neat magnavox

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Didn't sometime around 1958-59 they started offering more "Rectangular" CRTs in B/W TVs ?

I believe it was in the early 1960s that round CRTs were being replaced by rectangular tubes, with the switchover being completed in its entirety by 1966; however, I knew of very few b&w sets with round tubes, and those I was aware of had been made in the early 1950s. (I once had a Majestic chassis, 1951 model IIRC, with a 16GP4 CRT.)

The first color TVs had round tubes, but again, by the mid-'60s they had transitioned to rectangular tubes. I think this was a smart move on the part of TV manufacturers, as the round screen made a lot of TV programming look unnatural, IMHO, especially since the picture did not fill the entire screen (the CRT mask on the cabinet masked off the part of the screen the picture did not fill, although the resulting picture did not look natural, again IMHO). The rectangular tube is much better suited for TV viewing, as it is shaped like a movie screen.

Today's flat screens make use of this design as well (every FS TV I've ever seen has had a perfectly rectangular screen), but again, the picture often doesn't fill the screen vertically (due to the program having been broadcast or filmed/taped in 4:3 aspect ratio and being viewed as 16:9), requiring the use of the "zoom" button on the remote to fill it in. The linearity of the picture often suffers when the picture is zoomed in, and the small network "bugs" at the lower right or left corner of the picture almost always get hidden behind the mask.