Westinghouse K840CK15 Restoration

[Jeffhs]

Time marches on. CRTs were good in their day, but that day has passed. Now we have flat panel TVs which, of course, have made CRT televisions obsolete, except for collectors. Certainly, it is possible to use a converter box or an external DTV tuner with an older TV, and they do work well for what they are, but the picture these devices will produce on a 50+ year-old TV will not be anywhere nearly as good as that shown on a modern HDTV. The older sets were built for the North American NTSC television standard, which was a lot less demanding than the modern ATSC standard; that is, it is certainly possible, as I mentioned, to use an external converter box or DTV tuner to allow an older set to display ATSC signals, but the technology is so far out of date (with older televisions) that the only real advantage to using a DTV converter on these sets, IMHO, is to prove that ATSC can be displayed on such TVs. With new flat-panel HDTVs being so inexpensive (I don't like to say cheap) these days, it is actually, again IMHO, better to replace an old NTSC-standard television with a new, up-to-date flat screen. I did just that very shortly after the local TV stations in my area near Cleveland started telecasting in ATSC HD, was very favorably impressed with the improvement in picture quality and, very honestly, I would not go back to NTSC even if I could, or wanted to. The picture shown on my 32-inch Insignia TV on every station I receive here on Spectrum streaming cable service runs rings around the pictures I grew up seeing on TV before DTV, even though I was almost dead-set against getting a new TV at first, since I don't adjust to change easily.

Now that I have an HDTV (32 inches) with a picture even larger than the last 23-inch NTSC b&w TV I had in the '70s (a 1963 Zenith console, not to mention the 19-inch CRT sets I've owned over the years), again, I would not even think of going back to NTSC or CRT televisions, even if it were possible to do so. That is, working with NTSC TV standards is good for the experience and for the satisfaction of restoring older TVs to working order, but most folks outside VK are much better off just scrapping the old TV when it quits and replacing it with a new HDTV, again since new flat screens, even large ones (under 60 inches), have come down in price drastically from what they formerly sold for; that is, a 70-inch HDTV still costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $600, with larger ones costing much more, but TVs under 60 inches, as I said, are selling to most folks much better, due of course to their lower prices.

BTW, I don't see the sense in having a 60+-inch flat screen, unless the TV will be a status symbol (!). Sixty-inch and larger TVs are good for theaters and such, but they are, IMHO, much too much TV for the average home, unless the living room or family room is incredibly large.