Looking for the largest direct-view CRT, the Sony Trinitron PVM-4300
 

The Sony PVM-4300 is a 45" (43" viewable) CRT monitor that was sold between 1989 and 1990. No surviving units have turned up in the past 20 years. If you own this CRT or know someone who might still own it please contact me.

The unfortunate reality is that most very large CRTs got sent to the dump. There was a long span of time when it was extremely difficult to find homes for anything like that, and the majority of them were originally owned by businesses and educational institutions that had hard deadlines to get rid of stuff.

Working for labs and colleges over the years, I've seen so much stuff just get chucked away you wouldn't believe; easily hundreds of of thousands of dollars worth of high end computers, monitors and scientific equipment in perfect working order just because a project ended and there was no space for it anymore.

As much as it pains me to say it, there isn't going to be any out there not already in the hands of a collector.

Largest I've seen is the 40" Mitsubishis.

Personally I think the Sony WEGA super-fine-pitch HD-CRT sets are the best all around performing CRT TVs out there. HDMI (and analog inputs) 1080i native phosphor resolution, built in ATSC tuning, and my KD-34XBR960 even has an iLink port for direct one wire digital interface with my D-VHS HD-VCRs (a large part of the reason I sidelined my KD-34XS955 for it). They're also still relatively easy to find compared to 90s beasts.

Would need an army of grunts to move something that large, I have the Panasonic CT-34WX54 CRT set and that weighs 155 lbs.

Sony KX45ED-1

Best shot is the Japanese marketplace. But you never know when one might turn up.

Depends on how strong you are...My 34" 16x9 Wegas are supposed to be 205lbs and I can pick them up and walk with them. Getting them up the stairs that aren't as wide as the set is an 2-3 man job, but on level ground I don't need help...I've done extensive training buying and selling vacuum tube circuit era consoles.

Here is a UTube video of one being found in Japan and brought to the US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk&t=40s

Skip to 1:30 to get past the goofy intro and to the PVM-4300

Skip to 16:30 to see it unboxed after it's journey to the US

I like how on the 2 pictures of the set he can find on the Internet the one he didn't buy he claims is unsubstantiated because there's nothing in the picture for scale when there's a freaking Pilot TV-37 in the photo sitting on top of it.

The gamers in the hobby don't seem to give a damn to learn about the TVs that came before the Atari 2600 even if some of those sets (not the TV-37 though) are worth more than their car...

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I got one of these Great Picture, & Awesome Sound too!

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Yeah, I watched that one. I love how he tried to talk to someone at Sony and they ghosted him.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sony is a little irritated that some random kid from the US ended up with something that should be in the Sony museum.

Suppose that it's their fault for not being a little more proactive about it, but honestly it's pretty awful that something like that is in the hands of a random hobbyist and not in a museum.

There are hundreds maybe thousands of museum worthy sets that aren't in museums. As long as their owners appreciate what they are and are preserving them then it's fine if they aren't in museums.... Better someone is appreciating them than they end up scrapped or rotting in the back room of a museum that won't display them (you'd be surprised how many interesting things museums have that they don't or only rarely display).

That's an absurd thing to say. Museums have collections that don't all have a place out on the floor constantly. That's how museums work and is normal. Exhibits and works are rotated in and out to highlight different parts of the collection.

Museums are tasked with storing and preserving history and art for as long as possible for future generations. It is overly dramatic to say that undisplayed exhibits are "rotting in the back room" like they are locking stuff up in some Indiana Jones style government warehouse.

To be fair to Tom's point here;

With a set as rare as this one is, it should never be anywhere but "on display" if it were to be in a museum. From my limited reading/research when I read this thread and then found the UTube vid in a search, it'd take a pretty rare specimen indeed to upstage this one in the competition for a museum's display space.

Anyway, I didn't post the vid to start a dustup, the OP (Bottom1) posted a request for information as to whether any of these sets still survive, and I obliged the request with what I found :thmbsp:

As opposed to being in private hands and only ever getting seen in person by a handful of people before it gets used up?

I disagree. While I do think things are supposed to be used and enjoyed, this is a one of kind thing and needs to be preserved.

What I was objecting to was Tom's characterization of museums as being black hole that rot away artifacts. That couldn't be further from the truth. The whole purpose of museums is to preserve things by employing professionals to conserve and store things correctly. Exhibits are sometimes kept on basically permanent display, but they aren't always.

One good example of such a place is the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. This is the place that I first got to see many of the wonderful TVs and personal computers of history. It is an awe-inspiring and inspirational place for me and many people who became excited to learn about technology and media.

https://movingimage.org/

Nope.


Speaking from 20 years of computer collecting there are a lot of places that declare themselves as museums where the actual exhibit hall is tiny compared to the long-term storage. Some places do properly photograph, catalog and store their items. Others are black holes for machines that were found/donated, you get a few photos but then and are never seen again, or worse, the donations through poor paperwork are sold when the museum closes (the Living Computer Museum) and the items disappear into the shadows of the new private owner.
Likewise I am aware of museums who refuse to do any preventative maintenance even for static displays, either because modern technology somewhat conflicts with existing policy for handling artifacts or because the removal of volatile components would devalue the item. The Smithsonian is guilty of this.

I can absolutely see the largest known CRT on the planet doing that. I know systems that were selectively stolen and have never been seen again.