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Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

I am probably too much an old-timer, but my TV is actually a Sony Trinitron CRT, bought (for a very steep price) in 2002 or 2003 and still going strong.

For the record, it is a "beast", even if it is "only" 32" in size, it is weighing around 70 Kg!

I bought it at the time with a specific table/support for it.

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I have a similar Sony Trinitron TV - i'm not sure about the size, it should be at least 32" but might be bigger (it is a widescreen too). It is so heavy that you need at least two people (preferably three) to move it around and for the first three years i had it when i got it, i had it placed on the floor because... i couldn't lift it to place it anywhere else :-P.

The TV has barely seen any use, i got it because at the time i was thinking to buy one of the upcoming gaming consoles but i never got one and i do not watch TV. I couldn't connect it to my PC and, being on the floor, it wouldn't be very comfortable anyway. So it just stayed there until i moved and sent it to my sister who promptly sent it back once she moved :-P. That was the only time it saw any use. It is now in my bedroom, sitting there for 7+ years and - considering the weight - as far as i am concerned it is part of the house now.

Sometimes i am thinking to buy an HDMI to whatever input it uses (it has a bunch but not HDMI) adapter to connect a Raspberry Pi for watching a movie or something, but it is aligned at the side of my bed and it'd be much easier to rearrange the bed (and the rest of the room) than moving the TV.

It is like this TV was doomed to never be used since the first day i bought it.

Pi will drive it from the composite output, although you may need to borrow a HDMI screen to set it up.

At least for RetroPie, there's a config file you can edit directly on the SD-card, to force a video output and resolution and set overscan.

I'm using it force mine into 480p mode, to feed a HDMI->S-Video converter, which gives better video quality than using the composite output.

Yes, S-video is better than composite. But RGB component is the best, if your TV has inputs for it.

My TV has 2x SCART RGB, unfortunately I haven't found any good options for converting HDMI to SCART RGB. Everything is HDMI->component.

Something like this [1] seems like it might work (just go with whichever's cheapest).

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1080p-HDMI-to-Scart-converte...

All of those cheap converters only output composite video over SCART, no better than the Pi's composite output. Finding one that actually does RGB is either impossible, or really expensive.

I had never heard of SCART before, but it seems to be just a connector. There appear to be cables that would connect SCART to RCA component video.

SCART RGB and component are not compatible, I've tried that.

BTW if you have a device that takes component (i.e. PVM's) you can use an HDMI->Component adapter and drive 240P/480I/480P directly from the Pi with no rescaling :)

The HDMI output on the Pi is really flexible... you can even coax 2160P24 out of it... at least for static 2D displays.

Setting resolution through config.txt is a feature of the firmware, not of any specific OS (although I think there's something weird about how NOOBS and Berryboot map their /boot partitions around, or something...and that's part of why I avoid them).

Anyhow, setting resolution in config.txt ought to work everywhere.

I didn't knew that was composite, i thought it was something about audio or one of the generic I/O stuff. TBH i barely used the Pi, after getting it i played with it a bit but between the keyboard malfunctioning (keys getting stuck due to power, etc), wifi being disconnected (again a power issue) and the awful performance i didn't find much use for it. I also got a Pi2 but that seems to need a special cable for the composite output. But i guess Pi1 should be able to play video even if i have to transcode it in some other format and size.

The 3.5mm jack is a "TRRS" connector (3 conductors and a ground). So, left+right audio and video.

You've got to make sure that the cable has the ground in the right place, because I guess that different devices position it differently, so not all TRRS-to-RCA cables are compatible.

Considering you make it into 15 years of usage I think the price might be well worth it?

CRT in the old days, especially Sony's Trinitron CRT were extremely well designed and well made. Pretty much like ALL "Made in Japan" electronics sold were designed to last. I have a LCD TV from Sony that is now on 12 years of services, still going strong.

But as tech improves it seems the life expectancy of the product are taken less into account.

I would bet the Sony CRT monitor will out last my Sony LCD TV. And OLED is only going to be worst.

One response to this is: the market has spoken, it's not interested in paying for product longevity.

I'm not entirely sure I agree, but here we are.

I dont think it's a choice in the hands of the consumer anymore.

The market doesn't have enough information about product longevity to make an informed decision. The only reliable data point I have as a consumer is the warranty. The few brands that advertise longevity usually cost so much more than cheap versions of the same product that it's hard to justify the purchase. Why for example should I pay $150 for Patagonia jeans if I can get ten pairs of El-Cheapo jeans for the same amount?

How many people get rid of TVs in perfect working order just to get something with more features. I know at least 3.

> How many people get rid of TVs in perfect working order just to get something with more features. I know at least 3.

I know exactly 0. :-) So YMMV.

If someone asked me for advice, I'd tell them to skip "smart TVs" and hook up a Raspberry Pi with OpenELEC, or an Android TV box — resolution's probably the only thing worth upgrading for.

I seems like some people buy a new screen, fridge, washing machine, speakers, etc etc, just because they feel like a change of scenery.

I still nowadays use a high-frequency, high-contrast, high-resolution 20-years-old CRT for my desktop at home, it works as well as the first day. I laugh at all those retina resolution debates.

I used a CRT monitor until the resoluions of LCD monitors were really “retina” and the IPS with color calibration appeared (and the graphic cards and OSes supported these resolutions properly). At least until that point a good CRT was better: analog transitions between the pixels on the quality CRT were much easier for reading than the TFT LCDs of these times. The analog elements provided the smoothness.

> But as tech improves it seems the life expectancy of the > product are taken less into account.

On the contrary. The life expectancy has never been more important: it has never been more important to time the death of a device in such a manner that it hits some generational sweet spot to make the customer buy the same product over and over :-)

Is that really that much of an issue though? The current generation of monitors and TVs are probably going to become obsolete before they stop working.

Yes you can still watch the new series of Star Trek on a 26" CRT, but it'll look a lot nicer on a 55" 4K HDR OLED. In 10 years time I'm sure that will look just as outdated.

My trinitron started having issues after 10 years. At first the colors would shift and in the end everything would be greenish, if I remember correctly.

Also IIRC ... colour cast was one of the things you could adjust on the internals of a CRT: like some sort of collar or potentiometer on the green gun ... how I didn't kill myself messing around with CRTs before I knew better, I don't know.

If you have one be sure you know how to be safe before opening it - deathly voltages inside!

>CRT in the old days, especially Sony's Trinitron CRT were extremely well designed and well made. Pretty much like ALL "Made in Japan" electronics sold were designed to last.

Yes, once upon a time, with the exclusion for portable devices of course (in which Sony excelled as well, if anyone remembers the first series of Walkman, it had the "wow" factor as it was only a little bigger than the cassette), electronics did actually "go by the weight", it meant that "better" hardware was put in it, both in the electronics and in the case.

Only a few days ago, while attempting (vainly) to put some order in a storage room, I happened to move a (relatively recent) compact stereo player, you know one of those that has radio, cassette player and CD player + amplifier in a little cube of 20x20x20 cm, and right after that I moved a venerable ol'time Marantz amplifier.

I simply applied the wrong amount of force, at first I had the impression that the amplifier was glued to the shelf.

All my friends and myself had these Sony "flatscreen" TVs from around 2001. Took maybe three of us to move them out of our apartments. My friend had a bigger one, maybe 40" that was truly a beast and took up like a quarter of his Boston apartment living room. I remember I paid about $1K USD for the 32" model. I recently purchased a 4K 60" Samsung refurbed for $540. Memories.

When HDTV was getting started, the TV you wanted was the Sony XBR Trinitron. There was a reason that Best Buy didn't put them in the television display area with all the then-new LCD and Plasma flatscreens - because it had a far better picture and was half the cost (even at $1400).

They weighed 200 lbs (90kg) and nearly all of it was at the front with that thick cylindrical tube face. So you definitely needed a strong stand for them and you'd also want to add a strap to secure it to the wall so it wouldn't fall over on a child or pet.

My buddy had the XBR version, now that I think about it. It even had a cable card slot. What ever happened to cable cards?

I think they had a problem with pay-per-view.

Worth noting these were pushing very close to if not true 1080i on the final models with 1000~ lines of vertical res, when most LCD or plasmas were doing 1024x768(yep, non square pixels), or even 800x480. Only the REALLY expensive ones were true 720p, even.

They looked so much obviously better that it took plasma into the late 2000s to catch up

The closest comparison i can think of is gaming laptops vs desktops. You got objectively better performance for less money, at the cost of it being large and heavy. They were also pretty reliable, especially compared to early plasmas that blew various expensive boards constantly.(and i would know, i scored several for free this way)

I came to post here about exactly that TV. That TV was a major pain. It was the last CRT I ever owned. It requires two people to move it.

While the image quality was good, I replaced with with a cheaper, larger LCD a decade later and haven't looked back.

Not so strange. We just parted a few months ago from our 4:3 29 inch trinitron. It still worked, but we wanted a bigger screen for our new home. I never liked LCD so replaced it with a Sony OLED (yes I know the panel is from LG)

Does the remote still work? That always seemed like Sony's kryptonite.

We have a similar one (a 28" widescreen Trinitron from 2002) and you're quite right: while the TV is still fine, the excessively stylish remote died a decade ago. Happily we bought a Sony video recorder at the same time, and its more chunky remote still works and is also capable of controlling the TV.

(We do have a modern LED/LCD TV in another room but I mostly prefer the picture on the CRT, at least when watching TV or films)

>Does the remote still work? That always seemed like Sony's kryptonite.

Yes it does, but to be fair, it has never been used much (at least far less that what would be normal use) as I have it connected to a satellite box that has a remote that duplicates the TV's remote main commands and that is used like 99% of the times.

And I was optimistic about the weight:

https://docs.sony.com/release//specs/KV32FS120_mksp.pdf

• KV-32FS120: 165 lbs. 6 oz. (75 kg)

I still have one too- from the 90's

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