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Originally Posted by blue_lateral
The original 25" rectangular tubes from the 60's became "23v" when the viewable area law came about. New 21" roundie tubes became "19v" Still the same tubes. In the 70's they came out with "25v" tubes, and called them 25" sets again. They were the same size as "23v" tubes, but with squarer corners. A modern 27" has even squarer corners than a "25v" from the 70's.
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Yep! I would think all of those would produce essentially the same size picture. Same goes with the 18V, 19V, and 20V progression of rectangular sizes that Andy mentioned. Even 13V rounded-corner rectangles have became 14V square-cornered rectangles. Somewhere in my archive of old
Consumer Reports magazines there's a diagram they published that showed the progression (up to that time) of TV picture shapes; I think it accompanied their first review of the then-new 23" B&W consoles in the early '60's. [The 23" B&W rectangular CRTs had less-rounded corners than the 21" rectangulars that they replaced, much like the 25V versus 23V rectangular color tubes. At about the same time, the 17" size common in B&W portables was replaced with the 19" (the 'old' 19" size; this was later replaced with a 'new' 19" (19V) size about the time the "visible area only" rule came into play). ]
BTW, does anyone know when the first TVs with flat screens were introduced..? Zenith had those *gorgeous* 14" FTM (Flat Tension Mask) computer monitors back in the late 80's (those have to be about the *best* fixed-freq 640x480 color VGA monitors ever!), but as far as I know, Zenith never made a TV using those tubes. [It would have made for a hideously expensive 14" color TV at that!] Also, while the face of the tube on those monitors is ruler flat, it looks like the phosphor surface on the inside those monitors isn't quite flat, but just slightly concave (!). The first time I saw one of those back when they came out, I figured it was an optical illusion just becuase I was used to seeing curved-face CRTs, but even today those Zenith FTMs still look slightly concave to me.
Then there's this cute li'l Magnavox (Philips) 14" color TV that I found at a thrift store several months ago. It was made in 1987, and has a square-cornered CRT with a face that is pretty near flat, but not quite. It's much flatter than a typical 27" CRT, but that might be in part just because it's a smaller tube. [This set appears to be a sort of "fashion-design" cube-shaped portable; the cabinet is made of salmon-colored plastic with black trim, has a green LED display for the channel indicator, and has a full-function remote that tucks away into a pop-up storage well on the top of the set. I think it's even cuter than those Zenith 9" cube sets that were available in various colors.]