Shank Mods’ Epic Quest
When it comes to passion projects and preserving pieces of tech history, few stories capture the imagination quite like Shank Mods’ epic quest to rescue the mythical Sony KX-45ED1 CRT TV. In his latest YouTube video, Shank takes us on a whirlwind adventure spanning continents, history, and incredible dedication to saving what might just be the Holy Grail of CRT collecting.
The Sony KX-45ED1, also known as the PVM-4300, was a 43-inch CRT television released in 1989. Weighing a staggering 440 pounds without its stand, it was more engineering marvel than practical home appliance. Retailing for $40,000 (over $100,000 today), it pushed the boundaries of what CRTs could achieve, offering professional-grade performance. For years, this massive CRT was thought to be a myth, with scant evidence of its existence—just a few photos and an incomplete manual. The TV had become the 'Bigfoot' of CRTs, sparking debates among collectors over whether any had actually survived to this day.
Shank’s story begins with a clue—a photo of the KX-45ED1, allegedly taken seven years ago in the waiting room of a soba noodle restaurant in Osaka, Japan. When Shank’s friend Derf tracked the image to a blog, they discovered the restaurant was set to be demolished in just a few days. The urgency was palpable. With no time to lose, Shank posted a call for help on Twitter, hoping someone in Osaka could investigate. Enter Abebe, a stranger who volunteered to check the location. Against the odds, Abebe found the CRT still in place, fully operational, and confirmed that the restaurant owner was looking for a way to get rid of it.
What follows is a race against time to coordinate the TV's extraction, involving logistics experts, a moving team, and a mountain of paperwork.
From there, the race was on. Shank had to coordinate an international rescue mission to save the CRT from demolition. The challenges were immense. First, he needed to convince the owner to part with the TV. Then, the 440-pound beast had to be moved from the restaurant’s second floor to a safe location. The mission, required crating, air shipment to the United States, and transport to Shank’s garage. Throughout this process, Shank relied on an incredible network of helpers, including Abebe and Mr. Takahashi, a logistics expert who facilitated the move. The CRT was carefully wrapped, padded, and carried down the stairs by a team of movers, eventually making its way to a warehouse for shipment.
Once the CRT arrived in the U.S., the restoration process began. Despite being in working condition, it required extensive calibration and repairs to address convergence issues, geometry problems, and the beginnings of CRT cataracts. Shank enlisted the help of experts, who spent hours dialing in the TV’s settings. They uncovered a failure in the dynamic convergence circuit, which was ultimately repaired. After weeks of meticulous work, the KX-45ED1 was fully operational, providing a stunning display perfect for retro gaming.
Throughout this journey, Shank’s video highlights the incredible contributions of his community. Abebe, the man who made the rescue possible, turned out to be the director of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon. His selfless dedication during the final months of the game’s development exemplifies the power of shared passions. Other contributors, like Mr. Takahashi and the CRT experts who assisted with restoration, played vital roles in making this dream a reality.
This story isn’t just about a TV; it’s about preserving history and celebrating the people who make it possible. Shank’s journey serves as a reminder of the lengths we’ll go to honor the past and connect through shared enthusiasm.
Shank Mods’ video is not just a celebration of retro tech but a love letter to the communities that keep these technologies alive. From the daring extraction to the meticulous restoration, every moment of this story is a testament to what can be achieved with determination and collaboration.
Ready to experience the full adventure? Click here to watch the video on YouTube and see how Shank Mods saved the legendary KX-45ED1 CRT TV. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe to Shank Mods to support more incredible projects like this.
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Comments
It's a well done storytelling, but two odd thoughts/questions about it...
As I was watching it, there was the drama of whether it would be saved from imminent destruction, and it actually seemed unlikely that they could, but their approach was to be... secretive about it.
It turned out that they wanted it for themselves, and didn't that create a conflict of interest? By keeping it quiet, they increased the chance that they would obtain it themselves (and the YouTube story to tell about it), but increased the likelihood that the TV would be lost entirely (because other efforts wouldn't be brought)?
Fortunately the gamble worked out, and the TV wasn't destroyed.
There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
I applaud preserving this rare artifact, and compliment the storytelling, but did have these couple odd thoughts.
From the interview with the TV's original owner, this seemed like his ideal outcome.
The owner had seen discussions of the TV online and knew it was a big deal. But he still couldn't get rid of it until this guy came along.
The owner even said he wanted the TV to go to someone who would use, appreciate, and take care of it. The video clearly demonstrates all of the above. If the TV ended up in some museum, forever powered off, that would be even more tragic in some ways.
I didn't get the impression that anyone was bamboozled or cheated.
> But he still couldn't get rid of it until this guy came along
Yep. There are always droves of "it belongs in a museum" crowds, but when you ask if they want it there is only silence.
The sad reality is that there are countless more things in the world that belong in museums than there is museum space/staff to properly take care of it.
By syntheticnature 2024-12-2415:211 reply Or money. Note the Living Computer Museum basically collapsing after Paul Allen's death.
This was, sadly, a conscious choice made by Allen long before his death. Same as with his airplane and tank collection. He had plenty of time and legal advice to set it up with an endowment that could allow for its continued yearly operational budget and chose not to do so. His heirs don't care about his personal toy collection so it's been sold off.
The same thing basically happened with Malcolm Forbes' collections. It's perfectly normal for heirs to just not value things you've collected in the same way you did.
Which is why if you actually care you create an independent and well funded organization before you die so your heirs can't sell it all off.
By Out_of_Characte 2024-12-2420:311 reply Would that really be better than letting your family sell it to the highest bidder? The only real concern I see if its value falls below the metal it contains or the mover breaks it. If a family cannot sell and does not value it then whats the point of keeping it?
If one believes that collection should be for the benefit of the public, proper organization would remove it from the estate that goes to the heirs.
It wouldn't matter if the heirs value it or not, because it wouldn't have been theirs. Because he let it remain in his estate, he left it to his heirs to decide what to do with it, and clearly, they did not care to keep it as a public collection, nor to endeavor to keep it together as a collection. I guess I should have visited it when I had the chance.
By rincebrain 2024-12-2721:12 I'm reminded of the sad case of when I saw the pinball museum in Baltimore once, it was quite interesting, a lot of pre-electronics paddle games and the sort, and naturally, a large arcade of pinball machines. :)
I went to go back one day with friends, and found it had permanently closed in the interim, apparently because they couldn't afford the rent. [1]
(People in that thread love to complain about only getting a 1Y lease - but if they needed to move in a hurry, there's sort of a time crunch, and the longer the lease terms, the less favorable they're likely to be, since the landlord probably wants to hedge against prices going sharply up over that window...)
[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/pinball/comments/18wsn6/national_pi...
On any thread where the topic of various "collectibles" that surely someone wants comes up, there are tons of people who are "you can't just toss it" but somehow thy never want to take them off your hands themselves.
I totally understand the impulse but it's just not realistic to preserve everything.
>there are tons of people who are "you can't just toss it" but somehow thy never want to take them off your hands themselves.
It's not really realistic to expect everyone that values something to also be in a position to house and care for it. Someone can acknowledge that something should be protected and displayed without taking on the burden of doing it themselves.
This whole "if it's so great why don't you take it" attitude that comes up anytime someone laments the lost of a cultural/historic/artistic item is just negativity for the sake of negativity.
>I totally understand the impulse but it's just not realistic to preserve everything.
Agreed, but many of the comments here go too far in trying to denigrate the folks expressing the impulse without being able to act upon it.
By ghaff 2024-12-2620:54 Someone needs to pay to preserve it and the majority of museum collections are in a basement someplace. I don't denigrate people who want to preserve some collection but I also don't think it's realistic for them to expect "someone" to just do it for them.
By Onavo 2024-12-2420:27 *Living Computer Museum
By unscaled 2024-12-240:10 > There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
I didn't read that as Sony being pissed off by. Occam's razor says it's more likely to be your regular corporate dysfunction. Japanese corporations do seem as a whole to be more concerned about preserving their history than US ones, and Sony did have a small museum called ソニー歴史資料館 (the Sony Archive), but that Museum closed down in 2018[1]. Meanwhile, Toyota has six different Museum dedicated to its history and the history of the industries it participated in (including textile — Toyota was a major textile machinery manufacturer before it was an automotive company).
Sony still seems to display some of the archive's content in its headquarters, but I'm unclear how much of it. In general, closing the museum shows that preservation is perhaps important, but not very high on their priority list.
But even if preservation was a top goal, you still can't expect every employee on the PR department to be dedicated to that. PR departments are generally more concerned with current events, and may view such an interview as a distraction that isn't worth their time.
[1] https://nakamura.yokohama/sony-history-museum-36870.html
With respect to keeping quiet about it: it may not have been selfless, but it may also have drawn so much attention to it that the owner of the set wouldn't have wanted to deal with it. After all, he had already dealt with one person who didn't follow through.
As for the Sony not talking bit, it can probably be chalked up to corporate policy. Large organizations rarely let staff speak on matters when it may be construed as being speaking for the corporation.
True. Although, would a call to a museum of Japanese technology/industry, or to Sony HQ, have had a better chance to preserve it? (More likely to save it, less likely for it to be destroyed in handling and shipping.)
As well as keep it in country?
Perhaps the current owners will be reached by a museum, and decide to repatriate it. I imagine that the right museum home could be a win for everyone.
The other parties you mentioned would probably have less motivation to preserve it, let alone restore it to a fully functional state. I find it rather bizarre that many posters here seem to think that it’s morally preferable for the TV set to rot in Japan rather than getting the proper care in the hands of an American collector, all because of some imaginary cultural baggage.
Heh it strikes me that while the stakes of this "relic" are kinda low, it echos the conversations about institutions like the British Museum possessing historic artefacts :) some claim there is moral argument for it keeping its artefacts, because Britain can best preserve them and protect them from damage.
Responsibility and autonomy to preserve one's own heritage (with the associated risk of failing to do so) is a longstanding ethical dilemma between cultures, and the answers aren't so clear imho! (This argument is much more compelling for museums, rather than Sony)
Yes, I am aware of those arguments and I am inclined to agree with you. Compared to cultural artifacts which are mostly neutral in terms of externalities, relics of the industrial era suffer more from the cobra effect.
Others in this thread have bought up the future of ICEs and classic car preservation. Back in the early 2000s the US government offered people cash incentives to dispose of their fuel inefficient cars, and by disposal they meant running the engine with an abrasive liquid instead of oil until it is totally ruined beyond repair. Mechanics will tell you horror stories of rare car models being destroyed this way so the owners can claim a few hundred bucks from the DOT. I'm sure car collectors had a field day back then but with such a glut in the market they could not save everything that's worth saving.
Shank Mods was able to obtain a copy of the service manual in English from somebody in the US. This fact probably means that the TV was sold on (or imported to) the domestic US market for a while. (Sony have always allowed individuals to order parts through an authorised service centre, and the latter often insist on requesting a repair manual first even if you are 100% sure of the part number) It's very likely that a number of them existed in the US only to be unceremoniously thrown out by their owners when LCD TVs became more popular. I bet nobody batted an eyelid when that happened.
> Others in this thread have bought up the future of ICEs and classic car preservation. Back in the early 2000s the US government offered people cash incentives to dispose of their fuel inefficient cars, and by disposal they meant running the engine with an abrasive liquid instead of oil until it is totally ruined beyond repair. Mechanics will tell you horror stories of rare car models being destroyed this way so the owners can claim a few hundred bucks from the DOT. I'm sure car collectors had a field day back then but with such a glut in the market they could not save everything that's worth saving.
But what else happened with that?
The glut ended. Used cars got more expensive relative to quality.
And now the cost of a 'reliable used car' is far more than inflation adjusted for the time passed.
getting back on topic...
> unceremoniously thrown out by their owners when LCD TVs became more popular. I bet nobody batted an eyelid when that happened.
IDK about all that, during the 'LCD Phase-in' everyone I knew either donated theirs and/or moved CRTs into smaller rooms when they replaced a working one.
Especially if it was 'Decent' TV, i.e. Progressive scan and component input...
Let alone if the thing cost as much new as a very nice car of the day. The sheer responsibility of it (thinking more, you really can't throw this thing out unceremoniously, at minimum it's part of a house or business space eviction proceeding...) has some weight, ironically.
By pantalaimon 2024-12-2413:13 > everyone I knew either donated theirs and/or moved CRTs into smaller rooms when they replaced a working one.
But you can’t do that with a 400lbs behemoth of a TV, it would fill the entire room.
This beast is highly impractical and still only 480p.
Even those smaller CRTs got disposed of quickly as soon as the 2nd generation of flat screens arrived as they already took up way too much space.
> everyone I knew either donated theirs and/or moved CRTs into smaller rooms when they replaced a working one.
That might have happened for a while but by 2008-ish CRTs were being dumped left right and center. My city runs a annual kerbside collection program for large appliances and furniture, and I distinctly remember metal scavengers cruising the street gutting old CRTs people have left out for the copper coils, leaving whatever remains to be collected as hazardous e-waste. Around the same time, my parents got rid of a 16:10 CRT IDTV they bought in the 90s and semi-forced me to throw out a 21 inch IBM P275 I had because "it's using too much power".
In any case I doubt any corporate (or rich household) owner of a 47 inch CRT back then would think too much about replacing it with a larger screen that took up less space. After all it's just another piece of asset that has depreciated to zero value on their books.
> That might have happened for a while but by 2008-ish CRTs were being dumped left right and center.That might have happened for a while but by 2008-ish CRTs were being dumped left right and center.
Maybe I just grew up poorer than you but it took longer than that in my world.
> my parents got rid of a 16:10 CRT IDTV they bought in the 90s
Yeah meanwhile some of us had to deal with a Zenith TV that would 'jump' with a PS1 and other consoles on the RF/AV output because 'lord knows why'.
> and semi-forced me to throw out a 21 inch IBM P275 I had because "it's using too much power".
Given the other context of your comments I doubt this is a confession of contribution of hubristic affluence contributing to our modern disposable society but I feel like this underscores the point I'm trying to make in my reply.
Resourceful not-well-off people used to really appreciate repairable things, and the worst thing C4C did was get rid of a lot of not-fuel-efficient vehicles that were at least cheap to repair.
The video of that TV and the pair further underscores it. Everything on decently laid out boards. Nowadays an LCD tv, sometimes a part can go bad and it's so integrated that even 15 years ago it could be a 30 min solder job, nowadays it's cuck the whole shebang.
> In any case I doubt any corporate (or rich household) owner of a 47 inch CRT back then would think too much about replacing it with a larger screen that took up less space. After all it's just another piece of asset that has depreciated to zero value on their books.
Corporate maybe but I'd guess any smart corporation would try to load the 'disposal' costs of a 440 pound object onto the taker somehow. Similar for any rich household that wanted to keep wealth for more than a generation or two.
> Given the other context of your comments I doubt this is a confession of contribution of hubristic affluence contributing to our modern disposable society but I feel like this underscores the point I'm trying to make in my reply.
Let me assure you that none of what I said was meant to diminish your point of view which I agree with mostly.
What I was trying to convey was that people’s mindsets were rather different during the last decade of CRT. CRT had been around since the end of WWII, it may have gotten bigger over the years but the form it took on largely remained the same so there was a sense of continuity as people handed down old TVs when they got something nicer.
When cheap LCD TVs came to the market it represented something more akin to a paradigm shift as people with limited space at home could now easily own screens 30 inches and up. My parents are actually rather frugal with my dad borders on being a tech hoarder who insist on keeping every single cell phone and laptop he ever owned somewhere in his garage. However even he was unable to justify the sheer bulk and running cost of CRT TVs back in that period. Even if he were to give it away there would have been very few takers of any.
Therefore it’s not inconceivable that this model could have been sold in the US or even few more places outside Japan. Most of them simply disappeared without a trace because at some point they were probably worth less than the space it occupies, and people were overly eager to embrace the flat panels without realising that they are not getting some of the utilities back.
By c22 2024-12-2416:21 I keep all my old cell phones too, but I had to get rid of a run of them from around 1998 - 2008 because the plastic started turning sticky a while back.
By Retric 2024-12-2412:12 > not-fuel-efficient vehicles that were at least cheap to repair.
You don’t need to drive that much for fuel inefficiency to get really expensive. Even 10k miles/year which is well below average at 10MPH vs 30MPH @ 3$ / gallon is an extra 2,000$ / year, and adjusted for inflation gas is currently fairly cheap. Inflation adjusted in 2011 and 2012 gas was over 5$/gallon.
We might see consistent low gas prices intended to delay the EV transition (or the could spike), but these cars were already old 15 years ago when the program happened.
> Others in this thread have bought up the future of ICEs and classic car preservation. Back in the early 2000s the US government offered people cash incentives to dispose of their fuel inefficient cars, and by disposal they meant running the engine with an abrasive liquid instead of oil until it is totally ruined beyond repair.
Could you elaborate?
By rasz 2024-12-249:14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrappage_program
Cash for Clunkers - 700,000 cars SCRAPPED by the USA Government https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZMJ_oNtzzE
UK had its own program in 2009 https://www.banpei.net/2010/04/07/wtf-mr2-sw20-in-british-ca...
All the cars lost to the 2009 Scrappage Scheme - The UK SCRAPPED all these rare cars?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLLNOUUqCUc
By eru 2024-12-243:55 Thanks!
Those were wild times. I remember they also had a similar scheme in Germany. Absolute madness (and that's even if you ignore the useless damage to old cars.)
They should have just printed more money to juice the economy, instead of these wild schemes to give subsidies to specific industries.
By ToucanLoucan 2024-12-2323:473 reply > Back in the early 2000s the US government offered people cash incentives to dispose of their fuel inefficient cars, and by disposal they meant running the engine with an abrasive liquid instead of oil until it is totally ruined beyond repair.
So. Fucking. Stupid. As though Joe Consumer with a V8 Mustang he puts a few thousand miles on per year is the boogeyman of climate change, and not, hell just off the dome:
- Every standing military on planet Earth
- The global shipping industry
- The fossil fuel industry
> "As though Joe Consumer with a V8 Mustang he puts a few thousand miles on per year is the boogeyman of climate change"
Scrappage schemes target the smokey, rusty shit-boxes that are worth next to nothing. Not Joe Mustang's prized V8, which would be worth far more than the value of the incentive anyway.
And when it comes to old cars, reducing local air pollution is often the major concern. Not just climate change.
Cash for Clunkers did exactly what it was intended to do: It screwed up the used car market for a very long time, simply by decreasing supply while demand remained.
People still needed cars, and everything is relative. When used car prices go up relative to that of new cars, then new cars become relatively inexpensive.
This helps sell more new cars. And back in the time of "too big to fail" auto industry bailouts, selling more new cars was kind of important.
edit: And remember, there were restrictions for Cash for Clunkers. The car had to be less than 25 years old, it had to run, and it had to have been registered and insured for the last 12 months. It was deliberately designed to thin the pool of functional used vehicles.
This program claimed revered cars like Audi Quattros and BMW E30s...along with V8 Mustangs. And once turned in, they were all quite purposefully destroyed: Sodium silicate replaced the engine oil and they were run at WOT until they seized, and then they were crushed just to be sure.
By saturn8601 2024-12-2420:391 reply According to Wikipedia only about 677k vehicles were takes out of the market. In 2009 there were about 254 million registered cars in the US so did it really put a dent in the market?
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
[1]:https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...
By ToucanLoucan 2024-12-2420:481 reply That's the number of "registered vehicles" in the US, which is going to include everything from Joe Everyman's Mazda to every single truck AT&T uses to maintain what they assert strongly is a data network (sorry little snark there). A better thing to compare to would be the number of used cars sold. A quick google says about 35 million sales are known for 2008, comprising dealer, private, and independent sales. Taking the 677k figure at face value, that would amount to roughly 2% of the "moving" supply of vehicles being removed from the market, and worth noting, the taxpayer paid for that. Also worth noting that figure is going to be inherently conservative, because that's "all used vehicle sales" which includes things like rental companies unloading older inventory, logistics companies selling trucks, that sort of thing.
That isn't a ton but it also isn't nothing, and however you feel about it, that's 677,000 vehicles that were, according to the requirements laid out by the program, perfectly serviceable daily-driver vehicles that were in active use, that taxpayers paid to buy from consumers, strictly to destroy them. Irrespective of if it ruined the used market as the GP says, that's still a shit ton of perfectly usable machines that our government apportioned tax money to buy, and then paid contractors to destroy, on purpose.
By bratwurst3000 2024-12-2510:131 reply maybe the used market salesman used it as an excuse to sell used cars more expensive.
how much did the price go up because of 2%? and all other factors excluded. even inflation is 2% a year. so thats one year. sorry but i dont buy it made a dent in the used car market. proof it to me with numbers etc please otherwise it sounds like the usual useless rant about „everything is getting worse without proof“
By ssl-3 2024-12-2510:35 On aggregate, in a ridiculously-competitive market like commodity used cars that is generally free of collusion, salesmen do not get to determine sale prices.
That's simply not a thing when the other guy down the block will sell a similar car for $300 less and have his money today.
Any salesman can ask for whatever price they wish to ask for, and if it doesn't sell then there is simply no sale. (The annals of Ebay, to name one dataset that can be poked at, is rife with asking prices for things that simply did not sell.)
(This is one of the very few things that the "invisible hand of the free market" actually assures us of: Sure! A salesperson can ask $16000 for a car that is worth $6000. But if they sit on that car for years and years hoping for a bite that never comes, then maybe they can eventually sell it for $3000 -- losing money the entire time, for ever step of the process.
And while that's an example of how sales can happen, it is not an example of how sales both work and make money.
Used car salesmen do not butter their bread by losing money on sales. That's not a thing at all.)
By Reason077 2024-12-273:49 I don't know the details of the US programme, but London's recent successful scrappage scheme had a limit of £2000 for cars/vans and £1000 for motorcycles [1].
Only "dirty" vehicles that do not meet modern emissions standards qualified. And it only makes sense to scrap your vehicle if it's worth less than the £2000 payment you'd get by scrapping it. So nobody is scrapping modern, good quality vehicles: you'd just sell it instead and get more money.
[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/scr...
By jmb99 2024-12-244:55 Or the manufacture of new vehicles to replace perfectly serviceable old ones.
By layla5alive 2024-12-240:18 And agriculture
By RhodesianHunter 2024-12-2323:341 reply I just don't think ancient artifacts are comparable to an old TV.
By bratwurst3000 2024-12-240:51 hmmm i dont know. ancient artifacts sometimes highlight the technical and artistic possibilities of the time. In my opinion this tv represents very good consumer culture in the 80s as do amphitheaters in rome and greece their consumer culture.
By rtpg 2024-12-240:24 Though I don't think anyone would have wanted it, I think there's a bit of a false dichotomy there. Maybe in theory there would have been a place for this in a curated space in Japan... if not for it being so massive at least.
Ultimately if it was a TV designed in Japan, having it on display at a local tech museum would be nice. I just don't know where it would go that could deal with the space and the weight.
Closest thing I could think of is the NTT museum, which is ginormous... but it's mostly about NTT's stuff. "Some other company in Japan made big TVs" is a bit less interesting than, say, some older tabulation machines they have there.
Japan's really ill situated for industrial museums. Land is at premium, summer steam is brutal, disasters are routine, and public support is weak.
It's also just one of the world's best for Sony - they make a lot of bests(with many asterisks too).
One thing I only understood after I've bought a 3D printer is, someone wanting an obsolete product is weird from creator perspective. I still fully understand consumer side sentiments, and also am aware of vital importance of reference data archives, but I'd rather want audiences to seek the latest and greatest than asking me about a shelf bracket that I stopped making some time ago.
So I think it's an okay outcome. The TV lives on. Someday Sony might buy it back, or it might get transferred to some other museums. That's good enough.
The only stretch goal left is an interview with its creators or their autobiography(s). But that would be a cherry on top.
By shiroiushi 2024-12-242:27 >Japan's really ill situated for industrial museums. Land is at premium, summer steam is brutal, disasters are routine, and public support is weak.
This makes absolutely no sense. Japan is full of museums of all kinds, including really weird ones you'd never see in America. Not far from me, there's a museum of miniatures, a museum about sewers, a museum about tap water, a museum about subways, and a museum with an indoor recreation of an entire village from ~300 years ago. And the summers here are better than most southern US states like Florida or Arizona, and disasters much less routine than Florida.
By thrdbndndn 2024-12-241:00 > Japan's really ill situated for industrial museums. Land is at premium, summer steam is brutal, disasters are routine, and public support is weak.
Japan’s suitability for industrial museums can be debated, but saying “summer steam is brutal, disasters are routine” as reasons is ridiculous. This is the 21st century, not the Middle Ages. Besides, Japan already has plenty of industrial museums.
To be quite honest I don't think there are many museums that would want that CRT. CRTs are notoriously a massive pain in the ass. Retro computing museums and the like have their CRTs, but they don't really have the space for it.
It probably does make sense in the house of a massive hoarder.
By CamperBob2 2024-12-252:28 An example of a suitable museum that probably would be interested: https://www.sparkmuseum.org/
By sneak 2024-12-2323:46 He tried contacting Sony several ways, but Sony dgaf about anything these days.
They posted on Twitter to find people who wanted to get involved
> With no time to lose, Shank posted a call for help on Twitter, hoping someone in Osaka could investigate. Enter Abebe, a stranger who volunteered to check the location.
The restaurant was about to be demolished.
I don’t see any problems with this process or outcome. I think you’re comparing this outcome to an imagined alternative reality (going into a museum) that wasn’t even an option.
By msephton 2024-12-248:28 Exactly. The idea alone is worthless. The guy in the video has the idea and executed on it.
By philistine 2024-12-245:22 Ultimately, Indiana Jones does not exist. Only collectors.
If I was in charge of a big corporation that still made displays, I would not want to preserve CRTs because it could hurt the narrative that modern technology is strictly superior to old technology. If people thought about CRTs in a positive light they might realize that no modern display can match them in latency and motion quality when it comes to displaying 60fps content (as found in console and arcade games). I'd prefer that all CRTs were destroyed and forgotten.
By jpsouth 2024-12-241:58 I don’t think any large screen manufacturer would give a second thought to this, the average consumer will still want the 4K, HDR, flat screen that is wall mountable.
The market the CRTs would steal is practically non existent, surely. I’d love this in my house for retro gaming purposes, but I’d still have my LG C/Gx or Samsung N95x or whatever the newest, fanciest models are for movies and modern use cases.
By Springtime 2024-12-241:501 reply As much I appreciated the experience of no input latency CRTs they always gave me headaches after some hours due to the refresh rate flicker. LCDs were an immense relief even despite having very noticeable input latency for the same Hz (eg: cursor movement, which one gets accustomed to).
By geerlingguy 2024-12-243:511 reply And that high frequency whine that many people (myself included) can hear, that gets infuriating after a few hours of a TV remaining on.
By ToucanLoucan 2024-12-2421:371 reply And the elephant in the room (literally): A moderate-sized CRT weighed a TON, burned through power, and took up substantial desk real estate.
They definitely have their perks but I only own one CRT for retro gaming, and I wouldn't trade any of my newer monitors or TV's for a bulky old tube if you paid me. Hardest conceivable pass please.
By neuralRiot 2024-12-276:34 I used to run a dual 23” crt monitor setup, the day I replaced them with IPS LCDs I couldn’t believe how much desk was freed. On a side note i used to work on CRT TVs and i remember the 36” and how massive and heavy they were, I imagine this beast, specially being a trinitron as they were heavier than other brands of the same size, probably because they were flat on the vertical axis so the glass had to be thicker. Tri-tube projectors were also popular and you could project 150” easily on a dark room, the Sony models were mostly analog so probably the lag is not that bad.
By shiroiushi 2024-12-242:353 reply There's no need for this. If you want to make sure consumers don't want to return to CRTs, all you have to do are the following:
1) point out how heavy they are. Give them a facsimile to lift to show them, after making them sign a waiver that they may permanently injure their back doing so.
2) show them how deep they are, and how far away from the wall they must sit because of this.
3) show them two power meters, showing the power consumption of a CRT and a modern LCD for comparison. Also show the actual costs for that power, and how much typical usage of these displays will cost per day and per year.
The last one alone should dissuade most people from wanting to go backwards.
Most people don't give two shits about latency, and modern LCDs with >= 120 fps capability already exist.
I nearly collapsed while moving my CRT out of the house. I have no recollection of the size, but putting it on my shoulder by myself was a terrible idea, and I’m very lucky I didn’t injure myself.
Nothing could persuade me to voluntarily go back to CRTs.
By shiroiushi 2024-12-244:50 The only really good reason I can see to use a CRT is because you want to fix/rebuild one of the old 1980s vector arcade games (like Tempest or Star Wars) and want it to be a truly authentic reproduction.
By neuralRiot 2024-12-276:41 >If you want to make sure consumers don't want to return to CRTs, all you have to do are the following:
Nothing. Why would any folk down the street go out of their way to try and find a TV: More expensive, Heavier, Non-smart, power hungry, smaller. They are like classic cars, everyone loves them but not everyone wants to put up with all the hassles that come with them.
By philistine 2024-12-245:251 reply It's even easier than that. You can get a 43-inch LCD for 300$. CRTs, with their inherent complexity, can NEVER compete on price.
By shiroiushi 2024-12-245:371 reply Yeah, I left out the price aspect. Forget a 43-inch CRT: how about a 85-inch CRT? You can get an LCD (or better yet, OLED) TV this size easily for not that much money. But it's basically impossible to even make a CRT this size, and even if you could, it would be so expensive, heavy, and large it would be completely impractical. Lots of people now have 50-85" TVs in their living rooms, but those are all impossible for CRT technology.
However, the OP was trying to claim CRTs are superior because of latency and refresh rate for gaming applications, specifically, so I was just focusing on those aspects. The refresh rate part is silly; high-refresh-rate LCDs and OLEDs are common now. The latency part might have some validity, but compared to all the other factors it's really not that important.
By mrob 2024-12-2415:30 For maximum motion quality the refresh rate needs to match the frame rate. Modern gaming LCDs can beat CRTs in refresh rate, but only a minority of games support such high frame rates. For any given refresh rate the CRT will always have better motion quality.
By GuB-42 2024-12-2815:43 There is no way CRTs would be a competition to modern displays. Modern displays are strictly superior for all practical purposes. The microsecond latencies don't matter in practice, we are getting to the point where even esports pros won't get significant benefit compared to modern gaming displays, which are well beyond 60Hz. Some CRT monitors could do more (like 180Hz at low resolution), but not TVs.
The only thing CRTs are really better for is for content that is designed for CRTs, i.e. oldschool video games. And of course, that's what they are demonstrating. But it is just about giving the right context to historical video games.
I’d compare this to large format film cameras. By raw resolution, large format film cameras are still far and above what is achievable digitally. Yet, of course, no one would argue that they pose a threat to the practicality and efficiency of digital, and few people appreciate/care about/need so much resolution.
By pantalaimon 2024-12-2413:23 And those cameras don’t take up a good part of the room!
By fallous 2024-12-247:40 I know I moved into the LCD monitor era kicking and screaming because the CRTs I used with my computers were far superior for text sharpness and didn't cause me near the eye-strain when doing long programming sessions.
By to11mtm 2024-12-241:31 Good point TBH.
not really true anymore as the latest oled tech surpasses crt in almost every spec. And the spec it does not the difference is detectable by devices not human senses so practically makes no difference.
By mrob 2024-12-2413:03 The difference isn't subtle. This is perfectly sharp and clear on a CRT, but blurry on an OLED:
> conflict of interest
(nit) Please don't use "conflict of interest" that way (casually). It should only apply to situations where there are actual legal or ethical obligations in opposition. Nobody owes the online CRT community anything.
Point understood, but do you think there's no obligations to communities or societies, other than those codified in law, contracts, or some (professional?) ethics?
If those other obligations existed, could we say "conflict of interest" about them, or is there a better term or phrasing?
By foobarchu 2024-12-2423:51 Not who you were responding to, but I think there is no conflict there. If he was a known member of some preservation society, then maybe there would be a conflict of interest of the ethical variety, but as far as I know this person is just an enthusiast. They serve their interests and no other, with respect to this particular space.
By thousand_nights 2024-12-2323:511 reply i don't get the skepticism, yes a youtuber did a thing but without them probably no one would have cared and the TV would've ended up destroyed in the rubble of the building
he even went to the lengths of calling up different CRT experts trying getting them to fix it
all this negativism just feels like older people being all "zoomers bad" because the medium is not what they prefer. maybe we should just be happy to pass the torch and glad that younger generations even have interest in this sort of thing
By jonny_eh 2024-12-2419:25 The negativity struck me as jealousy. I honestly don't get it though. The YouTuber went through significant effort to save a very cool artifact, and then shared it with the world via a well made video. Bravo I say!
The email he shared that he was sending to Sony was obnoxious “this is a chance for some wicked awesome free PR for Sony..” so it is kind of no wonder they stopped talking to him. Other than that, he never said he was doing it for the good of humanity or anything, he just wanted it and found a way to make it happen, I admire the pluck.
By nharada 2024-12-2418:18 It might be pretty on the nose but I don't see why that would make them stop talking to him. Wouldn't that be the reason they'd approve a corporate interview in the first place? I doubt they'd do it for no reason
By giantfrog 2024-12-241:00 That’s not a conflict of interest, it’s just an interest
By fennecbutt 2025-01-0220:48 Quietly removed from the country but if they truly were worried about that then they only have themselves to blame.
Only giving value when something is already gone is kind of a toxic trait. It means you don't actually value it and you have other motives.
> It turned out that they wanted it for themselves, and didn't that create a conflict of interest? By keeping it quiet, they increased the chance that they would obtain it themselves (and the YouTube story to tell about it), but increased the likelihood that the TV would be lost entirely (because other efforts wouldn't be brought)?
Based on the timeline there was limited time to act.
Additionally, given they did some public 'reach-out' posts (that wound up finding them the thing) there were theoretically others that could have tried to handle it via their own channels.
Per the YT video's 'sponsorship', I'll note that shipping a ~450 pound TV and ~150-200 pound stand overseas in general is not a cheap, or easily logistical task given the timeframe. Esp if it's on the 2nd floor of a building to start (can't just do a simple hand hydraulic lift for the hard parts.)
> There's also a possibly related matter, in how Sony stopped talking with them. Is it possible that Sony and/or Japanese government aren't very happy to learn that a possibly unique museum piece, of one of the heights of Sony achievement, was quietly removed from the country, to the US, by a YouTube influencer?
Overthinking it perhaps. Sony has a lot of divisions and it's hard to get live assistance from them even if you are a current user of their products, at least speaking from personal experience with a couple different lines.
-----
That said, the YT video drew things out way too much for drama's sake and it made me glad I have ad-free.
By reassembled 2024-12-255:501 reply Arcade collectors are practically liquidating Japan of many valuable arcade cabinets and PCBs. Nobody cared about much of these items 10-15 years ago. The YouTube and Reddit subcultures have grown a new younger audience for retro gaming, who often have a lot of money to throw around buying up rare items. There are also IG accounts of folks in places like Dubai, who clearly have wealth, amassing large collections of Japanese retro game tech.
If Japan, Sony or any other individual wanted to save this CRT for themselves, it would have been snatched up by now. The fact stands that the creator of the video is the only person on earth who did the detective work and put boots on the ground to make it their own rare CRT. Good work, I say!
By rasz 2024-12-256:44 >Arcade collectors are practically liquidating Japan of many valuable arcade cabinets and PCBs
Funny you say Japan when same thing is happening to US Arcades :) Here an interview with Euro importer:
'453: Resurrecting Arcades: Meet Europe’s Biggest Arcade Importer - The Retro Hour EP453' - The Retro Hour (Retro Gaming Podcast) 1 Nov 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzfVLY5Ag3s
One of the stories is him buying out half of Las Vegas rare arcades auction for pennies because he was the only one willing to sit all night clicking on bids.
By ranger_danger 2024-12-2323:491 reply It's interesting that they say they had such a hard time finding help, I have never heard about this entire endeavor until now, and the video mentions them desiring contacts at Sony with the display division, which I happen to have, and would have helped if I had known about it.
By throwaway2037 2024-12-257:411 reply It's not too late! I recommend that you reach out to him on Twitter or Facebook. If he really could secure that interview, I am sure he could release a follow-up video, or update his original video to add a final chapter.
By nicolas_17 2024-12-2515:21 There's no such thing as "update the original video" on YouTube.
Unless you're like, Linus Tech Tips size and contact your YouTube "account manager"; and there's probably limits to what you can use that power for.
By eboynyc32 2024-12-242:35 Oh god who cares!!
By hbarka 2024-12-2419:25 You’re overthinking it. Sony is no longer the same Sony.
Eh, what standard are we holding people to? You ever shop for a used car(maybe even some rare spec of a sports car)? When you finally found a good deal did you shout in the streets and put out an ad to make sure no one else is around to make a greater offer?
By ranger_danger 2024-12-2323:411 reply ~~Plus, who plays out a mental moral dilemma with a historical museum any time they want to buy something?~~
Actually I think this might be a false equivalency OP, because this isn't just any old used car. I think it's fair to at least stop and question whether this should go to some greater good or not.
By pantalaimon 2024-12-2413:27 It’s the equivalent to an old sports car that was impractical when it was first released, but the pinnacle of its time.
I also had an odd feeling avout several other enthusiasts travelling to the guy's place presumably at their own cost, spending a lot of time to repair / tune up the thing, and in the end, our hero just adds it to his collection.
If I were passionate about something, I would fly in to play with it and tweak it on my own dime. Did you get the impression that somebody was swindled in this process?
By alibarber 2024-12-2419:53 Being able to physically mess around with something I’m passionate about, and learn and share info about it - without any of the overhead of actually storing the thing or the logistics behind it or whatever is something I actively seek out. Heck, legit museums charge entry for that.
By ahartmetz 2024-12-251:18 No actually, he just didn't mention any favors going the other way. Well, I don't really know how that community works, but I remember reading about the restoration of an old pinball machine where parts, money and favors were exchanged, not just given / taken.
By chiph 2024-12-2520:02 Just knowing it still exists and is owned by someone as passionate as the YTer would be enough for me. And the possibility of paying visits and playing classic games on it.
What got me was the four-player game where each player effectively had their own 21" monitor. Mind-boggling.
By roywiggins 2024-12-2418:09 Getting a chance to work on this unique device is probably its own reward for them.
By 2muchcoffeeman 2024-12-2321:403 reply I agree. At the beginning I thought this was a conservation effort.
Turns out to be the modern equivalent of colonisers stealing local artefacts.
Why export this at all!?
Today I learned that carefully preserving an artefact that neither its owner nor anyone else in its origin country wanted = “colonizers stealing.”
By throwawaysleep 2024-12-2322:221 reply This is the same for a lot of supposed “theft” by museums. Lots of “priceless” objects now were at the time junk, so they were thrown away.
By TacticalCoder 2024-12-2323:061 reply [flagged]
Alternate theory, both are true.
Western societies took advantage of multiple other societies to plunder their treasures. Those same societies didn't have the infrastructure and/or care to preserve these things themselves.
Sometimes two things can be true.
By throwawaysleep 2024-12-2323:201 reply If they do not care about them, they are not "treasures" by the standards of those cultures but rather "waste."
By HeWhoLurksLate 2024-12-241:17 Not necessarily true- the majority of people don't know about 3-2-1 backup strategy and I've seen hundreds of "help! my { phone | SD card | computer } died and I lost all my family photos" posts
By prmoustache 2024-12-2411:55 Conservation or not, that TV has been given out by its owner so there is no theft involved. Neither has it been moved out of the country by colons or illegaly.
And it is a damn TV. A big one for sure but it isn't Moctezuma II headdress nor are those Devatas carved from Banteay Srei cambodian temple.
By throwawaysleep 2024-12-2321:581 reply This example is what makes much of the "stealing" claim bogus, both for this and many artifacts. The Japanese owner wanted it gone and considered it trash. It wasn't some beloved item. Even Sony didn't care.
And so much of what is considered "stolen" was given away by someone in that culture as trash.
That's the standard excuse of a thief. "I'm not stealing it, I'm saving it". Better stop the excusing.
By throwawaysleep 2024-12-2410:33 Except that the owner is the one giving it away. The current owner doesn't claim theft.
The only people claiming theft are a third party that never owned the property in question or at the time gave it away freely.
Here's the (fantastic) YouTube video that this is a recap of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk
Was this done by the same person as made the video, or is it blogspam of it? (I'm asking because people are complaining about it elsewhere).
I have no information that you don't, but it looks to be blogspam of it -- it always refers to Shank as a separate party, it doesn't claim to have had any involvement in what happened.
By dang 2024-12-244:09 OK, we'll switch to the youtube link above. (Submitted URL was https://obsoletesony.substack.com/p/the-journey-to-save-the-....) Thanks all!
By hn92726819 2024-12-2322:301 reply Here's the real one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk
By zdw 2024-12-2323:38 Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42489600
By jader201 2024-12-2322:01 Such a well done video, thanks for sharing.
I even happily watched a very well executed sponsor ad.
By rwmj 2024-12-2321:08 A similar but not as large (merely 37") CRT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o7R8oJEZhY
By indigoabstract 2024-12-2320:58 Thanks, really good story. It unfolds like an Indiana Jones movie for priceless antique CRTs.
As a child in the early 90s (maybe 1993), I nearly got crushed under one of these trying to connect my Nintendo to the AV cables on the back. It was against the wall in an alcove and the only way to access was to rotate it slightly and lean it forward to reach the connections on the back (which I couldn’t see, only feel). It tipped off the shelf and onto me, partially supported by the shelf and partially by me.
I didn’t want to get in trouble because it was so nice, so I just kind of squatted there pinned under it trying to lever it back. Thankfully my dad walked by, noticed, and kept into action. And here I still am today.
By unsnap_biceps 2024-12-2321:082 reply Are you saying as a child you were able to move and hold up a 400 lbs tv or are you talking about a smaller tv?
Tilting or rotating a TV is different from lifting it (especially if there isn't much friction by design?) and might require much less force.
By a12k 2024-12-2321:34 Yes. This was more like continuously jerking my weight backwards with all my might while holding a front corner to maneuver the TV inch by inch into a diagonal orientation, until on the last jerk it went an inch too far.
By a1o 2024-12-2321:42 400 lbs -> 181 kg
By semiquaver 2024-12-2323:013 reply Just curious, are you certain it was this model or just “a large CRT?”
This model retailed for $40,000 in the US (100K adjusted for inflation) and only a small number (reportedly in the low double digits) were ever sold.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/1990/03/06/to-get-the-big-pic...
As the video mentions this model is so incredibly rare that previously there were only two known photos of retail units in the wild - and one of those photos was of the very unit that the guy in this story eventually managed to acquire.
The other photo is a mystery, nobody knows who took it or whether that unit is still intact.
By pantalaimon 2024-12-2414:51 It was also incredibly expensive - most people rich enough to buy it wouldn’t typically post their living room online in the early 90ies
By abracadaniel 2024-12-2419:09 And yet, common enough that a random guy in the forum claimed to have had several in his store and gave them a copy of the service manual. And that was in the same city as the collector in the video. A decent amount of these were probably sold, and almost certainly all disposed of as soon as they became obsoleted by plasmas.
By stronglikedan 2024-12-2416:36 I think most will infer "a large CRT" after reading OPs comment.
By RicoElectrico 2024-12-2323:421 reply Wow, goes to show how people are gullible to their "memories", never stopping to question them. This could explain the "communism was better" ramblings you get from old farts quite well...
I... just don't get it. What I remember from my young is not that much but it all definitely happened and does not need any artistic license.
It's a great understatement to say that the end of the Eastern Bloc could have been handled a whole lot better, especially from the perspective of people who would have been established or even happy with their lives under Communism: age 40+, educated, successful career at the Trabbi factory, just got to the top of the waiting list for an apartment, etc.
* This comment is not an endorsement of totalitarian governments
By IAmGraydon 2024-12-241:06 Are you guys lost? We're talking about a very fucking large TV here.
Crushing was probably not the only danger you were in there - even if the thing would have just fallen and imploded next to you, that could have been pretty dangerous as well...
By userbinator 2024-12-243:01 It is very difficult to break a CRT from the front, even deliberately. The neck is fragile but a CRT TV falling on its face (which is what tends to happen as they're very front-heavy) is far more likely to break the case or the boards inside than the tube.
By mosquitobiten 2024-12-259:57 I also almost got killed by one too. I was a baby playing around it, the unit was a communmist era black and white monstruosity 30 something inch and it sit on a floral lace and that on a very smooth wood table, the cable was dangling around it and plugged in front of it, I pulled by the power cable and made the tv slide until it fell of the right by me.
By garbagewoman 2024-12-245:271 reply “One of these” $40,000 tvs, sure
By pests 2024-12-247:18 Probably meant the category of CRT TVs, not that exact model.
