This is the question that Chi-Tien Lui has built his life around, and one that few people are so well equipped to answer. When Lui started CTL Electronics in , he and his customers were working in the vanguard of film and video.
He had learned to fix TVs as a teenager in Taiwan, and he came to America working as an electrician in the merchant marines. He opened his shop just after Sony released its first Portapak system, a comparatively tiny video camera that attracted artists like Andy Warhol and Nam June Paik, the Korean-born father of video art.
Paik and others came to CTL for help with their work, and as their installations aged, shaping the future of media became less important than preserving its past. CRTs are tough pieces of hardware, but as they age, plenty of things can go wrong. The electron gun can weaken, giving screens a dim, yellowish tinge. An electrical transformer can blow out. The phosphor can burn away unevenly, leaving permanent, ghostly outlines of images behind.
Lui works with a German engineer who helps refurbish tubes — by installing a new electron gun to fix yellowing, for example. Much of his work involves sifting through the vast but shrinking pool of CRT detritus.
He scours eBay for old TVs and parts, snapping them up in bulk, and hopes that most of them will work when they arrive. He gestures toward a sizable Sony Trinitron, one of his prize finds.
Certain TVs, everybody wanted to grab. Getting rid of the broken or unwanted CRTs, though, is a nightmare. The tubes contain toxic metals that could leach into a dump site, and 18 states specifically ban sending them to landfills. When CRTs were still being made, that was a useful resource, but recyclers have struggled to find other uses.
Companies could once export the tubes abroad, but as LCDs become more commonplace, CRTs are becoming less and less attractive. A lawsuit last year targeted a former partner of Recycletronics, which kept a staggering million pounds of glass in two Ohio warehouses. A EPA-commissioned report estimated that over million CRT televisions not counting computer monitors had been sold in the US since ; the average CRT was used for 11 years and kept in storage long after that.
Nulife, a company that legitimately smelted down old tubes for commercial sale, was ordered to scrap its backlog of glass after failing regulatory checks. It pulled out of the US market last year.
Aging televisions will eventually stop feeling merely old and start feeling vintage. But people may start thinking more carefully about how to maintain or donate them, rather than just throwing them away — something that would be good for both preservationists and the environment. For now, Lui sees the bright side of our nearly century-long love affair with CRTs. In the meantime, he has no intention of moving into the world of repairing flatscreens.
The new generation of electronics, he says, is fundamentally different from the old one. You could go to a factory training program and learn how to repair a CRT. But when it comes to actually watching television, Lui is less nostalgic. Across from the grid of Palladium monitors, he shows off a Chinese TV station playing on a massive screen above his desk. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
CRT TVs were also bulky because the electron guns that fire electrons at the inside of the screen need a certain angle of attack to work properly. Remember Me. Home Gaming. Reading Time: 8 mins read. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. Also, Will CRT make a comeback? Is plasma better than CRT?
Tags: crt tv smash. Share Tweet Pin Next Post How do I fix error 0x? Related Posts. How many GB is Fortnite ? Who is the hardest Cuphead boss? Who is the best DC villain? Next Post. Discussion about this post. Trending Comments Latest. Who is the weakest avenger? CRT material and process technologies are common to the vacuum tube industry as a whole, which continues to serve many applications across a wide variety of industries.
These include:. There are many advantages of CRTs, and one major one is the fact that CRTs use tried-and-true technology that has been in successful application for many decades.
The biggest maintenance upkeep needed throughout the life of your CRT is refreshing the phosphor coating. The phosphor coating determines the brightness, color, and persistence of the illumination, and various types are available depending on your needs. For example, to best see brief, fleeting events, a long persistence phosphor is recommended. For events that are fast and repetitive, or high frequency, a short-persistence phosphor is generally preferred.
Over time, phosphors wear down and lose some of the properties that make them functional. There are around 50 different phosphors available for your CRT, ask us which ones are best for your application.
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