1 00:00:00,110 --> 00:00:05,810 In 1960, the fledgling Sony company in Japan decided to get into the television business. 2 00:00:05,810 --> 00:00:10,539 Their first foray into television was a remarkable achievement in and of itself, being the first 3 00:00:10,539 --> 00:00:12,950 completely transistorized television. 4 00:00:12,950 --> 00:00:17,680 The TV8-301 wasn’t really a commercial hit, but it was a technical feat. 5 00:00:17,680 --> 00:00:22,280 And just a year later, Sony’s dealers were putting pressure on them to develop a color TV 6 00:00:22,460 --> 00:00:27,370 Sony was understandably reluctant as color TV sales at the time were abysmal in Japan, 7 00:00:27,370 --> 00:00:31,380 but the sales department managed to exert sufficient pressure on the engineering department 8 00:00:31,380 --> 00:00:33,160 to actually start work. 9 00:00:33,160 --> 00:00:39,210 Sony’s visit to the 1961 IEEE trade show resulted in a glimpse of the Autometric company’s 10 00:00:39,210 --> 00:00:40,250 Chromatron tube. 11 00:00:40,250 --> 00:00:44,080 This picture tube worked in a completely different fashion than the shadow mask picture tubes 12 00:00:44,080 --> 00:00:45,520 of the time. 13 00:00:45,520 --> 00:00:49,660 Rather than use three electron guns and a matrix of holes to create the separation like 14 00:00:49,660 --> 00:00:54,101 the standard shadow mask picture tube did, the Chromatron used a single electron gun 15 00:00:54,101 --> 00:00:59,040 combined with a vertical grille of electrically charged wires at the front of the tube. 16 00:00:59,040 --> 00:01:03,329 In essence, the Chromatron relied heavily on electronics to focus the electron beam 17 00:01:03,329 --> 00:01:04,940 onto the correct color. 18 00:01:04,940 --> 00:01:09,010 The beam was normally focused onto the vertical green phosphor stripes present at the front 19 00:01:09,010 --> 00:01:10,030 of the screen. 20 00:01:10,030 --> 00:01:13,970 But the deflecting wires, placed about a half inch behind the phosphors, could push the 21 00:01:13,970 --> 00:01:17,540 beam to either side, and light up the adjacent phosphor stripe. 22 00:01:17,540 --> 00:01:21,350 The pattern of these phosphor stripes on a Chromatron tube, sometimes called a Lawrence 23 00:01:21,350 --> 00:01:24,869 tube, were arranged as RGB - BGR. 24 00:01:24,869 --> 00:01:28,150 This was necessary due to the way the deflecting wires worked. 25 00:01:28,150 --> 00:01:31,090 Without a charge, the beam wouldn’t be a tightly focused and would light all three 26 00:01:31,090 --> 00:01:32,689 phosphors together. 27 00:01:32,689 --> 00:01:36,990 But by placing a charge between pairs of wires, you would get both a tighter beam and the 28 00:01:36,990 --> 00:01:40,690 ability to push it left and right to control the alternate colors. 29 00:01:40,690 --> 00:01:45,200 Placing a single green stripe between two reds and two blues made this easier to accomplish, 30 00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:48,979 as the direction the beam was pulled would reverse as it crossed each pair of deflection 31 00:01:48,979 --> 00:01:52,830 wires, as their individual voltage potential remained constant. 32 00:01:52,830 --> 00:01:57,729 Using an RGB-RGB pattern would require constantly reversing the wire grid’s charge, which 33 00:01:57,729 --> 00:02:00,770 would be a nightmare with the electronics of the time. 34 00:02:00,770 --> 00:02:04,700 Already there was a lot of added complexity, as with a single electron beam, it needed 35 00:02:04,700 --> 00:02:08,920 to be precisely modulated when producing a color image to ensure it fired with the correct 36 00:02:08,920 --> 00:02:13,050 intensity as it repeatedly changed what color component it was illuminating. 37 00:02:13,050 --> 00:02:17,140 The huge advantage of this chromatron tube was a much brighter picture than conventional 38 00:02:17,140 --> 00:02:19,200 tubes using a shadow mask. 39 00:02:19,200 --> 00:02:23,760 Even though it used just one electron gun, none of the beam’s energy was lost with 40 00:02:23,760 --> 00:02:27,270 this system, as all of it passed through the focusing wires. 41 00:02:27,270 --> 00:02:31,500 The Chromatron also benefited from minimal required convergence tweaking. 42 00:02:31,500 --> 00:02:35,110 This made the Chromatron tube much easier to configure in the factory, and less likely 43 00:02:35,110 --> 00:02:38,890 to experience convergence problems requiring adjustment over time. 44 00:02:38,890 --> 00:02:43,550 Remember, this was only seven years after the first color television was mass produced, 45 00:02:43,550 --> 00:02:48,800 so we’re dealing with brand new technologies with patents and licensing to go along with them. 46 00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:52,819 Sony saw both the better picture results of this tube and the possibility to skirt around 47 00:02:52,819 --> 00:02:56,800 licensing costs and leapt at the chance to take over the project. 48 00:02:56,800 --> 00:03:01,550 Sony bought the entire Autometric operation from Paramount Pictures, who was behind it. 49 00:03:01,550 --> 00:03:05,220 But they’d soon discover that while the Chromatron tube was a fabulous device once 50 00:03:05,220 --> 00:03:08,680 built, it was a veritable pain in the ass to produce. 51 00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:13,700 It took until 1964 for the first Chromatron television to actually be mass produced. 52 00:03:13,700 --> 00:03:16,120 And Sony sold each one at a loss. 53 00:03:16,120 --> 00:03:22,620 They were put on the market for a reasonable 198,000 Yen, but cost 400,000 Yen to build. 54 00:03:22,620 --> 00:03:26,640 That’s obviously not sustainable, but Sony had faith that if they just stuck with it, 55 00:03:26,640 --> 00:03:30,550 they could get the manufacturing costs down by perfecting the process as the production 56 00:03:30,550 --> 00:03:31,550 line matured. 57 00:03:31,550 --> 00:03:32,550 Well, they couldn’t. 58 00:03:32,550 --> 00:03:33,580 It continued to be a nightmare. 59 00:03:33,580 --> 00:03:38,909 So in 1966 Masaru Ibuka, Sony’s president and co-founder, led the way to find a replacement 60 00:03:38,909 --> 00:03:40,340 for the Chromatron. 61 00:03:40,340 --> 00:03:44,319 Part of the reason was that General Electric’s Porta-Color TVs had introduced an improved 62 00:03:44,319 --> 00:03:48,170 shadow mask design and new arrangement of electron guns. 63 00:03:48,170 --> 00:03:52,220 These picture tubes moved the electron guns from a triangle arrangement to an in-line 64 00:03:52,220 --> 00:03:56,580 arrangement, and shifted from the dot-pattern of the original CRT designs to the vertical 65 00:03:56,580 --> 00:03:58,730 triad design you see here. 66 00:03:58,730 --> 00:04:02,680 The result was a much brighter picture that was close to what the Chromatron was producing, 67 00:04:02,680 --> 00:04:08,040 and also eliminated many of the convergence problems conventional shadow mask tubes suffered from. 68 00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:12,180 So now Sony was stuck with a money-losing product that wasn’t that much better than 69 00:04:12,180 --> 00:04:13,310 the competition. 70 00:04:13,310 --> 00:04:17,159 The engineers at Sony would alter some of the ideas from the Portacolor and merge them 71 00:04:17,159 --> 00:04:19,239 with the Chromatron’s design. 72 00:04:19,239 --> 00:04:24,629 Susumu Yoshida asked engineer Senri Miyaoka if the three in-line electron guns could be 73 00:04:24,629 --> 00:04:29,509 replaced by a single electron gun with three individual cathodes, as this could decrease 74 00:04:29,509 --> 00:04:31,379 the cost of manufacturing. 75 00:04:31,379 --> 00:04:32,949 Turns out, yes you could! 76 00:04:32,949 --> 00:04:36,559 This initially made for focusing challenges, but they were eventually solved. 77 00:04:36,559 --> 00:04:41,060 The other big development in this new tube was similar to the Chromatron’s wire grille. 78 00:04:41,060 --> 00:04:45,219 The Chromatron’s electrically charged wires were altered into what’s called an aperture 79 00:04:45,219 --> 00:04:49,500 grille, which was fundamentally similar but didn’t require an electrical charge. 80 00:04:49,500 --> 00:04:53,150 The aperture grill was more of a single metal sheet with slits cut vertically through it, 81 00:04:53,150 --> 00:04:56,349 though it is sometimes still referred to as being made of wires. 82 00:04:56,349 --> 00:04:59,990 The grille separated the color components by blocking their path much like the shadow 83 00:04:59,990 --> 00:05:04,139 mask, but kept the vertical phosphor orientation of the chromatron. 84 00:05:04,139 --> 00:05:08,279 The aperture grill was very simple and very effective, but perhaps most importantly to 85 00:05:08,279 --> 00:05:11,650 Sony’s pocketbook, was unique enough for it to be patented! 86 00:05:11,650 --> 00:05:16,039 This new picture tube was called the Trinitron, and it was better than what any of the competition 87 00:05:16,039 --> 00:05:18,689 were producing by a wide margin. 88 00:05:18,689 --> 00:05:22,699 Introduced in 1968, these televisions were more expensive than the competition, but were 89 00:05:22,699 --> 00:05:24,689 universally well received. 90 00:05:24,689 --> 00:05:29,460 In fact, Sony received an Emmy award in 1973 for the invention of the Trinitron. 91 00:05:29,460 --> 00:05:31,690 But what made the tube so great? 92 00:05:31,690 --> 00:05:35,240 Let’s compare a Trinitron tube to a standard shadow mask tube. 93 00:05:35,240 --> 00:05:39,349 So, when you put a Trinitron display side-by-side with a conventional shadow-mask display, the 94 00:05:39,349 --> 00:05:41,469 most obvious difference is the shape. 95 00:05:41,469 --> 00:05:46,430 A Trinitron tube has a distinctive appearance due to the geometry of aperture grille vs. 96 00:05:46,430 --> 00:05:47,430 the shadow mask. 97 00:05:47,430 --> 00:05:52,469 A shadow mask tube has a near constant curvature across the face because the angles the three 98 00:05:52,469 --> 00:05:57,039 electron beams approach at to create the individual Red, Green, and Blue color components need 99 00:05:57,039 --> 00:05:59,649 to be consistent across the whole face. 100 00:05:59,649 --> 00:06:03,249 The center of the tube is aligned with the electron guns in the back, but the edges need 101 00:06:03,249 --> 00:06:07,379 to curve outwards to keep the inside face more or less perpendicular to the source of 102 00:06:07,379 --> 00:06:08,379 the beam. 103 00:06:08,379 --> 00:06:11,589 A Trinitron tube, meanwhile, only curves side to side. 104 00:06:11,589 --> 00:06:15,180 It doesn’t curve vertically, producing a distinctive, cylindrical shape. 105 00:06:15,180 --> 00:06:17,879 This is actually a requirement of the aperture grille. 106 00:06:17,879 --> 00:06:21,770 The aperture grille is fundamentally simpler than the shadow mask, as it only needs to 107 00:06:21,770 --> 00:06:24,529 block the electron beams in the X dimension. 108 00:06:24,529 --> 00:06:28,649 Three separate beams arranged in a line can be separated with just a slit. 109 00:06:28,649 --> 00:06:31,150 With the green beam in the center, it can pass straight through. 110 00:06:31,150 --> 00:06:35,129 But the red and blue beams can only pass through the left, and right, respectively. 111 00:06:35,129 --> 00:06:38,830 But this arrangement requires the slits in the grill to always be perpendicular with 112 00:06:38,830 --> 00:06:43,300 respect to the three beams’ linear arrangement, in other words the grille had to always stay 113 00:06:43,300 --> 00:06:48,280 completely vertical, as any tilt to the left or right could cause cross-over and you’d 114 00:06:48,280 --> 00:06:49,809 get messed up colors. 115 00:06:49,809 --> 00:06:53,030 We all know from Ghostbusters that you shouldn’t cross the beams! 116 00:06:53,030 --> 00:06:57,529 So, Trinitron tubes were designed to only curve in the X dimension, keeping the face 117 00:06:57,529 --> 00:07:01,840 of the tube perpendicular to the electron gun along its width, and the beam separation 118 00:07:01,840 --> 00:07:03,819 angle constant along its height. 119 00:07:03,819 --> 00:07:07,520 The other thing you’ll notice when comparing a Trinitron TV to a conventional one is a 120 00:07:07,520 --> 00:07:09,909 generally much brighter image. 121 00:07:09,909 --> 00:07:12,509 This was the signature “big deal” of the Trinitron. 122 00:07:12,509 --> 00:07:17,729 A shadow mask separates the color components through individual holes in a metal sheet. 123 00:07:17,729 --> 00:07:21,960 The earliest CRTs using a shadow mask would lose upwards of 80% of the beam’s energy 124 00:07:21,960 --> 00:07:27,360 to the mask itself, with only a paltry percentage actually making it through to excite the phosphors 125 00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:29,280 and make the screen glow. 126 00:07:29,280 --> 00:07:32,249 This was improved over time through the use of the in-line guns and the triad phosphor 127 00:07:32,249 --> 00:07:35,740 arrangement introduced with the Portacolor, but the beam was still blasting its way through 128 00:07:35,740 --> 00:07:37,110 tiny slits. 129 00:07:37,110 --> 00:07:41,169 This required very powerful electron guns, yet still resulted in a dim picture compared 130 00:07:41,169 --> 00:07:43,289 to conventional black and white TVs. 131 00:07:43,289 --> 00:07:47,289 The aperture grille, meanwhile, only needs to blocks the beam from left to right to separate 132 00:07:47,289 --> 00:07:48,860 the color components. 133 00:07:48,860 --> 00:07:52,779 Vertically there is no separation at all, and this allows much more beam energy to pass 134 00:07:52,779 --> 00:07:55,069 through it and reach the phosphors. 135 00:07:55,069 --> 00:07:59,569 This alone made the phosphors glow more intensely, but the tubes were further helped along by 136 00:07:59,569 --> 00:08:03,639 uninterrupted phosphor stripes rather than individual groupings. 137 00:08:03,639 --> 00:08:07,080 If you look closely at a Trinitron picture tube, you’ll see continuous lines going 138 00:08:07,080 --> 00:08:10,879 from top to bottom with no horizontal separation at all. 139 00:08:10,879 --> 00:08:14,229 When operating you see the stripes broken up, but that’s merely the result of the 140 00:08:14,229 --> 00:08:17,819 way the image is made via scanning in horizontal lines. 141 00:08:17,819 --> 00:08:22,169 As I’ve said now on two separate occasions, phosphor groups you see in a conventional 142 00:08:22,169 --> 00:08:24,360 tube ARE NOT pixels. 143 00:08:24,360 --> 00:08:28,689 This is analog video we’re talking and any Trinitron display helps to show how this is 144 00:08:28,689 --> 00:08:32,300 true by only containing stripes of phosphors. 145 00:08:32,300 --> 00:08:33,479 Now do you understand??? 146 00:08:33,479 --> 00:08:39,130 Anyway, a conventional tube’s phosphor groupings have black lines above and below each grouping. 147 00:08:39,130 --> 00:08:42,789 These lines further reduce the image brightness because, well, they don’t glow. 148 00:08:42,789 --> 00:08:45,060 I mean, that’s fairly obvious now isn’t it? 149 00:08:45,060 --> 00:08:47,410 But they also cause other problems. 150 00:08:47,410 --> 00:08:50,980 Conventional color picture tubes would display false patterns, sometimes injecting color 151 00:08:50,980 --> 00:08:54,910 where it shouldn’t be, when displaying an image with fine patterns. 152 00:08:54,910 --> 00:08:59,490 This happens when the displayed pattern is misaligned with the phosphor grid. 153 00:08:59,490 --> 00:09:03,279 Because a Trinitron doesn’t have a phosphor grid, is was less prone to this occurring, 154 00:09:03,279 --> 00:09:08,569 so in many instances a non-trinitron display would produce a Moire pattern or false color, 155 00:09:08,569 --> 00:09:10,270 and a Trinitron wouldn’t. 156 00:09:10,270 --> 00:09:14,470 Perhaps the only downside to the Trinitron tube is a fine stabilization wire needed to 157 00:09:14,470 --> 00:09:17,180 prevent the aperture grille from vibrating. 158 00:09:17,180 --> 00:09:21,310 If the tube was exposed to loud sounds, the aperture grille could vibrate and produce 159 00:09:21,310 --> 00:09:23,600 wild distortions in color. 160 00:09:23,600 --> 00:09:28,610 The stabilization wire would hold them together and prevent this, but the wire itself is visible. 161 00:09:28,610 --> 00:09:33,079 On smaller tubes like this only one wire is present, about a third of the way up from 162 00:09:33,079 --> 00:09:37,149 the bottom, while larger tubes would have a second wire the same distance from the top. 163 00:09:37,149 --> 00:09:40,819 To be fair, these wires are barely visible, since they are much finer than any of the 164 00:09:40,819 --> 00:09:46,220 scan lines, but they can be an annoyance when the tube is displaying uniformly bright images. 165 00:09:46,220 --> 00:09:51,380 In most cases the image displayed would contain enough variation to make the line essentially invisible. 166 00:09:51,420 --> 00:09:55,019 Now, the fact that this stabilization wire was necessary may explain the Chromatron’s 167 00:09:55,019 --> 00:09:56,329 ultimate demise. 168 00:09:56,329 --> 00:10:00,380 The charged wires probably suffered from the same vibration issues, particularly since 169 00:10:00,380 --> 00:10:02,860 they were so far behind the phosphors. 170 00:10:02,860 --> 00:10:06,371 And they couldn’t be stabilized as easily as the Trinitron’s aperture grill because 171 00:10:06,380 --> 00:10:11,060 a wire holding them all together would remove the required voltage differential between pairs. 172 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:15,350 I’m willing to bet that the Chromatron would have experienced continually worse problems 173 00:10:15,350 --> 00:10:19,660 as larger picture tubes were manufactured, and it would have needed even more R&D to 174 00:10:19,660 --> 00:10:20,660 address it. 175 00:10:20,660 --> 00:10:24,949 The many advantages of the Trinitron picture tube made Sony the undisputed king of televisions 176 00:10:24,949 --> 00:10:29,130 (at least from a quality standpoint) for many years, and they were able to charge a premium 177 00:10:29,130 --> 00:10:32,649 for their televisions which many people were willing to fork over. 178 00:10:32,649 --> 00:10:36,540 These two TVs show how successfully Sony was with the product. 179 00:10:36,540 --> 00:10:40,709 These are obviously made many years apart, but the actual picture tube is virtually the 180 00:10:40,709 --> 00:10:41,709 same. 181 00:10:41,709 --> 00:10:43,339 It might even have the same part number. 182 00:10:43,339 --> 00:10:47,090 Sony was able to keep pumping out the same picture tubes, update the cabinets that held 183 00:10:47,090 --> 00:10:49,910 them and the electronics that drove them, and they’d still be better than what the 184 00:10:49,910 --> 00:10:51,160 competition offered. 185 00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:57,040 From 1968 until 1998, any other manufacturer who wanted Trinitron technology in their televisions 186 00:10:57,040 --> 00:11:01,640 would need to license it from Sony, and Sony was plenty happy with just making the TVs 187 00:11:01,640 --> 00:11:06,569 themselves and made it difficult to do so, though Apple was notably keen on using Trinitron 188 00:11:06,569 --> 00:11:08,329 tubes in their early color monitors. 189 00:11:08,329 --> 00:11:13,050 However, in 1998 the patent for Trinitron expired, allowing the competition to make 190 00:11:13,050 --> 00:11:16,680 their own Trinitron-like picture tubes without paying royalties to Sony. 191 00:11:16,680 --> 00:11:21,600 But, the name Trinitron was still a trademark of Sony’s, so they had to fudge the name. 192 00:11:21,600 --> 00:11:26,050 Most of these new picture tubes would have some sort of Tron in their title, like Mitsubishi’s 193 00:11:26,050 --> 00:11:27,050 Diamondtron. 194 00:11:27,050 --> 00:11:29,319 Sony’s timing was pretty good. 195 00:11:29,319 --> 00:11:34,630 By the time their patent had expired, LCD and Plasma TVs were beginning to take over. 196 00:11:34,630 --> 00:11:40,269 By the mid 2000’s, CRT displays represented a tiny fraction of televisions sold in mainstream 197 00:11:40,269 --> 00:11:41,269 markets. 198 00:11:41,269 --> 00:11:46,000 But for the entire 30 years that Sony held the patent, it was virtually second to none. 199 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:49,959 Trinitron remained important for many years, and in some applications is still the preferred 200 00:11:49,959 --> 00:11:50,970 display device. 201 00:11:50,970 --> 00:11:54,870 I’ll tell you that for watching standard definition content, nothing beats it, and 202 00:11:54,870 --> 00:11:58,589 that’s why this TV stays here along with my menagerie of obsolete A/V equipment. 203 00:11:58,589 --> 00:12:00,390 Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed it. 204 00:12:00,390 --> 00:12:03,680 If you’re new to this channel, why not hit that Subscribe button? 205 00:12:03,680 --> 00:12:06,019 And I suppose I should suggest that you also hit the bell? 206 00:12:06,019 --> 00:12:07,160 I hear that’s important. 207 00:12:07,160 --> 00:12:10,250 I’d also like to thank all of my Patreon supporters out there. 208 00:12:10,250 --> 00:12:14,350 Patreon supporters are allowing me to spend less time in a normal job, and more time making 209 00:12:14,350 --> 00:12:15,399 videos for you. 210 00:12:15,399 --> 00:12:18,819 If you’re interested in helping out, please check out my Patreon page through the link 211 00:12:18,819 --> 00:12:20,430 on your screen or down below in the description. 212 00:12:20,430 --> 00:12:24,380 Thanks for your consideration, and I’ll see you next time.