Back in the day, I had a direct-projection version of one of those, made by Sony. In order to maintain proper focus and alignment of the three tubes, it came with a special screen that was slightly curved. It had no focus adjustment – you simply put the screen at a precisely measured distance from the projector. I don’t remember the exact size of the screen but it was big by the standards of the day – maybe 5 feet diagonal. By happy coincidence, I got it at just about the same time that pay-TV started and spent many happy hours watching movies on the big screen.
I don’t recall any issues with brightness or convergence but I only had it for a fairly short while. It was from one of those fancy-shmancy A/V stores that let you take things home on trial, and I eventually decided it wouldn’t be practical in the long run and exchanged it for a big conventional Sony Trinitron TV. And, reminiscing about the good ol’ days, the TV screen size I wanted was 27", which not only was the biggest Trinitron that Sony made, but was only available in the form of a large console. It was quite an elegant piece of furniture and looked very similar to this:
Yeah, that Sony was the Cadillac of TVs. In the 70’s and early 80’s, if you had a 27" Trinitron you were the AV king. Bigget CRTs showed up later. None looked as good as the Trinitrons, though.
Both my brother and my parents had 35" CRT televisions in the early 21st century. My brother’s set was a free-standing console while my parents’ set was sitting on a TV cart. When we eventually bought my parents a new flatscreen set, I insisted on buying it from Best Buy, as part of the deal was they would remove the old thing, which weighed something like 300 pounds.
I still have a couple of old large CRT TVs sitting in a back room because of the difficulty of disposing of them. More modern TVs, though, so none of the childhood satisfaction of crunching vacuums tubes with a hammer. (Except for the display itself, of course.)
If you do buy a VR headset I would strongly recommend the Quest 3, great value for money and perhaps the most developed VR app ecosystem right now.
Would it work as a TV replacement? Depends on you and your long-term comfort level with a VR headset. Personally I enjoy watching the Youtube videos on my Quest 2 but haven’t really used it for watching full movies though it’s quite possible.
This is an excellent Youtube VR channel focussed on travel videos which I have really enjoyed. If you buy a Quest it has an app called Oculus TV which has a bunch of VR videos some of which are amazing: e.g. a series of VR Nature videos narrated by David Attenborough.
Thanks for the content recommendations. That’s an area I’m curious about independent of the plain TV-watching. But have no great sources identified yet.
Yeah, my direct-view last tube TV was a 35-inch Mitsubishi I think. I paid about $2700 from my winnings on Jeopardy in 1991. It weighed a ton. I forget how I got rid of it.
Then I moved to a 50-something-inch three-tube rear-projection TV. I gave that away to my niece and got my first flat-screen, a Panasonic plasma, I think.
My most recent is a Sony 77-inch 4K HDR LED that I picked up refurbed for only $800. Less than one-third the (unadjusted) price, a tenth the weight, 4.5 times the screen area, and 20 times the pixels of the 35-inch tube.
