Hacker News Reader

Comment by jagger27 | Hacker News Reader

Have there been any attempts to make something like a CRT with phosphors and an electron gun in a thinner form factor?

What if we had a grid of smaller electron beams targeting a small display section instead of a single large one? Can it be done without vacuum tubes today?

View on HN

Yes, that’s basically what a plasma TV is.

Oh neat, I didn't realize that. I guess it didn't work out very well.

I have a plasma TV that I use for gaming (Panasonic Viera). It's a great display with none of the contrast or ghosting disadvantages of an LCD, but it's heavy, delicate, and most importantly, it puts out a ton of heat. A plasma TV is basically a grid of tiny neon lights.

Like any active display (CRT, plasma, or OLED) it can suffer from burn-in, but I haven't found that to be a problem for my usage.

Between a very old Panasonic Viera 42" upon which a buttload of Halo was played over many years, and the current Samsung Not-Smart Plasma which gets a bit less game play, I've yet to see the slightest hint of burn-in. I did get some ghosting on the Panny before I sold it, but I otherwise take plasma burn-in to be an artifact from TVs made twenty years ago.

It's a problem with every plasma TV ever made. I've got one of the last Panasonic Viera's which, after almost 10 years, has a slight dark patch around the place where subtitles tend to appear (I'm from the Netherlands where almost all non-dutch content is subtitled) It's only really noticeable when looking at a uniform gray screen which is not my content of choice, but it's there.

Plasma TVs are out there and have advantages and disadvantages to LCDs.

Also there was going to be field emitter (FED and SED) flat screen TVs, basically an array of electron guns.

But they were killed by the low cost of LCDs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-emission_display

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-em...

The Sony Watchman[1] had the electron gun at the bottom shooting at a tilted screen instead of shooting at it from the back. This allowed to make a GameBoy-sized portable CRT TV.

There is also an interesting LCD/CRT hybrid from JVC[2], it's not flat by itself, but the way it adds color to an otherwise black&white screen could be used in slim designs.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ZTQ5BvNIQ

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-q8ehzHeQQ

There're two competing technologies, before LCD came to dominate the display sector, utilizing electron emitters energizing phosphors in thin form factor, essentially an evolution of CRTs, SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) and FED (field-emission display).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com