Sony Pulls The Plug On Trinitron CRTs

It's official, the CRT is dead, long live the CRT.

Sony has confirmed (via AFP and MarketWatch) that it will stop making tube-based TVs by the end of the month. Sony had actually ceased production of CRTs in Japan back in 2004, according to MarketWatch, but it was still churning out "Trinitron"-branded tube sets in Singapore and Malaysia for sale in Latin America and Asia.

The news is sad but inevitable, with the rapid rise in flat-panel TV sales taking a serious toll on the CRT market. I was a CRT holdout myself until just a couple of years ago, when I finally replaced my 32-inch Sony WEGA HDTV (my second WEGA, actually) with a 42-inch Westinghouse LCD TV (since replaced by a 46-inch Sony Bravia XBR4—and yes, I love it).

And indeed, many videophiles will still tell you that the latest flat-panel sets still can't hold a candle to CRTs in terms of video quality. My old Sony WEGA tube-based HDTV, for example, had the deepest, darkest black levels I've ever seen in a set, even compared to Pioneer's Kuro plasma line.

That said, my 32-inch WEGA weighed in at an astounding 250 pounds (the woman I sold it to actually brought along two personal trainers, who hauled the set away on a hand truck), and let's face it—46 inches beats 32 any day of the week, even if contrast ratios still fall short of CRT standards.

I second the quality, I am still watching my 36 Sony XBR because of just that reason, there is no better when it comes to image quality. Now resolution, that's a different matter. But for what most people watch today, standard DVDs, the CRT is still tops. We get our DVDs from the local library, they get them as soon as they get released for cable distribution. Makes for cheap thrills.