I have a 43-inch LCD monitor and even that's unwieldy (but still manageable by one man). A 43-inch CRT is the kind if equipment whose weight, bulk, and power draw warrant a brown M&Ms clause in a band's performance contract.

One year ago today

Not cookie gated for me. You can easily read the content without interacting with the cookie dialog.

I had the 36" widescreen and I don't remember any issue with the power requirements, but I just calculated the screen area difference. The 43" 4:3 is 60% more area and the 45" 4:3 is 75% more area, so they are vastly bigger screens.

Also ...

> And news articles in 1990 said Sony dealers would not allow any bickering. [...] no discounts.

... that's probably "dickering", and an amusing typo. ("Hey, you can't squabble here!")

Industrially, it's very nearly a completely lost tech.

Last I heard the only new-production of electron guns for CRTs was one singular source in Russia, but that was before the war started.

Even preservation of already-manufactured CRTs is difficult.

The last CRT rebuilder in France closed years ago. Some folks purchased some of the equipment and tried to get it set up at the Vintage Television Museum in Columbus, Ohio, but ultimately failed. It's in the care of a dude in Maryland now but is not in production status.

AFAICT, the singular remaining entity presently capable of working on existing picture tubes is Colorvac, in Germany: https://colorvac.de/service/

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In the unlikely event that new CRT production ever ramps up again, it will be a lot like the reboot of Polaroid film was: So much institutional knowledge will have simply evaporated that even though the new product works, it will never work exactly the same as it once did.

Not true, you can make one yourself by hand if you want to, it just won't be very high quality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PzoAReMXOE

If you want a good one, you'll need the materials, machines and skills to make good ones. Probably not too likely unless you like building factories for fun and no profit.

I think it’s more that the production lines that existed to build them in volume have all been long dismantled, so it would be prohibitively expensive and all the people involved would be doing it for the first time.

The tubes start generating X-rays above 5kV or whatever(some docs say 15kV), and you need leaded(literally Pb melted in) glass for the screen to block it, unless you could find a substitute material(Sn nanoparticles or something) or you're fine with <5kV brightness for the tube whatever that amounts to. So you can't pitch it as a nicely eco friendly product, and the glass can't be easily recycled(Pb removed from glass).

Otherwise they're not THAT complicated. They're a lot like lightbulbs. Certainly not as exotic as LCDs.