Comments on: GE Widescreen 1000: Big time TV for big budgets https://dfarq.homeip.net/ge-widescreen-1000/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ge-widescreen-1000 David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more Sat, 06 Jun 2026 21:34:01 +0000 hourly 1 By: James https://dfarq.homeip.net/ge-widescreen-1000/#comment-57691 Sat, 06 Jun 2026 21:34:01 +0000 https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=30266#comment-57691 I take it this used a conventional shadow mask color CRT instead of the later standard arrangement of three separate monochrome CRTs? I wonder how good the picture looked, I suppose it would have been impressive at the time just by virtue of its size but typical 13” TV CRTs had a rather course dot pitch.

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By: Mark Penury https://dfarq.homeip.net/ge-widescreen-1000/#comment-57689 Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:00:06 +0000 https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=30266#comment-57689 This reminds me of a bit of an amusing anecdote. Not especially related to the topic, but…

A while back, my grandfather still used a CRT TV. He got his seven channels on it via antenna, and was always mad that he got a horrible signal. It didn’t help that the edges of the broadcast were cropped too…
Anyway, one day his TV finally died. So off he went to the store to buy a replacement. And he was particularly unhappy there: “Where are all the curved screens? I don’t want one of these expensive new flatscreen TVs!” This was less than five years. Either way, once we were able to convince him that his much-desired CRT TV was not only considered obsolete, but entirely unavailable, he did indeed buy an “expensive new flatscreen TV”. And he hated it. For one thing, it was apparently much too big. This was the smallest TV at the store; I think that it was a 24-inch. And then it was a Roku TV. And that *really* was the problem for him. Navigating the menus and such drove him nuts, and, worse, the antenna reception was no better. But now, he has to rescan for channels every time the antenna is adjusted… so that drives him mad too. And then one day the new TV quit working properly. Of course, turns out it needed updates. But my grandparents don’t get Internet through a router; they just have a hotspot that is turned on only to use the computer. And so the whole idea of having to *update* a TV was simply wrong to my grandfather. So, to say the least, he has a continually antagonistic relationship with that TV.
And then we tried to introduce him to streaming… that did not go well. “I don’t want to *choose* which show to watch, I just want to watch whatever is being shown now!” He is very attached to standard broadcasting…

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