The end of CRT in America?
 

For years I was under the impression that there were no new CRTs manufactured for sale in the US (at least at retail) after 2004, as I had never found a CRT set made after 2004. However today I found a set made in November 2005. Is it possible that new CRTs were manufactured for retail sale in the US in 2006, despite me never having seen one personally?

I think 2009-2010 was the end of consumer CRT set sales in the USA. The last ones seem to be the Disney themed youth sets, made cheaply from leftover component parts.

I think you could still buy CRTs until 2010ish. The last ones were cheap offbrands from China, Funai and maybe an Orion. They even had digital tuners.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the November 2005 set I got is either a Funai or a LG, it's a TruTech branded 13(?) inch TV/VCR combo unit made in Korea.

My Sansui digital CRT TV was produced in October of 2008, and I know they still had CRT TVs in some stores locally at least through Black Friday 2010.

http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1530589217

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This guy found a Sansui manufactured in November 2009: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LicDSxHEQcs

I love the video description (emphasis mine)
I’m trying to picture this. He must have been holding the computer against his chest with the screen facing away from him so that the webcam was pointed towards this trashed TV. In someone’s front yard, no less. Yeah, not suspicious at all... :screwy:

I have a Sony kv27fs120 made in 07. Dam good set cant wait to get it of storage .

...

The last of the Funai's and Orion's seem to be pretty good. I have a few with the DTV converter board.
I have a few RCA jail sets with the DTV board. They work rather well. Built in 2009.

One of the clear ones? I want one of those...

You can own one easy enough!
I'll clear a few spaces in my PM box later today. :thmbsp:

I recall about 10 years ago or perhaps a little later, seeing CRT sets relegated to a back corner of my local Best Buy store. Probably 6 or 8 different plastic cabinet analog table models. Screen sizes from 9" to probably 17" sets. This does not include those small screen, very cheap $10.00 CRT's found in drug stores & discount stores ect. These Coby analog crt sets are still listed on the Amazon site. Are they the very last of the CRT sets?

In 2005 I bought a 13" colour stereo Emerson with a built in DVD player.
It's build amazed me. They used a DVD ROM, like you would see in a tower PC.
All the resistors were gold banded and all the caps were Nichichon.
It also had two 3" round speakers mounted up front which gave decent audio.
I retired it when our cable went digital only...and gave it to a friend's grandkid to play
his DVD's on. It's still going strong too.


http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1325437383

That was the last one I really remember; Rite Aid drug stores had them for $10-20. There were also some cheap portable karaoke machines with a crt but I guess they don't quite qualify as a TV.

I had to laugh about some of the fools on the E-place. They're asking $40-50 for this junk.

Radio Shack had a big stack of Sylvania badged 5" B/W TV's in December of 2008. They were marked at $9.99. The salesperson said they were priced incorrectly, they should be $4.99. :D
I never took it out of the box. :scratch2:

In summer of 2007 my Panasonic 20" in my room from 2004 got hit in a power surge so I had to buy a new one. The LCD TVs were still quite expensive then, so I ended up getting a Sylvania 20" CRT. It has a pretty good picture. I think it was $89.99. I don't remember there being many CRT sets still there at the time, I got it at Sears. I can also recall there being notices on several TVs that they didn't have a digital tuner, but mine did have one, and it says SDTV on the front.

My parents have an Emerson 20" CRT TV that looks just like my Sylvania but it's black. That one is dated November 2008 so they were making them at least that late. Both of these are Funai made.

I do remember in 2008 that Walmart even had Durabrand 13" and 19" CRTs on their website that weren't even stereo and I'm not sure they had anything more than an RF input. They were kind of curvy looking black colored cabinet. They looked more like a 90s TV set. I never looked in the store to see if they had them. I thought it was funny they would still be selling such outdated sets without A/V jacks in 2008.

I can remember seeing those small black and white sets until just before the DTV changeover, then drug stores started selling small LCD color sets with digital tuners. That's mostly where I saw those tiny sets was Walgreens and CVS. The Disney themed TVs mentioned were about the last color ones I recall. They sometimes had a built in or separate DVD player and Mickey Mouse ear speakers on top. After that they completely stopped selling CRTs at all.

The Durabrand, Sylvania and Emerson, being Funai built seem the rather reliable. These things were all freebee's and all worked without any repair.
A few of the later ones have the DTV tuner and work reasonably well OTA.

I don't think I ever tried mine with OTA digital. When I got it was the same time we switched from antenna to cable and by then we may have had it set up in the bedrooms too.
It works very well for video games, I use it with my Wii or NES usually. I watch TV on it sometimes but of course the picture is narrow over digital cable.

Mine never had any issues but my parents' one seems to make a high pitched tone when it's been on for a while. It's a bedroom TV they never use much.

Now as far as computer monitors, I do believe those went all LCD by the late 2000s. I graduated in 2007 and the only computer monitors in my high school that were LCD were in the front office. Everything else was black Dell 17" with built in speakers on any new systems they got and they were still getting them at least as late as 2006. The cafeteria computers had CRT touch screens. We were not allowed to have LCD screens in classrooms or computer labs because students would break them.

When I started college in fall of 2007 it was totally different. Almost all of the computers on the college campus had Dell LCDs. There was only one computer in the whole college I remember with a CRT monitor on it and it was on one the students could use in the lobby. I don't know if it was because it was the only one but it seemed HUGE.

Oh and I just remembered my physics teacher in high school got a new CRT TV set to use for Powerpoints on her computer. I'm having trouble remembering the brand but it seems it was one sold at Walmart, eLo or something. That thing must have been at least a 40", I think the cabinet was silver. So they were still selling large screen CRTs as late as 2006-early 07 because this was my senior year. I wonder now why they didn't just install a projector on the ceiling for it.

I was actually stunned to see that a presentation room in my college still has a pair of ceiling mounted Panasonic 20-something inch CRTs. In 2018.

If it ain't broke...

LG were still making CRT sets in 2008. I guess they were mainly intended for "emerging markets", but some found there way here. The ones that I have seen were strictly budget models - 4:3 ratio, no digital tuner. Their high end 16:9 CRT sets with digital tuners and HDMI input were discontinued before these were released. Googling around suggests they actually had quite a lot of last gasp CRT sets for different regions - model 29SA2RS is listed as having USB! Anyone seen one?

I've got a 13" Magnavox (Funai) with a built in DVD player and digital tuner in the bathroom right now......... made in '07 or early '08 I think......

ILO.

I remember seeing those. I believe they were 36", they just looked bigger as there was so little else around the CRT.

I remember being in a Pamida store that had lowered their price on one (it was another Funai brand, but I forget which one) with a traditional spherical glass CRT, and a DTV tuner, for only $149. I was tempted, but had bought a 27" Funai flat face DTV months earlier, and I knew that 36" SD sets were not that sharp.

I checked my CRT sets to see which is the newest (that is, the set with the latest manufacture date).

This is my "Sansui" (Funai) DTV1300A, from August, 2007.
I saw this set in a thrift store about five years ago. I was immediately drawn to the SDTV mark on the front, and gladly paid $6 for it. Funny that the TV sets next to it were priced higher and did not have digital tuners. They had American brand names, but were made long after those brand names had been sold off.
Recently, the Mrs. complained about having to push the channel button dozens of times to go from channel 4.1 to channel 36.2
I found a remote control on an internet purchase site and bought it for $7.50, delivery included.
Ironically $1.50 more than I paid for the set.

This set is not stored in an attic or a closet. It serves the kitchen, and is used almost every day. The SD picture is as good as if the set were new. It is one of six fed by the same antenna and distribution amplifier.

Please delete.

I kinda wish I'd gotten a Funai set, I found out my Trutech set is a Daewoo...guess I own two rebadged Daewoo sets now, and somehow both work without issue.