It’s funny when you come to think of it and compare video with audio. How come in the audio world discussions sometimes become intense, while there seem to be far less intense discussions in the TV & video realm?
With TV’s there’s no talk on tubes, transistors, analog, digital, vinyl, cables, power cords, heck we can even get ’audio’ fuses and -USB cables.
No one has a tube TV (while they really have a ’warmer’ image :) and very few people use a $400 power cord with their TV set. And while there are expensive HDMI cables on the market, the vast majority uses one below $50. And no one spends money on floor spacers to avoid cable vibrations.
Our eyes may even be far more sensitive than our ears ... yet discussions are far less intense. How come?
I have one that is almost 40 years old. Picture and sound are still functioning like the day it was new. I wonder if my LED sets will still be functioning in another 40 years. Unfortunately, I won't be here to find out. But, I have to admit that a lot of people like "dinosaurs". Especially our children. By the time they are my age I can only imagine what marvels they will experience. Perhaps some of them will keep tech from our present time, in their "dinosaur collection". (assuming they are still working)
I still have my parent’s 1970s era console television in my art studio. Looking at it brings back great memories of watching Saturday morning cartoons, and shows like Mash, Kojak, The Million Dollar Man, and Baretta with my parents. Outside of my studio is my listening room. I have an 85 inch Samsung flatscreen mounted on the wall in that room. There just isn’t any comparison between a tube television and a flatscreen picture. I would say, it isn’t even close, unless your flatscreen is shot.
To bring in the tube television is comparable to taking my parent’s old console all in one stereo out of their garage, and scrapping all of my high end audio gear. I suppose if I hooked up my parent’s console stereo, I could bring over a crapload of 78s and 8-track tapes. Can you imagine going back to 8-track tapes? I can hear Comes A Time by Neil Young right now, as my Dad had it on 8-track. “Four strong winds that blow - fade out - click - fade in- lonely - Seven seas that run high,…plays a couple of verses and the chorus - fade out - click - fade in - But by then it would be winter - Not too much for you to do….”
Yes, audio has advanced light years, and so has visual technology. Be it a flatscreen, a decent computer monitor, or even your cellphone’s tiny screen, tube televisions simply can’t compete with the increased quality of the pictures available on these new flatscreen modes. Think of owning an eighty pound tube computer monitor. Even if it had a comparable picture, it would look ridiculous on your desk, and couldn’t work in concert with laptops. I guess the answer to your question is, tube televisions are gone forever because a newer, better technology has replaced the old dinosaurs with a much better picture.
I remember my first TV ectasy...In 1958...7 years old or six...my grandfather bought a TV set....
Animated comics with classical music beside the mute image, even the scherzo music of Bruckner ninth symphony...
It takes me thirty years to retrieve this Bruckner thema consciously...
I miss the Indian static image target when the program were off......Younger people here had no idea of what i speak about....It is a mystery keeped in memory by old ape like me....
I guess i am a nostalgic character....
My favorite screen are not computer one nor TV one nor gamer screen... Ereader screen take me on the verge of ectasy though....I own 2 russian pocketbook ereaders because they read all ebook format files with dictionary integrated in 50 languages ....
There is no question that today's tv sets have better resolution when the picture isn't moving very fast, but there is still a latency problem (even with the best sets of today) that CRT sets don't have that's why the gamers want them.
I remember back when I bought the best CRT TV I could afford at the time and it was a small Proton TV. Had a great picture and made my living room look larger than it was.
As mentioned the resolution ratings of today could not be met with CRT plus a 50” Tube would probably weigh 600 lbs or more and have to be 3-4 feet deep if not more for the guns to focus on the screen.
I can remember my father opening up the old BW tv, pulling the tubes out and vacuuming them. May have to dust off the ol’ CRT buried in the corner of the basement.
I watched a 4K copy of Jurassic Park at a friends recently. Was shocked at how terrible it looked. It had such a cold quality to it. Cold as in cold vs hot medium - McLuhan. There was zero personality to the visuals.
It was like looking at a cheap TV commercial shot on a high res camera. Did not like it very much. Perhaps this is why I don’t watch much Tv anymore…
The technologies are far better with OLED tv then anything from the past much lighter, no tubes to replace , and can mount it on the wall ,everything is far better and still improving .
@tvad yes, I has two of those xbr32’s. They were crazy expensive at the time but they were broadcast monitors. I remember seeing them in ABC NYC and they had this grotesque mauve colored trim LOL. It was hard to get rid of them….
The best Sony tube tvs and they like $500 back in the 70s.could never comparable to the cheapest flat screen LCD now...the pixels weren't even 200 now you have 4k OLED that have thousands of pixels per inch and you can buy a 65 " for $50...lol...funny a 24 in in 1999 was like 2,000....crazy
Video production and post production pro here. A couple of things to add. Until a few months ago I had an old 20” Sony CRT sitting unused in my post production suite.(pic attached) I was going to give it to a friend that collects old TVs, just to get some space back.
But before I did I jumped onto eBay to see if it was worth more than the $300 or so I thought, if even that. I ended up selling it to gamer who paid to have a shipping company pick it up, pack and ship to Canada. Total cost to him....... $5,000. Turns out it was sort of a holy grail of CRTs and had low hours, which was unusual since most of them were in large facilities and had many thousands of hours use. I still have a 14” version I plan to sell soon.
As far as Video in general, digital is far superior to anything analog ever had to offer, and my post suite is far superior to the million dollar suites when I first started out in the industry. Editing and color grading each needed their own at that cost. The people who do color grading are just as picky and tweeky in their own way about setup as audio folks are.Picture of my suite with the CRT. (Getting rid of it has allowed room for much better placement of the genelec monitors - sub is there as well.https://i.imgur.com/p7Xn1lY.jpg
Me too, I’ll agree with anything today, but I’m rollin’ mine.
I was overseas as a kid. There was no TV from 6-10 years of age for me It was weird to come back home to Jackie Gleason and Flipper.
We listened to Radio Free Europe. LOL You still needed tubes to keep the old rig my Dad picked up going. I remember exposed wiring overhead in every room. If you touched it, you got fried.. The first thing I learned at 6 years old. I hate getting shocked..
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As far as douglas goes:
Over the years the pattern has been well established. Those who have a strong inclination to think they are right and who wish to build a budget audio system (and will not spend much/any money to put their skepticism to the test) put up the straw man of tweaks in order to rip on religion/faith.
The thinking person sees clearly enough what it is, ignorance and arrogance.
You have a propensity to portray yourself as superior.
Besmirching of others is not very becoming to a person of your perceived inteligencia. Your piers may find it petty. Me not having your vast experience can only bow to your Odes of wisdom. Long live the philosophy of the mighty Douglas.. Tongue in cheek of course..
Put a NAME to those you deem ignorant and arrogant. I’ve never had a problem putting a name to an issue.. OR are we all just stupid?
Makes me wish I was still in the work force, some people you just want to spend TIME with in a ditch, full of concrete on a 120 degree day, and see what they are really made of, 10 hours later, sippin’ on ice tea and lookin at dirty pictures of each others girlfriends/boyfriends/dog-friends.
BTW my cooker is working great...:-), so are the mixed cables sets, tube gear, turntable (S), R2R and Preamp with tone control, bass contour, with variable loudness. I use a tube EQ too. Just to add a little more color to my system. I use them to Brake-in equipment, and cables all the time. I burn-in valves (tubes) on a machine I made, it works quite well..
How is the upgrade on the main AC at the house working for ya? 60 amp to 100, or 200 amp. That help things?
Douglas knows what we’re talking about. Glass houses Douglas!!!
I just finished reading "Return of the God Hypothesis" by Steven Meyer, which delves into molecular biology and Quantum Mechanics.
Over the years the pattern has been well established. Those who have a strong inclination to think they are right and who wish to build a budget audio system (and will not spend much/any money to put their skepticism to the test) put up the straw man of tweaks in order to rip on religion/faith.
The thinking person sees clearly enough what it is, ignorance and arrogance.
invalid - you are absolutely correct. It seems strange that no one has mentioned frequency response. The new digital tv format requires excellent very high frequency response, tubes just can't deliver that. And then there's the reliability issue and servicing tube equipment. By the way, good OLED's now are 240Hz. or higher, time to upgrade.
Not so anymore on my 120Hz OLED, no smearing or tearing at all.
I guess most of you got that the topic title was not meant literally. It’s just interesting that there still are tube amplifiers around, and vinyl records, with which there are countless steps (even chemical and mechanical ones) between getting from the studio master tape (where the noise level by the way is the equivalent of 12 bit or less digital sampling) to the final reproduction of sound on your speakers that it’s even astonishing there is any sound quality left. :) While we can't imagine watching a TV set with tubes anymore.
And there are so many heated debates in the audio world, on how a USB cable or a power cord improved the sound (or not), while these kind of similar discussions are far less with TV’s and image quality. That’s what struck me.
Still happy with the picture from my old school Panasonic plasmas….great mix between detail and warm color saturation….IMO, more like what I see in life than what I get from the newer 4K LED television in our workout room. Why no tubes - simple, people like flat televisions. BTW, my television cables terminate before they hit the floor.
tonywinga is right. What he leaves out however is he is talking about a notable exception. More typical was all kinds of artifacts, distortions, reliability problems. My dad was at Sears, had friends in the service department, they were always coming out and it was fascinating to watch them demagnetize and adjust one thing after another. Image quality could be exceptional, and that is funny because I remember so well the clarity and color as Kirk wrestled with the Gorn in Arena. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hnBp7x2QAE Or something like that.
Most TV manufacturers make 3 levels of each size of TV. I call it good, better, best. Not sure how they differ but picture quality is better at each level.
Well, when I brought home an AQ Niagara power conditioner to audition in my Stereo I decided it was a keeper. I had been using a Furman Elite 15 PF i power conditioner. What to do-so I put the Furman in the Home Theater system which has a few months old Sony XBR LCD TV. The Furman made a striking difference. The colors on the TV are much richer now. I marvel at the picture every time I watch TV now. I use some mid level AQ HDMI cables but do mostly streaming these days. (4k blu ray easily outshines 4k streaming btw) I had thought about a better power conditioner for the home theater but was not as motivated to spend the money like I do on the stereo system. About tube TVs: Some reminiscing about the late 1960s. My dad brought home a Philco 25" color TV in the late 60's. It had the best picture that I can recall on any TV until 4k. For real. I can remember seeing Star Trek on that TV in the late 60s. I noted to myself a year or two ago that it was not until these 4k TV's came along and the original Star Trek series was remastered in HD did the picture finally look better than on that Philco TV. It took nearly 50 years to get a better picture. Remember, Cable TV had the worst picture. It might have looked clear but it was grainy due to overdriven signals. Then TV's got bigger but the resolution stayed behind. The only downside was that Philco TV ate tubes. I remember often going down to the drug store to test tubes because the picture would either lose its color or go out completely.
Audio tweeks are Flat Earth Science. To the believers this is their religion! It, like all religions is faith-based. Attempts to verify these beliefs by scientific trial are lambasted as heresy!
Probably because we see what we want to see… With audio we may see it more in our heads. Since we cannot see it we are probably prone to making stuff up.
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