They definitely were
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
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Yeah back then they absolutely were.
They absolutely had a lot of debt*
Credit cards wit have been available for quite some time.
Or that.
I saw a lot of those huge big screen TVs in double wide trailers. Really rich people had a bunch of built-in CRTs everywhere. Real rich was a 12 inch TV in the bathroom.
And a phone by the toilet
The funny thing about TVs like that...the picture was large, but it was also bad. It was still 480i NTSC television from cable, satellite or a laserdisc at best, or a VHS cassette at worst. They could actually have viable speakers in them though.
Plus these things used a fresnel lens to make the image as big as it was, which meant that you had to sit in exactly the right spot to be able to even see anything. It's like how VR headsets are blurry and dim if you're not wearing them properly; same issue with these TVs.
And then there's the fact that they would get dimmer and dimmer over time (within 5-10 years), which surely didn't help matters much. Honestly you were much better off with a CRT over one of these old rear-projection TVs back in the day.
The viewing angles werent that bad. Honestly better than even a modern LCD TN panel. Also, only the newer lcd projectors had the dimming issues. Older models were 3 crts in a trench coat. They have a whole suite of issues on their own.
You gotta replace the lens juice
Yeah but I don't know anybody who actually did that. Most people get a new TV every 5-10 years anyway, and by then, plasmas were affordable and widely available.
There were also...I remember a certain class of rear projection TVs from around the turn of the century that were a lot more compact than the gigantic box type from the 90's. Similar technology but just not as boxy, often available in 16:9 that weren't plasma or LCD panels.
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You guys sound like David Silver from 90210. Can't remember the episode, but the gang plays poker in a beach club house or something and Silver geeks out about back projection TVs
they were great for the xbox 360 tho
The later widescreen big box TVs were good enough, especially if they had HDMI, VGA, or at least component video hookups for 720p HD.
You wouldn't want an older 480i rear projection like the ones we're talking about for XBOX 360. You wouldn't be able to see shit and text would be unreadable. The 360 was best experienced on HDTVs released in the 2000s.
Late models could do 1080i. And quality wise were better than lcds from that era. but iirc, after 2002, most models switched from CRT projecter to lcds and high powered lamps that are bad about dimming in age. So peak RPTV era is late 90s and very early 2ks. But even then, they tended to have ghosting and alignment issues... so...
They could do both, but most enthusiasts at the time preferred 720p because it technically showed more pixels on the screen at any given moment in time, and didn't flicker the screen. Personally I used 1080i anyway cause it looked better to me at the time, even knowing its limitations. Either way I'm glad that we have zero compromise 4K now.
It would depend on the type of projector. The crt types do not have 'pixels', thus 1080i would be native while 720p would be interlaced and reduce quality.
I had one of these monstrosities for a week. Got her on freecycle. Took up half my living room. Was six feet wide and three feet deep. And yes, it was blurry as fuck but godsdammit my screen took up the whole damn room for a week and it was fun as hell before we gave her away on freecycle and promised I my wife to stop getting free TVs.
ppl
af
You're not paying by the letter, son. Use your real words.
Ok boomer
You do realize that this is /c/90s_memes right? In the 90’s people didnt abbreviate every word longer than 5 characters.
Are you forgetting SMS speak? People used to have 160 characters or less
You think we were texting in the 90s?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS
1993 feels VERY 90's to me for some reason.
Also I distinctly remember Nokia phones even before the 3310
Did you read the article? It was barely used until 2000.
Well excuse me for being from the Nordics where it was adopted early
Just saying it doesn’t work as a reason to abbreviate everything in this meme. 🤷♀️
These TVs coexisted with abbreviated texting in Sweden
Ok?
pagers dude
911!
1177 700 711730 70 1231773177 40111 00 7415
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But we had the best 1337 haxxors.
You mean "k boomr"?
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My dad had one of these he built into his home theater when his collection was hundreds of VHS cassettes. Looked like garbage, even in a dark room.
Ended up spending the last few years of his life in front of the gigantic CRT that has digital cable and DVD.
He also bought the biggest CRT monitor for his one top of the line best buy PC that he undoubtedly only used to look up porn.
He bought the biggest whenever it came to tech, even if he didn't really know how to use it.
My cunt of a step mom probably lost those big beautiful CRts to gambling debt, if her junkie sons didn't pawn them the second my dad died.
Been trying to find one on the side of the road. That fresnel lens can melt rock.
Ain't got one of dose, how bout dis
That organ is free.
Wrong format.
Okay, but why is the couch BEHIND it?
This was the fashion of the time.
I almost threw my back out moving one of these down a stairwell out of an apartment. So huge, heavy and awkward.
Same! Back in the day my new flatmate, who was recently divorced, called me from work to say the delivery guy would be arriving with a new TV for the flat. I ended up having to help him lift it up 4 flights of stairs. It weighed an absolute tonne and my body ached for days. I didn't complain though as he paid for it :-)
oh dude, that tv changed hands five times. one of them was through mine
I knew a guy who had a front projection TV, it was huge. How expensive were those in comparison?
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