I don’t mean BETTER. That’s a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That’s just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
      8·
      2 months ago

      HTC knew what was up with the HTC One series. Their polycarbonate bodies felt Nintendo 64 controller levels of durable.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        I’ve got a drawer that has a stack of my old phones and devices in it. Among them is the CD MP3 player I’ve had since high school. It’s 24 years old, made entirely of plastic, it followed me all the way through high school and part of the way through college, and it’s in perfect working condition and bears only light scuffs. It might be my midlife crisis coming on but I’m tempted to start using the thing again instead of my smart phone. My PC tower has a 5 1/4" bay, I’m tempted to install an optical drive in it.

        • bitwolf@lemmy.one
          1·
          2 months ago

          I still move a 5.25" Blu Ray writer drive between machines. Just in case I want to rip or watch an old bluray.

          Without it, we have to sit.and wait for the dusty Xbox One to update just so it let’s us play a bluray.

          The Xbox One is so fantastically bad, the only reason it’s not in the garbage is because it’s not mine and the SO wants to save it

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      I realize my smartwatch is made with really hard to scratch or crack glass, but every single time I ding it on something, I anxiously check to see.