Author Topic: CRTs still being made?  (Read 18808 times)

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Offline AutogolazzoJrTopic starter

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CRTs still being made?
« on: December 03, 2017, 05:53:00 pm »
http://www.alibaba.com/products/F0/crt_tv/CID634--CN----------------------------351-687.html?spm=a2700.7724838.52.1.lBimKx
Seems as if there are a lot of crts still being produced for third world countries.
The housings seem as if they are made new, but I'm not sure if the tubes are made new or salvaged from old tvs. It seems as if there might be a tube factory in Guangzhou, China. Any info on this?
 

Offline buck converter

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Just me and my scope.
 

Offline AutogolazzoJrTopic starter

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2017, 06:10:35 pm »
I am assuming instek scopes are made with NOS crts.   :(
 

Offline Cyberdragon

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2017, 01:39:30 am »
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Online coppice

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #4 on: December 04, 2017, 01:55:16 am »
The last time I checked there was still CRT based colour TV production both in China and India. I think most of the China production is for export. I can't imagine anyone investing in new plant, but while existing plant can still churn out tubes, and all the other components, they can make CRT TVs which undercut even the cheapest LCD ones.

As for oscilloscope tubes, if people like Instek have a market for analogue scopes, getting tubes for them shouldn't be an issue. They were never produced in millions, like TV tubes, and they are far simpler to manufacture. There should still be places capable of making the modest quantities required, just making a batch every now and then.
 

Offline AutogolazzoJrTopic starter

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #5 on: December 04, 2017, 03:43:44 am »
Interesting. I would love to get my hands on some of those crts, they are flat and some state they are 720p and 1080p (though I guess they are terrible and might be lying about resolution).
 

Offline Cyberdragon

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #6 on: December 04, 2017, 06:28:09 am »
1080p CRTs are real, although they could still be lying, it's China.
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Offline stj

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #7 on: December 04, 2017, 11:26:56 am »
there is no reason the crt couldnt do 1080 - forget the "p" reference.
they are probably developed originally as pc monitor tubes.
 
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Offline Vtile

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #8 on: December 04, 2017, 03:12:12 pm »
Interesting information, but the last factory will have monopoly.  :)
 

Offline Ampera

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #9 on: December 05, 2017, 11:10:55 am »
1080p CRTs are real, although they could still be lying, it's China.

No need to doubt. It's 100% not 1080p. It says PAL and SECAM input. I would like to know how to to PAL or SECAM at 1080p.
It just they put a buzz word in their product description, and if you ask them about this, they will tell you they mislabeled product spec.
The same on Taobao when you buy a component. You will see $100 ICs being priced 0.1 CNY, and seller will request you to contact them and revise the price before buying.
They set price to 0.1 to jack up their search ranking. Tmall (basically Taobao premium) doesn't allow such, but Taobao allows that.

Depends on what you would consider PAL/SECAM. Component (YPbPr) uses some of the standards of PAL/SECAM/NTSC (depending on where you are) video, but if you are referring to broadcast, ground RF, or Composite video, then that would be quite interesting indeed. VGA is still RGB and can handle 1080p fairly well.

In terms of CRTs I am on the hunt for good ones that are available as cheaply as possible. If I can find a decent 1600x1200 CRT that handles high refresh rates well that would be awesome. Bonus points for Trinitron. Their weight, and the fact that I am not alone in my hunt makes them nearly impossible to get at any decent price, and I am not quite off my rocker (or loaded enough) to spend more than MAYBE 100 bucks for a really really good model.

My friend actually likes to spread this article around about John Carmack and his (SGI?) machine that used a 1080p CRT to program Quake.
https://www.geek.com/games/john-carmack-coded-quake-on-a-28-inch-169-1080p-monitor-in-1995-1422971/

I love CRTs because you can get amazing images off them. I understand why they are dangerous to produce and dispose of, as well as why they aren't so practical at higher resolutions, but I still love them. I unfortunately have no good IBM/SVGA compatible CRT displays (besides CGA, but I have no machines with CGA support besides a C128 if you wish to count that). I also have use for tubes that work at odd refresh rates for VLB cards that output higher resolutions at strange ~40hz interlaced modes (yes, it is weird.)

I honestly just need like a 30 minute spree in something like a freegeek backroom and I would be set for most of what I need. Stuff like that is hard to do now adays, and people are happy to charge you on the rare occasion you actually want to BUY junk.

Anyways, I've rambled enough. It doesn't surprise me that CRTs are still being made. There's probably some niches out there, maybe as replacement units for systems that would cost too much to have a similar LCD installed (strange video inputs/signals, etc, idk).
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Offline Berni

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #10 on: December 05, 2017, 11:35:51 am »
I do wonder how the image quality compares these days.

I have held on to my CRT monitor for as long as possible for the reason that it had a great image. I ran it at 1600x1200 so about the same as 1080p except that its not widescreen. Even at such resolutions it could run higher than 60Hz and provided a superb sharp image. Even of all the CRTs i had this one had the best image no matter how much i tried to fine tune the adjustments on some of them. I also made use of the fact that CRTs can run at lower resolutions nicely by running most of my 3d games at lower resolutions to squeeze better framerates out of the under powered PC.

Eventually that CRT dies and at that point i bought a 1080p LCD monitor to replace it and even tho it only has 5ms of response time i could easily notice the pixels not responding as quickly as on a CRT. In general i preferred the look of the CRT.

I haven't looked at a decent CRT since then, perhaps LCD has come far enough by now to beat them but i never got a chance to compare them again.
 

Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #11 on: December 05, 2017, 11:53:44 am »
I still use a CRT, 19" Trinitron, 1600x1200 at 85Hz.  Quite good picture, if a bit dim over the years.  Only needed one repair in its 16 year life.

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Offline james_s

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #12 on: December 05, 2017, 08:54:12 pm »
If they are still being manufactured that would be very good news for the classic arcade collecting community as supplies of good burn-free CRTs are drying up. Especially oddballs like the 100 degreen 19" color tube used in the Atari and Sega color vector games. Complete color vector monitors are fetching ~$500 each these days when they turn up, most of the parts can be reproduced fairly easily but the process of manufacturing a color CRT is complex enough that once the plants shut down and the equipment is scrapped I don't think it will ever come back.

Anyone who hasn't played the original Asteroids on a real B&W vector monitor should check it out for an example of an application that can only be done with a CRT. Nothing else except maybe a laser projector with a really fast set of galvos can come close to the dynamic range required. You can emulate the game with MAME but the result is nothing like the real deal.
 

Offline dexters_lab

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #13 on: December 05, 2017, 09:41:25 pm »
it'll all probably be like vinyl... we'll get all nostalgic about scanlines and they will start making them again

going by the rising price of PVM and BVM monitors it's not going to be long

Online coppice

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #14 on: December 05, 2017, 10:05:42 pm »
it'll all probably be like vinyl... we'll get all nostalgic about scanlines and they will start making them again

going by the rising price of PVM and BVM monitors it's not going to be long
This is a spoof, but still.... http://www.breakingburgh.com/cathode-ray-tube-tvs-make-roaring-comeback-nationwide/
 

Offline james_s

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #15 on: December 06, 2017, 12:39:33 am »
I'm skeptical of them ever being made again, but I have long foreseen a comeback in popularity amongst a certain crowd, just as happened with tube audio. CRTs do have a certain look that is not easily duplicated. The color is a bit different, the contrast ratio is excellent, and IMHO an analog display tends to look a bit nicer than anything with fixed pixels for a given resolution. I still have an old Sony XBR CRT in the basement that I use primarily with my old console games and it still produces a stunning picture that rivals a lot of HD LCDs despite being only 480p.

The thing that did in the CRT is that they're bulky and heavy. I still don't think HD would have caught on the way it did if not for the development of big, flat, thin TVs to replace that huge bulky box. Probably a good 70% of viewers don't even care about picture quality. When CRTs were king the most common TVs were the cheapest junk available and now after more than a decade of general availability of HD I'm still surprised at how many HD TVs I see connected via SD composite or to SD-only sources. People don't even notice or realize that it's not actually HD. That's also why I believe it's a fool's errand TV manufactures are on trying to come up with a killer feature that will make everyone go out and buy a new TV again. Flat panels did it before, not anything related to picture quality or gimmicks. 
 

Offline stj

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #16 on: December 06, 2017, 08:35:30 am »
and IMHO an analog display tends to look a bit nicer than anything with fixed pixels for a given resolution.

colour crt's have fixed pixels (triads actually, groups of 3 pixels(R,G,B))
 

Online coppice

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #17 on: December 06, 2017, 10:20:21 am »
and IMHO an analog display tends to look a bit nicer than anything with fixed pixels for a given resolution.

colour crt's have fixed pixels (triads actually, groups of 3 pixels(R,G,B))
FIxed pixels and an excitation scheme which can't aim at them properly.  :)
 

Offline stj

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #18 on: December 06, 2017, 12:34:42 pm »
that's why you have a shadow-mask.
much simpler than a scaler chip.  >:D
 

Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #19 on: December 06, 2017, 02:44:33 pm »
My first factory job was at a GTE-Sylvania CRT factory in 1979. So I do have a certain fondness and nostalgia for CRTs.

Even then, we were feeling the competitive pressure from Sony's Trinitron, which was way ahead of everyone else.

The company responded by designing a shadow mask which used rectangular phosphor mask, and increased the anode voltage to 37 kV.....but it was already too late. By mid-1982, the factory was shut down.
 

Online coppice

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #20 on: December 06, 2017, 03:13:24 pm »
My first factory job was at a GTE-Sylvania CRT factory in 1979. So I do have a certain fondness and nostalgia for CRTs.

Even then, we were feeling the competitive pressure from Sony's Trinitron, which was way ahead of everyone else.

The company responded by designing a shadow mask which used rectangular phosphor mask, and increased the anode voltage to 37 kV.....but it was already too late. By mid-1982, the factory was shut down.
Sony Trinitron tubes did well, but never swamped the market. Other designs were sufficiently competitive. I think your plant shut because the US TV makers were unable or unwilling to make appealing TV sets. No US made TVs means no US made TV tubes. US semiconductor makers did OK making silicon for foreign made TVs, but people don't want to ship large fragile components like TV tubes half way around the world to an assembly plant.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #21 on: December 06, 2017, 04:31:21 pm »
and IMHO an analog display tends to look a bit nicer than anything with fixed pixels for a given resolution.

colour crt's have fixed pixels (triads actually, groups of 3 pixels(R,G,B))


I'm well aware of the anatomy of a color CRT, but it is still not the same as a fixed grid of digitally addressable pixels like you have in an LCD screen. The electron beam is not rigidly linked to each phosphor spot and is not blanked between "pixels", it sweeps smoothly across with one spot getting brighter as it approaches and the previous getting dimmer as the beam passes away. There may be other factors at play here too, I have not studied it in detail but I do know that side by side a good quality SD CRT looks a hell of a lot better than a 640x480 LCD of the same size because I've sat them side by side and studied it with my own eyes.
 

Offline meeder

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #22 on: December 06, 2017, 05:00:29 pm »
Most CRT's had a better colour rendition as well.
When I used my colorimeter to profile the screen the last CRT I had only needed very small adjustments and was very stable over time.
All the LCD's that came after it have been a lot worse and needed a lot more adjustments.
 

Offline kosine

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #23 on: December 06, 2017, 05:08:53 pm »
I still use a Dell 21" Trinitron for CAD work because fine grey lines are more visible. (It's a rebadged Sony underneath.) Haven't tried the very top end LCDs, but on every other standard LCD screen I've used, the lines just disappear, especially when I zoom out.

Probably something to do with the electron scanning not being as all-or-nothing as you get with LCD pixels. Would definitely agree there are some (niche) applications where a CRT wins out. Will be a sad day when mine finally dies / becomes unfixable. Weighs a hulking ton and takes up half the desk, but the screen is gorgeous and very easy on the eye at 1600x1200 and 80Hz.
 

Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: CRTs still being made?
« Reply #24 on: December 06, 2017, 05:15:17 pm »
I wouldn't mind getting one of the 2048 x 1536 x 85Hz monsters, but they still sell for quite a good value actually!

Hm, there's a thought, buy up a bunch of broken ones -- good tube but failed circuitry of some sort or another.  Also, any with weird inputs (BNCs, 13W3, etc.).  Fix them, and replace the interface with an adapter circuit for VGA or DVI (bonus points if it does DVI-D or HDMI!).

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