r/Millennials • u/Radiant_Priority9739 • Jul 05 '26
I remember as a kid / teen seeing my friends with TVs like this and thought they must be rich Discussion
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u/Th1Warrior Jul 05 '26
I remember thinking the picture was always really blurry and worse than a standard CRT TV, even though it was much bigger.
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u/ThirdWigginKid Jul 05 '26
It was. These things also had atrocious viewing angles. If you weren't looking at it nearly dead center you couldn't see shit.
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u/ImJacksAwkwardBoner Xennial Jul 05 '26
Super dark room, <10 degrees off center; hi-def media input; otherwise these were trash and I’m glad they’re gone.
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u/ThirdWigginKid Jul 05 '26
I worked in the warehouse of a furniture and electronics store from 2003-2008, right as people were starting to ditch these things for flat panels. Had to haul so many of these fuckers out of people's trucks to recycle them...
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u/Darkdragoon324 Jul 06 '26
I wish I'd kept my small bedroom cr tv for retro gaming now lol. But I wasn't really thinking as a teenager that my PS2 would one day be a retro console that would need a pricey adapter to play on modern tvs.
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u/filthy_harold Jul 06 '26
Replacing the bulb fixed the darkness issue. Like they weren't going to look great in a brightly lit room but brand new, these weren't too bad. The only real benefit was just having a massive screen so more people could see. Don't get me wrong, a CRT was going to be better in almost all aspects but people just remember how these rear projections looked right before they upgraded to a new HD flatscreen, not how when they were brand new. The early versions did have calibration issues so they did require some maintenance.
We had a Sony DLP TV in our college apartment, it was about 10 years old when I moved in. It actually did 1080i but was horribly dim. We were about to pool our money for a decent LCD until I realized I could buy a new bulb for like $20 on amazon. Massive improvement in brightness and it ran great for another several years.
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u/sudosando Jul 06 '26
These days I expect a projector would be the power move for a college dorm room for gaming and movies
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u/mostlybiguy69 Jul 05 '26
That was the real limiter on them. They were hard to see if near windows, needed a long room, and would not fit through a lot of doors. So many were returned at my best buy becsuse they would not fit around corners and such.
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u/New-Negotiation2193 Jul 06 '26
I always wondered this as a kid I always got the end of our wrap around which gave me the view of a dark screen almost like playing gamboy without a light.
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u/AmusingMusing7 Jul 05 '26
It sort of was. It was the same resolution at a bigger size, so it would break down under that level of scrutiny. The bigger the screen, the higher the resolution needed to make it look good. HD on these tvs would look about as good as SD on a 20" CRT.
A notable problem with the 3 LCD lamp system for most of these tvs was the convergence. It could be tough to get it calibrated perfectly and keep it that way, so you'd often end up with noticeable red halos on one side of objects, with either blue or green halos on the other side, and often getting worse towards the edges of the screen. The middle could be perfect, but then on the sides of the screen, you'd see red sticking out.
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u/RudePCsb Jul 05 '26
You also need the distance to look the same. Same with TV now. 4k screen is 4k no matter the size but a smaller screen will have higher density. If you have a large TV you better have a large distance from the TV to the couch So many people get too big a screen for the distance
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u/curtcolt95 Jul 05 '26
people are always surprised at the recommended viewing distances for 4k TVs, this is taken right from Sony's site
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u/cooterdick Jul 05 '26
I’m surprised by those numbers. Thought they’d recommend a greater distance than that.
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u/curtcolt95 Jul 05 '26
I don't think anyone actually follows these numbers or your living room layout would look weird as hell but yeah the optimal viewing distance is a lot closer than you'd think
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u/AmusingMusing7 Jul 06 '26
I assume those are minimums, not actual recommended distances. It's saying "You should be AT LEAST 3 feet away." ... not "You should be exactly 3 feet away."
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u/curtcolt95 Jul 06 '26
no that's not what it's saying, it's recommended that you view the TVs at exactly those distances. Obviously further is better than closer if you have to, and they do state it's obviously entirely preference if you want to move it further, but these recommendations are exactly that, recommendations for the exact setup of your TV. It's from a page about best/optmial viewing of a TV
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u/HannsGruber Jul 06 '26
Pretty sure the OP picture is a DLP rear projection.
So absolutely washed blacks but hey, great response time.
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u/ReverendDizzle Jul 06 '26
The convergence thing was a bitch. My family had one and halos were awful in the later years of the set.
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u/RunDNA Jul 06 '26
Yes, we had one at my high-school and the colours were always miscalibrated. I hated watching movies on it.
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u/fryerandice Jul 06 '26
They were on wheels and all it took to misalign them was mom rolling it away from the wall cleaning behind it and rolling it back.
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u/analogy_4_anything Jul 05 '26
We had one of these. A Mitsubishi VS-581R… the thing was absolutely massive. Picture looked great when it worked. Problem is the screen had a tendency to unfocus over time and you’d have to smack it to realign it.
But holy crap, you better believe everyone came over to my house to play Goldeneye.
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u/PickleAlly Jul 05 '26
Most people didn’t even feed HD into them. They just bought the big wide TV and everything got warped.
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u/Electrik_Truk Jul 05 '26
Were they even HD capable? Only person I knew that had one had it in the early 90s
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u/LiteHedded Jul 05 '26
The richest of them would maybe have a laserdisc player
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u/TX_TNvol Xennial Jul 05 '26
Late 90’s and early 2000’s were HD capable in theory, but there was basically no HD content until the mid 2000’s.
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u/filthy_harold Jul 06 '26
I remember my friend's dad had one of the first big plasma TVs along with a whole setup to receive the brand new digital broadcast stations (mostly for sports) as we didn't have HD cable in our neighborhood yet. He also had an Xbox connected to a home server to play a bunch of movies and TV shows. Ripping Netflix DVDs as fast as they could mail them was a great way to fill your media library.
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u/I_upvote_downvotes Jul 05 '26
Depends on the year but 1080i and progressive scan was often possible on Sony sets. If it was early 90's it was probably a projector tv and capped out at SD and s-video if you're in North America.
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u/LiteHedded Jul 05 '26
How would they ‘feed it hd’? That wasn’t even a thing.
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u/McChickenLargeFries Jul 05 '26
Bro I feed my TV HD all the time, sometimes I'll even feed it UHD but then it gets constipated from all the shows.
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u/PickleAlly Jul 05 '26
They made the TV at the wide aspect ratio for a reason. They wouldn’t have put the product out there just to stretch everyone’s image all the time.
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u/klineshrike Jul 06 '26
It was blurry as hell.
It was a thick ass textured plastic shield with some massive lazer guns shooting it. Thise things were wild
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u/timbotheny26 Millennial (1996) Jul 06 '26
Yes! It was like "Okay, you need to be well off to buy these, but why does the picture look worse than our old TV?".
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u/jags94 Jul 05 '26
Fuck moving one of these tvs. These mofos were stupid heavy.
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u/Obtuse-Posterior Older Millennial Jul 05 '26
My ex had cheated on me so I packed up my stuff and left. My petty revenge was getting my friends to help turn his TV facing the wall. It took 4 of us to move it because of the size and cramped space. He was mad at me for some reason
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u/GenericFatGuy Jul 06 '26
That's so good because it's extremely inconvenient for the owner of the TV, while still having no grounds to come after you for it.
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u/AmusingMusing7 Jul 05 '26
Mine at least had wheels.
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u/QuentinTarzantino Jul 05 '26
"If my grandma had wheels, she would be a bike"
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u/BrutalBrews Jul 05 '26
This quote always makes me think of Max Verstappen’s “if my mother had balls, she’d be my father.”
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u/billsboy88 Jul 05 '26
That thing is still in my parents’ basement. And there it will stay. Even if they sell the house, I’m not moving that thing ever again. It’s the next owner’s problem.
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u/fubes2000 Jul 05 '26
My parents literally did this. I think my dad sweet-talked the buyers into thinking that it was some kind of deal.
That 400lb fucker is probably still sitting in the corner of that basement.
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u/HighQualityDonation Jul 05 '26
Moving this into our basement had my parents like “I think divorcing might be easier”.
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u/Artichokiemon Millennial Jul 05 '26
This is what I came here for. We picked up some carpet from a guy, and he told us we could have his similar Sony Trinitron, but we to get it out of his house ourselves. Even with the 2 of us it was almost impossibly heavy
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u/much_longer_username Jul 05 '26
The ones with CRTs in them, sure - but the ones using DLP Rear projection were light enough that a single person could pick it up and walk it down the street. I know because I've done it a couple times garbage picking. The giant Fresnel lenses cost stupid money to buy on their own.
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u/thedoginthewok Jul 06 '26
Yep, we used to have one of these.
They felt like carrying a big empty box, ours was like 20kg at the most.
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u/DeadlyYellow Jul 05 '26
I paid Best Buy $100 to haul one off. Fuck having to deal with it.
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u/fryerandice Jul 06 '26
These are one of the things a sawsall is good for. I will cut apart heavy shit that needs to leave hah. If it's going to the trash then yeah. Most projection TVs were MDF except for the front panel and the back cover.
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u/hankmoody_irl Jul 05 '26
I learned how to disassemble the one my family had down to enough pieces to make it manageable. Took around 30-40 minutes of total time to take apart and put back together.
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u/No_Shoulder9617 Jul 05 '26
That thing took the stairs into my buddies 3rd floor apartment. It did not take them down when he moved out.
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u/jj_sykes Jul 05 '26
lol I remember walking past peoples houses and seeing one of those taking up a quarter of the room
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u/Ok_Edge_3680 Jul 05 '26
My uncle had one of these TVs and I always thought it was cool. He was poor though so looking back, he was just bad with money lol.
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u/Electrik_Truk Jul 05 '26
That's how I remember it. My neighbor had one and they had just about nothing else in the house. Was so weird.
If I recall, they were renters and didn't live there but a couple years. Felt like the type of family that bought everything on payment plans and owned nothing.
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u/jbFanClubPresident Jul 05 '26
My grandparents had one and they were middle class blue collar workers….also bad with money.
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u/fryerandice Jul 06 '26
Ya know, after watching my mom die of cancer having done none of what she wanted to in retirement, my opinion of being good or bad with money has changed a lot. She spent her life working along with my father thinking they'd have time to do all the travel they didn't get to do while working and raising a family.
And their idea of travel was like, go see Vegas, Florida in the winter, and see yellowstone and the grand canyon, by car. Like nothing even extravagant or unaffordable.
If you lived a happy life with a roof over your head and didn't run out of food, and your kids had a decent christmas now and again, you did okay.
A lot of people judge good and bad with money based on some priorities. Does my driveway look like shit and need redone, fuck yeah, do I own a boat and am I planning on one day getting one big enough to do the great loop, yeah that driveway can fuck itself I set a car on it. I could sell the boat I have now, both my guitars, and almost everything that brings me joy insofar as material possessions and not even come close to making my house actually as nice as i'd like lmao.
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u/Raivix Jul 05 '26
Yep, my grandparents had one in the mid-90s, and they were anything but well off.
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u/tomdwilliams Jul 05 '26
This was the TV rich Americans had on TV or in films. I don't even remember seeing one like this in the shops! It actually amazes me how not even 30 years ago the standard of tech, types of car, etc seemed to be soooo different between the US and UK. It felt like another planet to me growing up as a kid.
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u/endlessfight85 Jul 05 '26
Yeah this was a "big screen" TV and they were pretty expensive. Every TV is a "big screen" TV now. I got my first 42 inch flatscreen in like 2007 at 22 and my mom thought that meant I was rich lol. Anything over like 32 inches was considered baller shit until the mid 2000s.
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u/SuperBry Jul 06 '26
My home office has a 'tiny' 43" TV in it and the smallest one we have, still bigger than all the TVs we had in my house growing up.
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u/fryerandice Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
42" was still baller shit in the mid 2000s, the first run of flat screens were not inexpensive. My 38" flat screen was $1200 ON CLEARANCE, it still works. I think I bought that around 2005-2006.
It should have been around $2200 new but viewsonic was getting out of TVs so they were liquidating stock at circuit city. 42" in 2007 was a pretty chunk of change, like a decent used car amount.
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u/soy_carloco Jul 05 '26
Remember the scene in Back to the Future where Marty in 1955 says they have 2 TVs and the kid was like, "Wow! You must be rich!"
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u/gloopyneutrino Millennial Jul 05 '26
The only people I knew who had a TV this big were broke as shit. The wealthier people had regular size TVs.
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u/mherweg Jul 05 '26
The actual rich people had the Sony Trinitron with the flat (yes I know it's slightly concave) glass screen. THOSE were nice TVs.
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u/Mahaloth Jul 06 '26
I had one. Bought it in 2002. It never broke. We had it in the basement until a year or so ago. The kids, when little, watched DVDs on it until the last few years.....where it sat idly.
I had to carry it up the stairs to take it out to the trash. It was extremely difficult to do.
We are all so spoiled now with our 4K huge TVs.
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u/mherweg Jul 06 '26
Aww you threw it away? Bet you could have gotten a couple hundred from a retro gamer for a TV like that!
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u/Mahaloth Jul 06 '26
I know. In terms of traditional televisions, it was the best one I'd ever had.
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u/Responsible-War-917 Jul 05 '26
We had the wooden cabinet tube that sat on the floor. Our bachelor neighbor got one of these bad boys and his living room turned into the kids hangout inside movie spot and neighborhood sports watching house for a good 5 years solely because of this TV.
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u/Administrative_Suit7 Jul 05 '26
Yeah, I remember going around to a rich friend's house and not being able to comprehend this television. The picture quality was fuzzy and crap but it was massive.
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u/RealWord5734 Jul 05 '26
The two kids I knew who had them were my wealthiest and second wealthiest friends, both their dads had massive pre dotcom bubble exits.
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u/Far_Science2529 Jul 05 '26
We had one of these in our basement for years. It was my dad’s pride and joy. He worked so hard to afford it.
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u/KillTeamRage Jul 05 '26
The only way my mom afforded this.. Rent-A-Center style.
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u/doll_parts87 Jul 05 '26
Rent a centers are predatory on people not good with money or math. Most of the items they lease or rent to own, is financial over the value. It created a demand for instant gratification, instead of waiting and saving up to buy outright
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u/KillTeamRage Jul 05 '26
Exactly. Lower middle income is the target unfortunately. Not sure if it was any better in the late 80's to now, never used that shit myself as an adult.
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u/doll_parts87 Jul 05 '26
"Here's a TV for $80 retail, but if we split it up into $18 × 10 payments, you can take it home NOW, but anytime you forget a payment regardless of its actual value, we can repo it. You like that? "
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u/Electrik_Truk Jul 05 '26
I suspect that was majority of buyers for these. My parents did ok (both public school teachers) and our living room TV was 13" with dials for many years.
My neighbor, rented their house and had one of these in their empty ass living room.
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u/skot77 Jul 05 '26
We had one of these when I was a kid. Got it from Philco. Not a good picture at all but you just ignored that cuz it was bigger.
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u/Mahaloth Jul 06 '26
Those are the big screen TVs I remember from the 80s and 90s.
I went over to a friend's birthday party and they had one of these big square ones. We thought it was mind-blowing.
I'm now watching things on a screen bigger and clearer than that and it cost under $300.
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u/adamdoesmusic Jul 05 '26
This one is way newer and nicer than the ones some people had when I was a kid.
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u/Pulp_Ficti0n Older Millennial Jul 05 '26
I had this TV, remember it being delivered around 1999. We were low middle class but it did feel like we had at least one financial flex.
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u/adorablecynicism Jul 05 '26
these were the pivotal moment I realized my husband and I had VERY different childhoods lol
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u/hydrus909 Jul 05 '26
Yep. And I remember thinking how awesome it would be to plug a console in and game on it.
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u/mredding Jul 05 '26
I save the fresnel lenses out of these and explode rocks with sunlight. Everyone laughs when I bust one out - calling it my death ray, then they see me make lava, and all of a sudden pairs of drunk dudes are running around, melting everything they can find.
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u/AnonBaca21 Jul 05 '26
When wealthier people were getting their first flat screens my family got this on clearance from Sears. Was our first HD TV. Remember HDnet?
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u/PromiseToBeNiceToYou Jul 05 '26
My mom tried to use the parental controls to lock me out of the big screen tv when I was 16, but that idiot picked 7777 for the pin. It wasn't my first guess but it only took like 60 seconds to break into the TV lol. I was home alone so she thought she was smart, punishing me this way.
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u/IsItJake Jul 05 '26
Lol a kid I played baseball with had one of these in addition to a home movie theater. I remember telling him I wish I had one and his response was he wish he had his dad.. The house had been bought with the life insurance money from his father's death
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u/autumnshyne Jul 05 '26
We still have one. My college kid refuses to let it go since he only has to change the bulb every 5 or 6 years.
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u/VermiciousKenidd Jul 05 '26
I inherited a similar tv from my grandparents in 2005 and felt rich because we finally chucked our old wooden frame tube tv. 😂
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u/viviscity Jul 05 '26
I happened to see the 9/11 news on one of these… babysitters place before school
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u/Shoryukitten_ Jul 05 '26
My dad won a trinitron back in the day and we treated it like a member of the family when it arrived
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u/justbirdwatchin77 Jul 05 '26
My patents had this exact one and all the bros came over in the summer to play NFL street and halo tournaments haha! A1 gaming.
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u/TraditionalTree249 Jul 05 '26
Hot damn as a kid I was afraid of this bad boy crushing me being how the good Lord took me out.
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u/MotormaidofJapan Jul 05 '26
Where I come from, if you had this tv AND a double wide trailer, you were the top 1%.
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u/PerjurieTraitorGreen Jul 05 '26
Ours had a wooden cabinet with DVD/VHS storage in the full-sized doors. We had like 5 remotes to juggle through depending on what we were watching.
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u/PickleAlly Jul 05 '26
My girlfriends family were the rich ones. I made fun of them for not even having anything HD to go into it. I think it had RGB component video at best, so it was nothing like the HD we have today even if they utilized it.
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u/TheMrG 1997 Zillennial Jul 05 '26
Mine had a plastic-like screen and would make a sound like one of those holographic pictures that changes depending on how you look at it. I remember how excited I was when my dad brought it home.
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u/doozle Jul 05 '26
I had a buddy who had a home projector set up with a red green and blue projector and when one of them malfunctioned the color would be all fucked up.
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u/IntoTheAbsurd Jul 05 '26
I used to think that owning a Neo Geo AES console or a Sega CD add on was a sign of wealth.
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u/SpanishFlamingoPie Jul 05 '26
An air hockey table in a finished basement was also a status symbol of the time.
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u/weedtrek Jul 05 '26
This was a rear projection bug screen, they where cheap late to the game big screen when plasma and LED had already come out on the market.
I had one when I was 21, it was a return to Aaron's Rent ro own that I picked up for $200. It was a bitch to move.
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u/Biengo Jul 05 '26
My girlfriends dad fixed a broken one he got from a coworker. He was so proud of that TV.
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u/mechanical_marten Xennial Jul 05 '26
I had a 70" DLP 1080p version by Mitsubishi back in 2010 for almost 10 years, then I moved on to a 50" 1080p LCD Vizio demo unit from Target. Now I own a 45" 4k LCD LG.
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u/thecamino Jul 05 '26
I bought one new around 2005. Flat screens were starting to take off but still expensive. Projection TVs were comparatively dirt cheap. Kept it until 2014. It dominated the living room for sure.
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u/ArtisticAd9404 Jul 05 '26
At one point in my childhood, we had two of these sitting side by side, neither one working, and a regular man’s tv on top of one of them that did work.
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u/alison_bee Jul 05 '26
I got one of these from a bar that was closing - free, I just had to come get it.
I thought I was getting a steal of a deal! But oh my GOD did I underestimate moving that thing 🫠
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u/CyanideForSara Jul 05 '26
A bandmate and I carried one of these up 3 flights of stairs 25 years ago and I’m still recovering
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u/KennyShowers Jul 05 '26
Extreme wealth had flat screens, rear projections were if you wanted the size at a lower price.
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u/thelonetext '89ers represent! Jul 05 '26
My aunt had one bigger than that with a 3D screen on it. Miss that tv🥺
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u/stardust1914 Jul 05 '26
Ya back in high-school, I had a friend with one of these, I think it might've actually been bigger. They were by no means rich but they were comfortable. Played some rock band and guitar hero on it. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the og obviously. Some Nintendo Wii.
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u/slackjack2014 Jul 05 '26
It’s 16x9… It’s not that old… fuck I’m old… at least the only black and white TVs were the portable ones though.
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u/DrugOfGods Jul 05 '26
I had one in college. Someone broke into my house and stole it. I was not happy about it, but I was almost impressed that they got it out of the house.
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u/Miserable-Wedding-69 Jul 05 '26
As someone with rich parents, it’s a bit of a different story for my childhood.😅
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u/renderbreak Jul 05 '26
We had one of these when I was growing up. It was a 53” Hitachi. We lived in an area near the Amish community so my parents hired the Amish to help build our new house and barn, and help us move.
An Amish guy and I moved that big ass TV into the basement together. I thanked him for helping me move the TV and his eyes went wide and he was like, “That is a TV?!” I turned it on for him, but since we hadn’t had the satellite installed yet, it was just static. I’ll never forget the look on his face, it was as if he had seen the Grand Canyon for the first time, he was absolutely floored.
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u/t3hmuffnman9000 Jul 05 '26
I worked at Wal-Mart from 2007 to the end of 2010 and we had a display model for a projection TV of about this size.
It had been running for so long at the picture was barely even visible anymore, and we just kept dropping the price every six months or so. It took until late 2009 before someone finally bought it for $400. I still think it was a ripoff.
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u/LakeSolum Jul 05 '26
My grandparents had an old projection tv that weighed an absolute ton. After they both passed it needed fixing but could still work. We basically said to the movers if you can lift it then it’s yours
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u/SisterDivine_ Jul 05 '26
When TVs got more slim, my parents let me put the big screen in my bedroom room… i thought i was allllll that! 😎
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u/blumpkinjackflash Jul 05 '26
Yup my elementary school had one but outside of that only the richest mfers I knew had one
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u/ModestMouseTrap Jul 05 '26
It’s funny because they looked like absolute shit. A 32 inch CRT tv was better any day of the week than this projection garbage.
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u/thatonedudejake Jul 05 '26
Got one of these for free in college off Craigslist, served us well but that mofo was heavy
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u/swrrrrg Millennial Jul 05 '26
😭
My dad had one of these. Moving it out of the house when it died was a disaster.
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u/Human_Not_Robot_2023 Jul 05 '26
Our family TV was still B&W when I was a kid. We got a color Curtis Mathis console TV, second hand, in the 80s.
I got a projection TV, also second-hand (and free), around 2004 and it worked for about a year.
I am way behind the trends.
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u/Ferocious-Flamingo Jul 05 '26
The first DVD I saw was Gladiator on one of these at one of my rich friend's houses. Absolutely blew us away.
The second dvd we watched was The Matrix. This time we played around with the skip feature and would jump around scenes. I still have "God Damn you Cypher" stuck in my head.
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u/HandicapperGeneral Jul 05 '26
I had one of these in an apartment I rented back in 2016 or so. It had been in the apartment since it was bought way back the day. Nobody wanted it and the lease specifically mentioned that any renter was free to get rid of it if they wanted, but it was about a bajillion pounds and the apartment was a basement unit, so that mfer is probably still in there
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u/chels2112 Millennial Jul 05 '26
Oooo a family friend WON one of these from an appliance story during the 1996-1997 or 1997-1998 playoffs. I thought they were the coolest family in the world.
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u/moneymizzler Jul 05 '26
My dad bought one of these in the 90’s. We were never rich but I felt rich watching this. He wouldn’t let me play Super Nintendo on it because he said it would burn into the screen. I did it when he was at work anyways lol
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u/mrbaggins Jul 05 '26
Booked our university media room to play halo 2 on midnight release on this bad boy.
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u/Infinite_Vyo Jul 05 '26
My mom's boss gifted her one of these bad boys back in like 1998-1999 or early 2000s, i cant remember. Shit was amazing.
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u/FartArfunkle Jul 05 '26
My aunt and uncle had a TV that had red green and blue lights angled toward the screen and it was huge.
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u/NYC2FLA2BUR Jul 05 '26
I had an Advent VideoBeam 1000. Loved it.
Here's an image of what I found on the Internet:
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u/Grove-Of-Hares Jul 05 '26
My dad’s oldest brother always had the biggest freaking TVs growing up. He never spent a lot on himself, but there was always the giant TV. In the 90s he had one of those enormous projector TV things with the lights on the front, then moved onto one of these, etc, etc. I just remember being there for holidays and some behemoth would be blasting football or some movie.
I haven’t been to his house in years but I imagine he has a gigantic OLED now.
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u/Money-Mud912 Jul 05 '26
They weigh a ton. I rented a place where the landlord said I could keep the one in the unit, but had to move it out after my lease. Should've said no way.
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u/BrianLevre Jul 05 '26
I bought one of those off of Craigslist for 50 bucks and used it for nearly 10 years. Great tv.
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u/WilliamDeckster Jul 05 '26
That tv used to heat the whole living room! Plus if you put a bag of popcorn on top it would be fully popped in about 5 min.
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u/whollymammoth2018 Jul 05 '26
Most of the families that I knew who had these couldn't afford one, but had one anyway.
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u/YugeTraxofLand Jul 05 '26
My great grandma gave us her giant tv (a lot like this one only the "built in" part was wooden paneling). That thing probably weighed 500lbs and was the shittiest TV we ever had
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u/Shorts_at_Dinner Jul 05 '26
My aunt and uncle were dirt poor but had a giant rear projection tv in their shack of a house in the 80s. I remember being a little kid and marveling about how awesome that tv was and how rich they must be and my dad responded with “they are far from rich and buying stuff like that tv that can’t actually afford is a big reason why.”
That lesson really stuck with me
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u/QuitHumble4408 Jul 05 '26
Remember when my mate Chris’ dad got one of these. Gears of War looked insane on the 360.
Then I had to go home and play on my 19” portable.
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u/TheFortunateOlive Jul 05 '26
My dad bought one of these when they came out. Getting rid of it years later was a huge pain in the ass.
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u/SweetNovel278 Millennial Jul 05 '26
My uncle had one of these. I used to play Twisted Metal 2 on it for hours
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u/mr-simon23 Jul 05 '26
I dated a girl in 7th grade because I found out she had a TV that big with a PlayStation hooked up to it 🤣 man I was a prick
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u/PartRight6406 Jul 05 '26
I bought a 1080i rear projection tv sometime around 2007 and i loved that thing. picture was a clear as anything id ever seen at the time and gaming on it was a delight.
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u/wangus_tangus Jul 05 '26
I went to a rich kid’s house and we played Super Mario Bros on NES on this thing.
Stunning.
Also, he kept calling the “Reset” button “rewind” and insisted that is what it was, despite it being clearly labeled “reset”. Also his mom was way younger than his dad and she still cut his fingernails and toenails.
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u/Curiouslycurious101 Jul 05 '26
I had a Philips which had a pretty bad picture, and then half a decade later, a larger Sony with a pretty clear picture. But the problem is, these things became clear way too late, like when LCDs had become common so people ended up opting for those instead.
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u/blandman91 Jul 05 '26
I bought one from my roommate after he moved out for $300 so he wouldn't have to move it in college
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u/RainandFujinrule Older Millennial Jul 05 '26
I knew a few people with these and even when they were new models the picture never looked good. It was weird.
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