After having a look on rightmove at a pretty expensive house (750k) I was shocked that people who clearly are of an age to have young kids still own them, don’t get me wrong they did produce a decent picture but really why, just why would you still own one? Even if you don’t watch tv why wouldn’t you reclaim half of your living room with a lcd, or no tv?

It still works. Seems reason enough to keep it in my book.

They took on a huge mortgage to pay for that nice house, and have nothing left for things like TVs.

Did you see any food? No, thought not.

Me . Because.-
The sound is good from the built in speakers as the area behind the tube is massive
Size doesnt really matter as its in my loft mission control center
and out of way
I dont watch alot of tele really , maybe 10hrs a week tops
I am a luddite.
It was free.
It nearly killed me getting it up the stairs to the loft room

Me, it isn’t broken so why replace it?

2unfit2ride – Member
After having a look on rightmove at a pretty expensive house (750k) I was shocked that people who clearly are of an age to have young kids still own them, don’t get me wrong they did produce a decent picture but really why, just why would you still own one? Even if you don’t watch tv why wouldn’t you reclaim half of your living room with a lcd, or no tv?

Mine was at least 15 years old before I was forced to give it up…

nothing on telly anyway

only changed 1 CRT for an LCD recently so it was the right aspect ratio and to get HD

CRT still works perfectly, and I bought it when I was at uni to go with my Atari ST. Nothing from dixon’s now will last even a quarter of that.

Until yesterday, me.

i had a crt tv up until late last year (bought 2nd hand from furniture exchange about 8 years ago). i had to buy an led tv finally as the crt finally gave up the ghost.

i do like my 24″ led i have to say though,especially for gaming on (can see the whole screen for one thing now).

I used have a 36″ Panasonic CRT. It was huge and cost £100 from Ebay, a few years ago.

The picture when connected to an Arcam DVD player (also from Ebay for £100 and a brilliant CD deck) through the component video connections was brilliant. I know that there were less pixels than a 1080p but it just looked “better”.I think is was 576p? Hard to describe why it looked better.

It wasn’t “better” on normal TV and the Mrs hated it, as it took up so much space, so we got rid. That was hell of a job as it weighed 100kg.

in the lounge we still have a sony 32″ CRT that we got free from a member of another forum who lived local and had upgraded his telly with a christmas bonus.
Only just swapped the 10 year old crt in the home office for a LCD in the last couple of weeks. in the bedroom have a plasma we got cheap off ebay when the 15 year old CRT packed up last year.

As with others, we had one until very recently. Only changed as my nephew gave me his old 42″ flatscreen. A new telly had been on the list of ‘to buy’ but as the old one worked so well it never seemed a priority. Add to that that a decent crt will still give a better picture in sd than a cheaper flat screen why rush to change?

Had my since 2003. It hasn’t stopped working yet. There’s nothing bad about the picture or sound as it’s only used to watch freeview and the occasional DVD. If I buy a new tv I can’t buy new bits for the bikes.

Us because why throw something away if it still works, one the main problems we face is the huge amount of waste due to the pathetic consumerist ‘must have’ mentality 👿

#stupidhumans

We had a huge 34 inch (fairly decent) 1990s CRT until about five years ago when my wife’s grandma died and we inherited her LCD screen.

Otherwise we’d probably still have the CRT.

Can’t say it has actually saved me much space either. Despite being a much smaller object it still sits on a large TV cabinet housing set top boxes, consoles, controllers, games and DVDs.

Still use one – If it went pop tomorrow I’d buy another pretty much just like it. I’ve yet to see a flat telly that I like either as a ‘thing’ or like the picture of. I think flat TVs just look bad in the room – sticking them on the wall is ridiculous, anywhere you stand them they just look awkward

I have to buy and use quite a lot of flat screen TVs as part of the work I do and the frequency of failures is both alarming and lucrative – happy to be paid to source and fit replacements, not so happy to spend my own money on one 🙂

only changed 1 CRT for an LCD recently so it was the right aspect ratio and to get HD

This is one of the biggest issues / disincentives for me to move to flat screen – 16:9 content looks fine letterboxed on a 4:3 screen but 4:3 on a 16:9 screen looks awful. Theres still a fair bit of 4:3 content around both on the TV and in the DVD cupboard (The Wire for instance) and it would irk me to watch it on a 16:9.

Where would you buy one from? Surely you could only get a second hand one, which would be a risky purchase!

Where would you buy one from? Surely you could only get a second hand one, which would be a risky purchase!

Of course second hand – it would cost buttons – whats the risk? (Always fancied and Sony PVM-2950Q – that would cost big bucks though, if I could find one for sale). As it happens we only have two shops in the village and one of them is a TV repair man – proper expert old school guy with a collection of TV and radios in his window thats better the museum collections I’ve worked in. He could pretty much track down anything for me.

[edit] now look what you’ve made me do, I’ve only gone and saved ‘Sony PVM-2950Q’ on my ebay notifications.

[second edit] – whoops…. I might be updating this in a few days 😆

Cathode rays make you faster, FACT

I find my CRT “easier” to watch that a lot of modern lcd/led tvs! A lot of modern tellys seem to really suffer from motion blur and colour bleed, and only recently have they managed to get as good a contrast ratio as a top of the line CRT imo.

(as as loco, says, if it ain’t broke why chuck it away!)

I must admit when I got my first flat screen TV It did feel a bit of a waste when I took my perfectly functioning as good as new 36″ Panasonic Widescreen TV to the tip – all 65kgs of it! I had tried to sell it for a good few months before deciding to take it to the tip, but amazingly nobody wanted it – odd given it was one of the last high end models Panasonic produced so probably one of the very best CRT TV’s ever crafted by the hand of man. I then tried to give it away to friends and, family but nobody wanted it, so given that I didn’t have the room to just keep it I reluctantly decided to chuck it on the tip. I did hope that they might look after it and give it away to a good cause, but two burly men picked it up out of the boot of my car and hurled it into a skip onto a pile of other discarded CRT TV’s. It was a sad sight.

Having said that, no matter how good the picture was on that old TV it was not a patch on the picture on my new Panasonic Plasma screen, so I soon got over it.

Seriously OP – a £350 LCD non-HD TV will give a far superior picture than any CRT TV. It’s time to move on! Granted the sound from a flat panel is utterly woeful – but the sound out of big CRT TV, though better, was still pretty poor. A bit like saying Chlamydia is better than Gonorrhoea (or the other way round – i’m not sure which is worse in reality). But for relatively small outlay (or free if you already have a HiFi amp and a pair of speakers, you can get around that pretty easily.

I only replaced mine when it died.

the sound from a flat panel is utterly woeful

Agreed. Thought we’d try the new one without anything, now see that we’ll have to get some sort of sound bar/base for it. Picture is streets ahead of our old CRT (Consigned to a spare bedroom), but the sound is mediocre at best.

Mine’s dying, sound randomly goes up and down. So after 13 years of sterling service it’ll soon be gone. Wouldn’t bother otherwise – picture’s OK, sound’s fine, why change?

Still use the CRT as the SNES image isn’t jumpy on it.

We only got a second hand flat screen thing a couple of months back, when the Freecycle crt started playing up.

Why would you spend money on a TV unless you had too, and certainly not ‘latest tech’….

when I took my perfectly functioning as good as new 36″ Panasonic Widescreen TV to the tip – all 65kgs of it!

lightweight!
My Panny is something insane like 75 or 100kg. And the weight is all at the front.

16:9 content looks fine letterboxed on a 4:3 screen but 4:3 on a 16:9 screen looks awful

tbf, on the one I replaced, being a portable it would have ended up with less actual viewing area than an ipad.

not binning that one. it works fine, and might be needed with Atari, N64 etc. when I get around to setting up some retro stuff.

the 36incher is going in the skip though. something went wrong with the colours, an everything looks pink. probably repairable, but there’s a big LCD there now.

and every TV i’ve owned, portable, CRT or LCD has had sound that I would call shyte. LCD have no space for speakers. CRTs just have so much plastic that the cases resonate. always used amp and speakers, and always will.

Yes.
I’m in the ‘if it’s not broken, why replace it.’ camp.
Also, I watched part of The Hobbit’ on an expensive, modern telly and the picture looked wrong, erm, too clear/sharp or something.

Another one in the camp of sticking with a CRT till it goes pop, here.

Had mine until 4 years ago, still worked well, sound was better than new tvs and it would have been hard to steal as it weighed a ton 🙂

Still rocking a 32″ SONY CRT… had it from new about 14 to 15 years ago, its also hooked up to a first generation SKY+ box that’s just as old

we don’t like change around these parts

Me too. It still works, so why change? I haven’t moved beyond cds either. It’s all a pointless techotwattery arms race anyway. I only change when I have to.

Our old TV wasn’t widescreen which was the only reason for changing it. Picture was good. Really happy with our new Sony, picture is excellent and the sound isn’t too bad as is but it is connected to our hi-fi to give it a bit more oomph when watching shouty bangy films.

Sony Trinitron here, with Nicam Stereo!
An oldy but a goody.

I only bought my first telly about 3 or 4 years ago, don’t think I’ve ever owned one. Used to repair coin op video games a while back, so I know my way around a CRT but last had one in the house when I lived with my folks several decades ago

I fancy a CRT for pre HDMI gaming. Sega, Nintendo and ps1/ps2 look dogshite on a plasma or led.

Yep, still got a Sony flat screen CRT as our main TV.

My Wife whinges a lot that she thinks we should swap it out for something flat, but meh….it’s a moving picture with sound.

It works and sits in a corner, so the extra bulk isn’t really noticeable anyway as a flat screen would go across the same corner, but would just have a load of empty space behind it.

My daughter, who is a book designer and has “good eyes” reckons she much prefers the picture quality of CRT, so is always on the lookout for old Sony Trinitrons.

I wonder if CRT is becoming the new Vinyl and next year there’ll be a Television Store Day (as well as the eagerly anticipated 26″ and 1 1/8″ headset Bike Shop Day)?

BigJohn – Member

My daughter, who is a book designer and has “good eyes” reckons she much prefers the picture quality of CRT, so is always on the lookout for old Sony Trinitrons.

To my eyes, a lot of flat screen TV’s seem to make ‘real’ stuff look like it’s animated. Could just be how they are set-up though?

Could just be how they are set-up though?

Almost certainly.

I fought tooth and nail to keep my old “there’s nothing wrong with it” Sony CRT, eventually buckled under spousal pressure and replaced it with a 42″ Toshiba flat screen. My gods I wish I’d done it years ago, the difference is startling.

There’s an argument for CRTs for retro gaming, but beyond that it really should be consigned to the same bin as the vinyl so beloved of half-deaf 50-somethings who still think the sound of frying chips in the background adds to the experience.