TV Buying Guide-Part 1: CRT Televisions

Welcome to my guide to buying consumer electronics. To begin with, I will look at a gadget that takes pride of place in our drawing rooms: the humble television. Over the next few posts, I intend to give you a short introduction to the different kinds of televisions available in the market: CRT, LCD, Plasma, DLP and Front Projection TVs

The cathode ray tube has been the basic television technology for the last 80 years and gets its name from the cathode rays emitted by a heated cathode inside a vacuum tube at the rear end of the unit.

Though it is used mostly in plain-vanilla TV’s, high-end CRT models deliver surprisingly good quality; even better in some ways than fancier, more expensive technologies like LCD and Plasma. CRT models are especially good at black levels (the quality of black and other very dark colours in the picture).

They look good from any angle which means that several people sitting in different places can enjoy the picture. They have excellent brightness and can be enjoyed in a well-lit room.

They do have some disadvantages: primarily their large size and weight which means that models can weight around 85 kg and require two men to lift. They are also limited in screen-size and you don’t get the enormous screens that are possible with plasma. Still, even high-end CRT models are lower-priced than comparable LCDs and plasmas and given their excellent picture quality, they are a great buy if you have the space for them.

Next post: LCD

Technorati Tags
Television | CRT | Plasma