Sony SL-MV1, SL-B5 - 1985
Portable Betamax VTR combo unit.
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Panasonic AG-500
Panasonic AG-550/560
Reading on Fudoh’s Shmup-forum CRT thread, these are refered to as “presenters” and perhaps primary intent was commercial display, have some built in looping functionality? Some talk of lack of record functionality intentional to discourage theft, but the 550/560 model can indeed record.
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BeoVision Avant Series - 1995
These early Avants are super neat early SD 16:9 curved glass displays. Built in VHS for good measure, motorized rotating base. They also produced later flat-screen CRT versions, DVD.
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I saw these in town a few weeks ago. I don’t know how much they cost or what make they are but they are cool.
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Sony PVM-20S1WE -1997
You see the true bigboy D-series super high spec widescreen flat-glass BVMs talked about often, but I had never heard of this curved-tube ~300 TVL 16:9 PVM before. Neat.
Panasonic W32D5F
Panasonic W25R4L
Panasonic 36" 16:9 ??
Panasonic 24DX1
Panasonic also has a range of consumer 16:9 curved glass CRTs. All the listings seem to be from UK/Europe, not sure if these were ever sold in the US.
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Mitsubishi AM-4201R
Possibly the biggest direct-view CRT ever produced? Makes that D24 there look real cute. Sony did some ~40" tubes, including the later 4:3 HD XBR you can find floating around your local Craigslist for free (+ the cost of back surgery).
Well, this multiscan behemoth seems to beat it out at least nominally. Look at that: 440lbs. I don’t think there are verifiable photos of this IRL? Retailed for $40k in 1990 money. Can this be the one true king?
Nope, apparently the biggest tube ever made was Sony’s 45" viewable JDM-only KX-45ED1. Absolute unit.
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lots of these are charming as hell but looking at them also leaves me real relieved to know i’ve got a huge thin flat clean hdtv in the other room. the thought of watching a film on any of these makes me anxious. i guess old tvs are just for videogames?
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thread has me nostalgic for the ~32" (possibly larger?) mitsubishi with 2 rgb scart inputs my uncle gave me when i was a teenager, dreamcast looked so fuckin’ good
i have no idea how we moved it
http://raytube.tumblr.com/ good tumblr
I am not a strong boy but I had to use a hydraulic jack, and a v.carefully devised lifting plan that v.smartly involved damaging a window sill, to get my monitor onto its current stand. Also, when moving into our current place a mover guy fucked up his finger while putting it down.
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I don’t understand the bases of these things. All the 32"+ CRTs I owned still had thin plastic rails on the bases that loved to pinch fingers and scrape tables, instead of the large flat foam-covered surface that modern flatscreens have. Is that structure unfeasible at this weight?
The 32" flatscreen CRT (2006 model) I brought to the meetup had indents in the top, so it’s manageable to carry by resting it against your stomach.
Well, manageable-ish.
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Sony Qualia 015
In 2003 Sony released a weirdo floor sitting 36" high-end fashion HD CRT for $11,000.
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Sony HDM-3830
Sony’s Late-80s(?) push into proto-HD, HDVS/1035i, 400+lb 38" 16:9 CRT. Attached is a photo of a smaller(?) HDVS monitor running HI-TEN Bomberman in 1993, a widescreen HD version of Bomberman developed for the “Tetsujin” prototype hardware (which according to this article later became the basis of the PC-FX but I am not fact checking that)
Sony first demonstrated a wideband analog video HDTV capable video camera, monitor and video tape recorder (VTR) in April 1981 at an international meeting of television engineers in Algiers. The HDVS range was launched in April 1984, with the HDC-100 camera, HDV-1000 video recorder, with its companion HDT-1000 processor/TBC, and HDS-1000 video switcher all working in the 1125-line component video format with interlaced video and a 5:3 aspect ratio.
The helical scan VTR (the HDV-100) used magnetic tape similar to 1" type C videotape for analog recording. Sony in 1988 unveiled a new HDVS digital line, including a reel-to-reel digital recording VTR (the HDD-1000) that used digital signals between the machines for dubbing but the primary I/O remained analog signals. The large unit was housed in a 1-inch reel-to-reel transport, and because of the high tape speed needed, had a limit of 1-hour per reel. Sony, owner of Columbia Pictures/Tri-Star, would start to archive feature films on this format, requiring an average of two reels per movie. There was also a portable videocassette recorder (the HDV-10) for the HDVS system, using the “UniHi” format of videocassette using 3/4" wide tape. The transport housing similar in appearance to Sony’s D1/D2 Standard Definition Digital VTRs, but recorded analog HD. The small cassette size limited recording time.
Japan had the earliest working HDTV system, with design efforts going back to 1979. The country began broadcasting wideband analog high-definition video signals in the late 1980s using an interlaced resolution of 1035 or 1080-lines active (1035i) or 1125-lines total supported by the Sony HDVS line of equipment.
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Sony KX-32HV50 aka Profeel 16x9 - 1997
Wow check out that touch strip control. Can’t figure out if this will do 15khz natively? Looks real cool though. This guy’s youtube channel is great a true degenerate.
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the post about the Mitsubishi set is why if I go crazy and drop some money on a PVM or other pro CRT, it’s not gonna be bigger than 14 in
as it is, the 8 in PVM I have on my desk-table is already perfect and cute enough, but it only does composite, so 
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This tech is beautiful.
I had a Sony Trinitron HD-CRT and still feel bad about selling it to some rando on Craigslist instead of to someone with old consoles.
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBJRCv0tNMQ2rnCm7VKYOkA
RGB Rob. Another great channel.
