The $10,000 Trinitron

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

No matter how good this TV was in 1981, the technology was still limited to 480i. I'm not sure if 480p was even possible at the time. When DVDs were introduced in 1996, they were still 480i.

No matter how high-tech the TV claimed to be, it still had the same fundamental limitations.

The computers that existed in the early 1980s generally output a 240p signal, although a few machines had options for higher resolutions.

In the 1990s, a friend of my mother's was showing off her 33-inch CRT TV. She asked me how much I thought it cost. I correctly guessed $3,000. Soon, however, that expensive TV would become obsolete as HDTV came along. Some of the final CRT televisions could accept an HD signal before flat-screen TVs became common.

In my final years in Utah, I saw someone giving away a 33-inch TV on the curb. I thought maybe I could use it as a video game display. It was so heavy—probably around 150 pounds—that a friend and I nearly killed ourselves trying to lift it together. I eventually had to give it away before I moved.

Shortly after arriving in Indiana, I saw another 33-inch TV sitting on a curb. I convinced the owner to haul it to my house. Again, I wanted to use it as a video game display, but I eventually gave it away. A young couple wanted it for their son's video game system.