Why are there no tube televisions anymore?


It’s funny when you come to think of it and compare video with audio. How come in the audio world discussions sometimes become intense, while there seem to be far less intense discussions in the TV & video realm?

With TV’s there’s no talk on tubes, transistors, analog, digital, vinyl, cables, power cords, heck we can even get ’audio’ fuses and -USB cables.

No one has a tube TV (while they really have a ’warmer’ image :) and very few people use a $400 power cord with their TV set. And while there are expensive HDMI cables on the market, the vast majority uses one below $50. And no one spends money on floor spacers to avoid cable vibrations.

Our eyes may even be far more sensitive than our ears ... yet discussions are far less intense. How come?


rudyb
Not a valid comparison.

CRT TVs worked on an entirely different principle to those of today's flat screens.

Apart from transistors and, for those that like it, digital, today's hi-fi uses the same technology as yesterday's, going back nearly 100 years.

You might as well ask why there are no horses and carts.
To gamers refresh rate is not the only factor, although the higher the better. The other factor is latency ... the delay between the moment the video info left the PC and the moment it’s displayed on screen, caused by the built in digital image processing. When watching a movie latency plays no role at all, but to competitive gamers this delay impacts their reaction time in a negative way.

Most modern TV sets have a ’gaming mode’ via which (most of the) image processing is bypassed and latency is minimized. But still there’s a delay of a couple of ms. With a CRT this latency is zero.
You might as well ask why there are no horses and carts.

@clearthinker Yes, those are ancient technologies. And that’s my whole question, my wondering ... how come there are still ancient technologies like tubes and vinyl in use in the audiophile world, while there’s no such trend in the videophile world? If it sounds nicer (to avoid the word better) then maybe a TV set with tubes could also look nicer? If there’s a market for ’audio fuses’ because they make it sound nicer ... how come there are no ’video fuses’ that make the picture look nicer? Apparently there’s no market for that.


Unlike audio, TVs are super-commoditized to the point that most are extremely comparable to each other - the panels likely came from the same source in Asia and the processing isn’t nearly as differentiated as with earlier generations like DLP’s spinning color wheel and plasmas, for instance, that came after the monstrous rear projection TVs. Tvs have become like cell phones largely because the demand is so massive. When it comes to audio most people are given just good enough (I.e no crackling or very noticeable distortion with bass thrown in) without even knowing it with their Bose car stereo and EarPods. So much about audio in our Audiogon world is more art than commodity. For this reason, I for one am glad the mainstream hasn’t taking the art out of audio.
I remember my Dad blessing the console TV, tearing it apart and hauling down a handful of tubes to the local Hoyle's drugstore wher they had a tube tester and hundreds of replacements.  Seems like we did that every 6 or 8 months.  Ah, the good ol` days.