Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcadam | Hacker News Reader

I remember my parents bought a 32" widescreen CRT HDTV (1080i) back when HD was first becoming a thing. That was the heaviest TV set I've ever had to move in my life.

They offered to give it to me a few years later when they upgraded to an LCD... wish I would have taken it (no idea what happened to it now). It took me forever to find a decent CRT on craigslist for retro gaming :)

View on HN

My brother was a bit of a home theater enthusiast when we were growing up and he bought a widescreen CRT HDTV and you aren't kidding about the weight. It took three of us tumbling it up the stairs just to get it up there (nearly killing us twice). It was a beautiful set he gifted it to me when he upgraded to an HD projector. Used it until I moved out. I wasn't moving that battleship any further than the street by that time LED panels had started coming out.

In retrospect I wish I had hung onto it but with the size and weight it just wasn't possible.

I bought a widescreen 32" CRT back in the day. I chose that particular model because it was the only in that price range that had a VGA port (in addition to antenna, SCART and other PAL inputs).

It was advertised as handling a resolution of 640x480 via VGA. But I discovered that it could accept an 848x480 image from my desktop computer.

Coupled with a 50 GBP (~75 USD) Logitech wireless keyboard, I could surf the internet comfortably whilst leaning back on the sofa. In widescreen!

(This was maybe 17-18 years ago.)

Importantly, the widescreen ones always have post-processing to convert from the SD resolution to the resolution of the tube, they aren't like PC monitors where they switch resolutions. This adds about as much input lag as a modern hdtv :(

Reply on news.ycombinator.com