What Happened to the Lines on Sony Trinitron TVs? Why They Never Disappeared
Overscan
7,945 views
Those two faint grey lines across a Sony Trinitron screen were never a flaw waiting to be fixed. They were welded in on purpose, on the first tube in 1968 and on the last one in 2008.
After a licensed color tube nearly sank the company, Sony built its own. The Trinitron used a single electron gun and a grille of fine vertical wires held under tension, letting about 25 percent more light through than a shadow mask. But tensioned wires ring. Sony welded damping wires across them, and those wires are the lines owners carried back to the store.
You will learn:
• How the failed Chromatron forced Sony to design the Trinitron
• Why the aperture grille beat the shadow mask on brightness
• Why damping wires were the only cure for a ringing grille
• Why IBM told its own customers the lines were normal
• How expiring patents let rivals copy the design
• Why the best tube of its era still ended in 2008
If you ever sat close to a white screen and found those two lines, or watched the picture shrink to a white dot at switch-off, share what you remember in the comments.
Subscribe for calm, careful histories of the screens we grew up with.
#SonyTrinitron #Trinitron #ApertureGrille #CRTTV #TrinitronLines #RetroTV #CRT #SonyTV #VintageElectronics #TVHistory
9 Comments
Once you've played old games on a decent shadow mask or slot mask tube it's very hard to go back to Sony.
Especially their late model Trinitron Wega which were just awful.
What Happened to the Lines on Sony Trinitron TVs? Why They Never Disappeared
Overscan
7,945 views
Those two faint grey lines across a Sony Trinitron screen were never a flaw waiting to be fixed. They were welded in on purpose, on the first tube in 1968 and on the last one in 2008.
After a licensed color tube nearly sank the company, Sony built its own. The Trinitron used a single electron gun and a grille of fine vertical wires held under tension, letting about 25 percent more light through than a shadow mask. But tensioned wires ring. Sony welded damping wires across them, and those wires are the lines owners carried back to the store.
You will learn:
• How the failed Chromatron forced Sony to design the Trinitron
• Why the aperture grille beat the shadow mask on brightness
• Why damping wires were the only cure for a ringing grille
• Why IBM told its own customers the lines were normal
• How expiring patents let rivals copy the design
• Why the best tube of its era still ended in 2008
If you ever sat close to a white screen and found those two lines, or watched the picture shrink to a white dot at switch-off, share what you remember in the comments.
Subscribe for calm, careful histories of the screens we grew up with.
#SonyTrinitron #Trinitron #ApertureGrille #CRTTV #TrinitronLines #RetroTV #CRT #SonyTV #VintageElectronics #TVHistory