To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their Trinitron line of televisions, Sony launched the KX-45ED1. At forty three inches the screen on this particular model made it the largest tube television in the world, and it came with the kind of price tag that if you need to ask…you can’t afford it (likely around $100,000 USD today). Three decades later, only two of these mythical displays were thought to exist and [shank] chronicled his quest to acquire one of the last remaining “Big Boys” in the mini documentary below.
As it turns out, one of these gigantic tube televisions was located on the second floor of a restaurant in Japan still sitting in the same place it was installed in 1989. It hadn’t moved in the intervening decades, because the television and its specialized support stand weighed over 500 pounds. Having an object that heavy physically moved down a flight of stairs would seem to be the most formidable challenge for most, but compounding the issue for [shank] was that the building housing this colossal CRT was set to be permanently closed in less than a week.
With next to no time to arrange an international flight, [shank] utilized the power of internet to ask for help from anyone currently living near the “Big Boy” CRT’s soon-to-be final resting place. It just so happened that a fellow retro tech enthusiast based in Japan saw the post, and traveled over an hour by train at a moment’s notice to aid [shank]. The heartwarming story of total strangers united by a common interest of preserving a rare piece of tech history is certainly worth a watch. Let alone the goofy size comparison footage of the smallest CRT display sitting on top of the biggest one.
For more on tube TVs and the like, check out this article by Dave on retro gaming on CRT displays.
I have a friend in the broadcast business who may have had one of those (deductible, since he was on 24 hour call to deal with transmission issues). I’ll have to ask him. He had it in his living room, I remember it was a Sony Trinitron. When he moved, it went somewhere. He did say it took both him and his grown son to move it.
If it still exists, your friend will have the 3rd known example.
He landfilled it and replaced it with a flat panel. Not everything is worth saving. He got it at cost from the Sony rep. And yes, both he and his son are big people. Trinitrons are awesome, though…I had a smaller one and it had a noticeably better picture.
Was he and his son both weight lifters? Because that would be 130KB per person.
130KB per person? How do you weight a kilobyte?
I think Rasz meant Kg. For some of us in US, that’s about 287 pounds.
That was probably a 37″ CRT. Still a monster but not as heavy and much less expensive. My parents had one, and that was after my dad retired.
That’s quite a tale. I watched it before you listed it here.
Me too. It seems that I’ll have an new job opportunity if HaD hires, or I’m loosing way to much time on the tube.
it’s a youtube staple to copy another video and “minor alteration later” produce their version, it’s a HaD staple to not read the article fully :-P , I come to HaD to get articles not on a code watching my moves but more on interests of the authors here. while keyboards are great I would love to see some more projects covered, i’ve submitted many but not seen one pushed.
Yes, and me. YouTube has been promoting it to me for several days.
I doubt that the weight grows “exponentially” with the diagonal. Square or to the cube maybe?
(Aren’t square and cube both exponents?)
Power vs Exponential can be very confusing wording.
One increases the base of the exponential and the other increases the exponent.
pressure of atmosphere PLUS weight of the glass supporting itself. it’s exponential.
The Trinitrons I’m aware of were flat face. The flat face has to be very thick to hold back the atmosphere; the curved surfaces can be much thinner. Consequently the face is the heavy part of the CRT, holding back about 13,000 pounds of air pressure. The weight of the glass needed to support the CRT pales in comparison. The required thickness of the glass is proportional to the length of the shorter axis of the face, i.e. linear. (A mechanical engineer should check me on that.) The area of the face is approximately diagonal squared divided by 2, i.e. power of 2.
Mass is proportional to thickness times area, = power of 1 times power of 2 = power of 3. Other features of the tube will grow somewhere in the range of power of 0 to power of 3. Thus the total weight of the tube grows no faster than the cube of the diagonal. It is not exponential.
This made me realize that I never knew how old big screen TVs worked (the thick bois that were practically their own entertainment unit) All we had were CRTs so I just assumed they were some fancy giant tube.
Looks like most large TVs back in the day were rear projection TVs. With some having a small CRT in them that is projected to the main screen.
I had thought those really only existed when DLP took off for awhile as the cheap way to make big TVs.
It’s interesting how much display technology has changed.
My parents had a 37″ or so Sony CRT TV in the late 90s/2000s. It was definitely a big glass tube, no projection.
I’m specifically referring to what I had always heard called a Bigscreen TV. Larger than 37″ and practically their own entertainment unit. I think most would have large speakers at the bottom below the screen.
In the early 2000’s I had a monster CRT monitor. Must have weighed about 50lbs. No idea what the brand was, but I wish I still had the thing. Movers ended up breaking it. Sigh
This is great! I recently bought a CRT television for some retro games (still haven’t got the Atari 2600 working and set up yet). The last advertised it as 20 or 21″. It turned out to be I think 32″. We had to get her guy neighbor to help load it into the car. Then when I got home, I had to get my guy neighbor to help me carry it into the house.
Heh. In a similar vein, a couple of years ago I acquired a 32″ Trinitron, which was correctly advertised as such. However, I didn’t realize until I came to pick it up that it was a console unit! I had been expecting to be able to take the TV off of its stand, but when that turned out to not be possible, well… let’s just say that trying to shoehorn a giant piece of electronics furniture into the back of my little Honda CR-V was an interesting challenge. It fit, but only by the slimmest margin. I ended up using an engine hoist to get it out.
Great video, interesting product. I like that he does the little troll post at the end, that’s a good joke.