later father) tolerated bad pictures from indoor antennae, even when they could easily have had an outdoor antenna installed.
Presumably a similar effect was responsible for them being happy with overly large screens with visible scan lines.
Sylvia.
Its not just about width but flatness as well, vacuum and flatness are incompatible. If you didn't mind a spherical screen and no chance of kids/drunks throwing toys etc at the screen then they could be much thinner glass and so much lighter.
-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
I appreciate that the extra width means that they have to be flatter, other things being equal. Still, making them bigger (higher) as well just exacerbates that. Smaller widescreens should be possible at managable weights. Indeed, I subsequently found reference to a 56cm (22") Hitachi widescreen that weighs just 22kg. So there were some smaller ones.
Of course, they're depressingly easy to relegate to a child's/guest room or give to a relative, on upgrade rather than selling on the second-hand market.
Sylvia.
As soon as you go away from round the glassware becomes increasingly heavy.
In the UK, the signal strength simply isn't high enough for indoor aerials to work for most.
Luckily interpolation was 'discovered' at about the same time.
My 32inch Sony KV32FX60 weighs 65kg / 143 pounds
A television sensibly sized to the dimensions of the room. Weight is not an issue - people weigh more, and houses generally don't have a problem with that.
Dividing the distance of the screen from the boot of the viewer by seven, ye get the minimun required height of the screen. A unit of this size doesn't look too out of place as an item of furniture.
Meanwhile, some televisions have evolved from an item of domestic furniture to the equivalent of wallpaper. And programming, likewise.
Per Sylvia Else:
Dunno about "all", but we've still got a 27" CRT TV in the kitchen that's going to need professional intervention to remove it if it ever dies. I think it took three of us to get into the house, unpacked, and positioned where it's been for the last 15 or so years.
As others have pointed out, as you increase the size of a CRT it gets heavier.
The other factor is optimal viewing distance. Get too close to a standard definition TV and all you see are scan lines. With a high definition TV you can sit significantly closer without seeing scan lines. The other factor is the height of the image. I have a 32" SD CRT TV. To keep the same height of image requires a 40" HD TV. I seriously doubt anyone is going to be making a 40" CRT that would require anything less than 4 people to move.
PlainBill
My Phillips sure as hell is! Most of the weight is in the CRT, so it's hellishly front-heavy, which makes it a bugger to carry. I'd guess that it's twice as heavy as my 10 YO, 28" Panasonic.
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