Growing up in the early ’90s, I could feel in my bones whenever someone turned on the household TV. Didn’t matter if it was on mute, if I was at the other side of the house, or even if I was asleep; the high-pitched 15kHz whine of a cathode-ray tube TV — as much a feeling as a sound — was impossible to ignore.

And that’s not the only drawback to the technology that was for decades the centrepiece of home entertainment. Box TVs driven by CRTs are enormous and heavy, despite most of them having a smaller watchable screen than any modern set. They can be permanently damaged by impacts, age or exposure to magnets. They contain incredibly high voltages and can become instruments of death if they go wrong (or if they fall on you).

Old games are designed to be displayed on old screens, and some developers even checked their work closely on consumer CRTs so they could take full advantage of the texture and blur.

CRTs were almost entirely phased out during the 2000s in favour of lighter, bigger, cheaper LCDs. TVs that had been prized family possessions were carried out of lounge rooms and abandoned.

But even though they’re ugly, take up too much space and need sturdy furniture to hold them — and even despite that annoying whine — I’ve always held on to at least one, dragging them across states from rental to........

© Brisbane Times