In 2000, at around the point when most well off people were transitioning to flat panel TVs, I inherited a large 32" CRT from a friend of mine. They were upgrading and wanted to get rid of their old CRT.

I said I'd take it and use it for my treadmill so I could watch TV while I walked.

The thing weighed 100lbs!!!! I had to build a reinforced stand to lift it up in the air and I nearly killed myself hoisting it up and having it nearly fall on me multiple times! And the thing took up so much room ... I think it occupied almost the same amount of floor space as the treadmill.

The dangerous thing about these things is that they were big and lopsided ... it's like lifting a huge kettle ball but all the weight of the ball is only on one side and the rest of it is empty air. It was really easy to just drop the thing because you lost balance with it. Or even worse, throw your back and some muscle because you were trying to save it from falling over while you held it.

but did you ever play 4-player Mariokart64 on a...

I once had a 25" TV kind of... "un-skin" itself. It slid off of a hand-truck by accident, and while falling a whole five inches to the ground, the sheer weight and mass of the tube pushed itself through the brittle plastic housing of the set. What was left was a pile of plastic shrapnel and circuit boards, with a fully intact tube sitting atop it. It was only ten years old at the time, and I think it was either bad plastic or it lived its life in a sunny spot, letting UV destroy the material.

TV tube glass is actually surprisingly robust along the front and sides, despite containing a vacuum. It's the neck that you have to be careful with. One false move and it'll snap, destroying the whole thing.

A friend in college was given a free CRT airport monitor. It was something close to 40" and weighed at least 500lbs. It took 4 of us to very angrily move it to his upstairs room.

“You mean I get this 21” monitor for free if I can carry it down five flights to my car?! Thanks mister!” - Me as a child

I got PTSD from dragging one of those fuckers up three flights of stairs, back in the 80s. Had a good job, single, decided to splurge on a massive 27 incher, or whatever it was back then, without ever considering the logistics of such an operation. A lot of Yosemite Sam-style muttering that day, let me tell you.

I got all you losers beat:

• Console with RCA connectors or ant>RCA adapter
• Plugged into the video-in adapter on my camcorder
• Hooked up via firewire 400 to my sister's 2000 iMac
• Running in cracked video editing software
• Didn't know how to resize the windows, so my game only took up about 20% of the CRT

I bet y'all can't even handle how jealous you are of my sweaty ass being cooked by humming electronics while failing levels over and over due to unnecessary latency.

I used this setup when I was grounded, which was frequent. Which also meant that I had to be really quick-like in setup and teardown and always had to pack everything back up when I was finished/heard the garage door open, to hide the evidence. My dad would check the temperatures of all the TVs around the house to make sure I wasn't using them, but I was allowed to use the computer for homework and video editing.

I had a friend in the '90s who moved into a duplex and found that the previous tenant had cut into the separating wall and tied a splitter into the neighbor's cable line. So he had free cable until the day the cable went out and he called the cable company to complain.

I had one of the first hdtvs. Well it was HDTV Ready I think it was marketed as. It was essentially just a 36in 800x600 crt monitor. Had to pair it with a special directv receiver. I think it was a RCA MM36110 and the damn thing weighed nearly 200 lbs. Needless to say I’m pretty sure I left in the house I sold because it was just too damn heavy. I have a 55inch TV that feels like a toy compared to it.

https://dn721608.ca.archive.org/0/items/manualsbase-id-145505/145505.pdf

Going to LAN party with cathodic tube monitors T.T

Yep that and massive bulky air conditioners the bane of my young back.

I just bought RGB to VGA adapters for my consoles instead (and S-Video to VGA for the earlier 90s consoles that didn't support RGB/VGA without a mod chip).

It was a lot easier to haul a 19" CRT monitor over a 25" CRT TV, due to not only being smaller, but having fewer circuitry as well since you don't need a tuner. The image was a lot sharper too for obvious reasons.

Speaking of which, some of my best memories as young adult involved bringing my XBOX over to my cousins' house, borrowing my aunt's monitor, and bringing it into the living room for some 6-player Halo action. All you needed was two consoles, two copies of the game, two screens, and an ethernet switch—or just a crossover cable if you were playing offline (since wifi on consoles wasn't a thing yet). Four of us would play on the monitor, and the other two cousins would share the TV (cause again the monitor could put out a higher resolution than the TV, so it was better to have the most people on the monitor instead of splitting it 3v3).

It was a lot easier to coordinate and kick ass in online matches, when the team is all in the same room and can see each other's screens. It was the best time of my life and I miss it dearly. I've never had that much fun in a video game since.

Sony Trinitron. Heaviest fucking TV I've ever encountered.

I have a piece of shit Sony TV. I rolled it up the stairs when I was 16, it has only been removed from it's wheeled table a week ago I am now 26. These so so bitches weigh a lot.

I found 3 crts in my attic when I moved into my house and almost died bringing them down the ladder

Every other time you dropped it but nothing ever happened to it, and it’s still in your parents basement collecting dust.

I had one of the last Bravia cathode rays made. It was 38" and colossal. The move from one 3rd floor apartment to another 3rd floor apartment (no elevator in either case) convinced me to switch. I gave it away to an old buddy who thought I was exaggerating when I said bring 3 people.

Yeah, that wasn't allowed. I had a portable at one point, and it got like two channels...

Does anyone want to talk about the price is right?

I had a CRT in college (2008-ish) that looked pretty much identical to this. More than 32", maybe 36"? It was 720i and had component inputs, no HDMI. Lots of Smash Bros (N64) and Halo 3 was played on it. Good times.

Customer not understanding the difference between a triplex and a splitter.