There was once a heavy box in almost every living room. It could weigh 40, 60 or sometimes more than 80 kilograms. It occupied half a metre of space behind the screen, needed a serious piece of furniture to support it and made a faint electrical sound when switched on. The picture did not appear instantly. First came a click, then a barely audible high-frequency whine, and finally the image slowly came alive behind thick curved glass.
This was the CRT television – the Cathode Ray Tube – and for decades it represented technological progress itself. Then, almost overnight, it became worthless. When flat-screen televisions broke through during the 2000s, the transition was brutal. LCD and plasma displays became thinner, larger and cheaper. Electronics stores filled with screens that could hang directly on the wall. The old bulky television suddenly looked prehistoric.
Millions of perfectly functioning sets were carried down staircases, driven to recycling centres or advertised for free to anyone willing to collect them. The question was no longer how much an old Sony Trinitron was worth. The question was whether anyone was strong enough to carry it out of the house. Now something strange is happening. People want them back.
Perhaps Perfection Became Boring
Gaming alone does not explain what is happening. The return of the CRT belongs to a much larger cultural movement. Vinyl records were supposed to disappear. They came back. Polaroid photography was supposed to disappear. It came back. Analogue film survived. Cassette tapes are being released again. Old synthesizers, mechanical keyboards, analogue instruments, vintage cameras, retro computers and physical media have all attracted new audiences.
This does not mean these technologies are objectively superior in every way. Spotify is far more convenient than maintaining thousands of records. A modern digital camera can outperform an old consumer film camera in almost every measurable technical category. A modern OLED television offers resolution, brightness, HDR, size and efficiency that an ordinary CRT could never approach. Yet people are searching for something the specifications do not measure.
Digital technology has become almost frictionless. We touch the same piece of glass to take photographs, communicate with friends, read newspapers, listen to music, watch films, navigate cities, order food, pay bills and work. Almost everything has been absorbed into rectangles of black glass. Older technology had identity. A camera looked like a camera. A radio looked like a radio. A record player revealed its mechanical purpose immediately. You could understand what the machine did simply by looking at it. And the television was not merely a screen. It was furniture.
When Television Was Furniture
It is easy to forget how much television once influenced the architecture of the living room. The television had wood veneer, speaker grilles, buttons, knobs, doors and sometimes even its own legs. Some models were deliberately designed to match existing furniture. The television occupied physical space and therefore became part of the room.
Modern television design has moved in precisely the opposite direction. The objective is to make the device disappear. Bezels become thinner with every generation. Screens hang millimetres from the wall. Manufacturers advertise increasingly invisible frames and hidden cables. Technically, this is remarkable. Aesthetically, however, almost every television has become the same object: a large black rectangle. When switched off, a €5,000 television and a €700 television can look surprisingly similar from across the room.
This creates an opportunity that television manufacturers may not yet fully understand. Perhaps consumers do not actually want the cathode-ray tube back. Perhaps they want the television as an object back.
The Next Step Could Be Neo-CRT
Imagine a television appearing on the market in 2027 or 2028. It is perhaps 32 inches with a 4:3 display ratio. The cabinet is deliberately deep. The corners are rounded. The front is inspired by television design from the late 1970s or 1980s. Physical controls sit on the side. There are genuine volume knobs, proper switches and large front-facing speakers. Different versions are available in dark wood, orange, beige, brushed aluminium or black industrial plastic.
But behind the gently curved front panel there is no cathode-ray tube. There is a modern OLED or MicroLED display. Inside sits an extremely powerful image processor capable of reproducing the characteristics of dozens of historical displays. One mode could imitate a European television from 1978. Another could mimic a Sony Trinitron from the late 1980s. Another could reproduce the appearance of a Japanese arcade monitor. Another could recreate VHS softness or a professional broadcast screen. Instead of selecting “Cinema Mode” or “Sports Mode,” you might choose 1978 Living Room, 1989 Arcade or 1996 PlayStation.
The television would include HDMI, USB-C, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and modern streaming services, but it could also offer composite video, component video, RGB and perhaps SCART on European models. Old hardware would connect directly. New hardware would work perfectly. Call it Neo-CRT. 1978 on the outside. 2028 on the inside.
This would not merely be retro decoration. It could become a completely new category of consumer electronics combining nostalgia, industrial design, gaming culture and modern technology. New displays designed specifically around retro gaming have already started appearing with 4:3 formats and support for old video standards alongside HDMI. They are not true CRT televisions, but the direction is revealing. Someone has recognised that modern consumers may want new technology designed around old experiences.
Why Not Simply Manufacture Real CRTs Again?
This is where nostalgia collides with industrial reality. A CRT television is not simply an old screen inside a large plastic box. The cathode-ray tube itself is a sophisticated vacuum device. Electron beams are directed towards phosphors on the inside of thick glass, generating the visible picture. Manufacturing these tubes required highly specialised factories, equipment, materials, expertise and supply chains. Most of that infrastructure no longer exists.
Restarting production would therefore not be comparable to reopening a small vinyl pressing plant. Manufacturers would need to reconstruct an industrial ecosystem that disappeared decades ago. There are environmental considerations as well. Traditional CRT glass contained substantial amounts of lead, which helped protect viewers from radiation generated inside the tube. Modern environmental regulations would make production more complicated and expensive.
Then there is the weight. A large CRT can weigh dozens of kilograms more than a modern television of similar screen size. That affects everything from manufacturing and packaging to warehousing, shipping, retail and home delivery. Imagine today’s online retail logistics dealing with millions of 60-kilogram televisions. The economics quickly become difficult.
Which means that the CRT televisions still surviving today have an unusual characteristic: they are a finite resource. Nobody is making meaningful quantities of new ones. Whenever another functioning CRT is destroyed or recycled, the global supply permanently decreases.
Yesterday’s Rubbish Becomes Tomorrow’s Collectible
There is something almost comical about how quickly value can change. During the 1990s, a high-quality Sony Trinitron could represent a serious household investment. A decade or two later the same television might be offered online for nothing: “Free. Collection only.” Sometimes owners were prepared to pay someone simply to remove it. Today enthusiasts search specifically for those same models.
Professional monitors have become especially desirable, but interest increasingly extends to ordinary consumer televisions, particularly high-quality models with good geometry, RGB or component inputs and suitable screen sizes for gaming. An ecosystem of restoration is developing around them as well. Technicians repair capacitors, restore power supplies, calibrate geometry, adjust colour convergence and keep ageing televisions alive.
There is, however, another problem. The people who genuinely understand CRT repair are disappearing too. Working inside a CRT television is not comparable to changing the battery in an old radio. These devices can contain dangerously high voltages even after being disconnected from power. Proper repair requires expertise and respect for the technology. So the surviving televisions are ageing at exactly the same time as the specialist knowledge required to maintain them is becoming rarer. Mass-produced consumer electronics is slowly becoming technological heritage.
The Generation That Never Owned One Wants One
Perhaps the most fascinating part of this revival is that it is not driven exclusively by middle-aged consumers trying to recreate their childhood. Someone born in 2005 is now around 21 years old. Many people in that generation never had a CRT television in their family home. To them, the technology is not necessarily nostalgic. It is exotic.
This is the same mechanism that allows young people to become fascinated by vinyl records despite growing up with Spotify. They are not remembering something from their childhood. They are discovering something physical and unfamiliar. The past becomes new when you never experienced it the first time.
Imagine a room belonging to someone in their early twenties: an old television, Nintendo 64, VHS player, physical games, large speakers and perhaps an old computer sitting beside a modern smartphone and gaming PC. To an older generation it may look like 1997. To a younger generation it can look original. That is an important distinction. Retro culture eventually stops being nostalgia. It becomes design.
We May Not Miss the Past – We May Miss Character
Perhaps this explains much more than the return of CRT televisions. We do not necessarily miss the past itself. We miss objects with personality. Technology once had visible mechanical and physical characteristics. You interacted with switches, knobs, motors, buttons, cartridges, tapes, discs and cables. Devices behaved differently from each other.
Today, enormous parts of human experience have been standardised into software interfaces. The camera is an icon. The music player is an icon. The notebook is an icon. The television remote is an app. The bank is an app. The newspaper is an app. The map is an app. The shop is an app. The technology has become enormously more powerful while the physical experience has become increasingly uniform.
Perhaps that is why analogue culture keeps returning. It restores friction. And sometimes friction is what gives an experience identity.
The Future May Not Always Be Thinner
For decades the direction of consumer electronics seemed obvious: smaller, thinner, lighter, faster and increasingly invisible. But eventually we reach a strange point. When everything becomes thin enough, everything begins to look the same. The smartphone is a black glass rectangle. The tablet is a larger black glass rectangle. The computer screen is another black rectangle. The television is an enormous black rectangle.
Perhaps the next major design movement in consumer technology will therefore not be about making devices thinner. Perhaps it will be about giving technology a body again. Real buttons. Real knobs. Materials. Texture. Light. Mechanical movement. Objects that are allowed to occupy space. Objects that communicate what they are before they are even switched on.
If that happens, the small CRT revival may prove more important than it first appears. Because perhaps the cathode-ray tube itself is not really returning. The idea behind the old television is returning. The idea that technology can simultaneously be a tool and a piece of furniture. That a machine can have personality. That something does not have to be reduced to a few millimetres of aluminium and glass to be considered advanced.
We spent twenty years making televisions thinner. Someone may soon discover that there is money to be made by making them thick again.
And somewhere right now, an old Sony Trinitron is sitting in a basement, an attic or the back of a storage room. Its owner may be wondering whether it is finally time to take that enormous piece of outdated technology to the recycling centre.
It might be wise to wait a little longer.
By Chris...