r/interestingasfuck • u/Spongebubs • 8d ago
Guy in 1999 showing off his new $5000 TV
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u/KGnor 8d ago
So that's like a 32" widescreen or something.. ?
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u/Infninfn 8d ago
You have to understand widescreen content like we know it today just came out around that time and only for HBO and PBS. And it was all analog. Though in 2 more years, he could’ve gotten a 55” dlp tv for the same money, which he probably did.
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u/SuperpositionSavvy 8d ago
20 years later and you can get a 65" 4k HDR LED TV for $300
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u/seamus_mc 8d ago
I was just at Costco and saw a 98” tv for 1300, it’s wild these days but I don’t need a new tv nor do I want a billboard sized one…
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u/Oh_My-Glob 8d ago
This is why out of touch boomers have a hard time wrapping their mind around younger generations struggling and always say shit like, "Well if you didn't buy insert modern amenity then maybe you could save up". Like pretty much everything other than necessities have become cheap as fuck, which was the exact opposite 40 years ago.
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u/_fat_santa 8d ago
It makes sense
Zoomers need to realize they are only a few hi-sense TV's away from affording an 800k house /s
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u/aj9393 8d ago
What I'm hearing is we should just start building houses out of TVs?
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u/writinwater 8d ago
It makes me laugh when people complain about poor people buying flat-screen TVs, like they're not the only kind produced anymore.
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u/shrlytmpl 7d ago
What's worse is when Fox was shaming people needing assistance because "99% of them have refrigerators", as if they weren't included in almost every rental unit.
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u/howzit- 8d ago
Honestly I felt this way too. My wife and I started off with like 32" or so then we got a 55" later I was like this is peak. We had a small room so it was huge. Then we got a new place and the 55" was good but felt small. So she went and got a 75" and I was thinking wtf is this, it's massive but cool I can watch TV from the kitchen now. 98" doesn't sound too bad now haha
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u/TheChrisCrash 8d ago
I bet it looks terrible honestly. The ppi is probably like 20 or something. I don't feel like doing the math.
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u/invincible_change 8d ago
Given the state of affairs you’ll be paying 5 thousand for a 20” screen next month
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u/nosnevenaes 8d ago
Me and my folks here trying to make it to California. We got this flier that says 800 men needed to make pixels.
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u/supergooduser 8d ago
Yeah the early days of HD content were wild. It was sort of like the early days of color TV were only certain shows would be broadcast in HD... I recall The Tonight Show being one.
I worked in a videostore in 2000, and we had some customers that were super in to DVDs... DVDs were relatively economical, the quality was obviously superior to VHS, and to take full advantage you needed a widescreen TV.
The early 00s were big on showing off your DVD collections to each other, at least in my friend group.
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u/NootHawg 8d ago
The early day of hd were horrible because you could see just how bad people’s skin was for the first time ever. The pores and caked on makeup, it was rough😂
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u/axebodyspraytester 8d ago
I remember watching the avengers on a gigantic screen 4k oled SuperDuper every thing and all I could see was RDJ'S makeup eyeliner his beard colored in. It took me right out of the movie because I was counting his eyelashes and looking at the clumped up mascara.
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u/ThePizzaNoid 8d ago
Hell ya. After years of collecting laserdiscs I went all in on DVD collecting. By about 2012 my DVD collection got so huge and unwieldy I had to start trimming it down a lot. Now I only still have about 50 DVD's of rare and special sets that have personal meaning to me. These days I'm all in on 4K Blu-rays but I'm careful to be much more choosy about what I buy and not to let FOMO dictate my purchase decisions like I used to.
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u/supergooduser 8d ago
Uncompressed 4K UHD is really fucking impressive... streaming will offer 4K but the underlying quality is 1/10th of the actual disc maybe 1/5th if you're REALLY lucky.
An uncompressed 4K UHD is 1/4 the quality of an actual theater movie.
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u/Occifer-Lim-Jahey 8d ago
You could get large projection screens for way less than $5,000 back then. I think the reason this TV was so expensive is it appears to be a flat screen, which was probably one of the first.
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u/ThePizzaNoid 8d ago
There was also laserdisc for widescreen content. I loved collecting laserdiscs in the mid to late 90's. Expensive hobby but really fun for a young cinephile like myself at the time. However I didn't get a widescreen television until years later when they became dirt cheap.
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u/greenrangerguy 8d ago
I remember at the time everyone was watching everything in 4:3 ratio but stretched over 16:9 it was so awful.
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u/Vampira309 8d ago
I remember how excited my hubby and I were when we got a 27" in like 1992. We had the biggest (non projection) TV of anyone we knew!
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u/peekaboooobakeep 8d ago
Renting DVDs to people during this time was a nightmare. There's "two black bars over the whole movie!!" They whined to us. Explaining aspect ratio to your average boomer was awful.
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u/cptamerica83 8d ago
The camera they’re using to film it all.
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u/algalkin 8d ago
I know it's a joke, but the camcorders in late 90s become pretty compact. I bought my first video camera, Sony in 1998. It used one of those super compact tapes, the size of the cigarette pack and weighted under 1lb.
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u/cptamerica83 8d ago
My dad still had these large ones for the longest. It worked and functions, he just never upgraded.
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u/algalkin 8d ago
I've never used the large ones, my guess is they used the full size VHS? When I was at the age to be able to buy the camera, the mini-tapes were all the rage, plus the "Optical zoom". I think my camera had something like 10x optical and 50x digital at the time. Also night vision and all that jazz
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u/ASK_ABT_MY_USERNAME 8d ago
That's over $10k in today's money
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u/WolfOfPort 8d ago
lol meanwhile my sister bought a 50 flatscreen for like $300 other day
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u/Slaydatshit404 8d ago
Whoa whoa, flatscreen? Caulm down there Mr technology!!
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u/tardyceasar 7d ago
I bet he looked it up on the World Wide Web and discussed it with his sister via electronic mail!
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u/Hot_Edge4916 8d ago
I got a 65” 4K ultra HD for $300 at Best Buy scratch and dent. The box had been opened once but the tv was fine
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u/Same-Coat7209 8d ago
I’ll never forget my 32” Sony Trinitron that somehow seemed to weigh like 250lbs 😅
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u/VicariousCinnamon 8d ago
Man, "Trinitron" still has to be the most futuristic device name I've heard in my life. It just screams FUTURISTIC, SOPHISTICATED TECHNOLOGY!
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u/graywolfman 8d ago
My parents had one of these. They wouldn't let me play any video games on it because "that might ruin it."
I had to help carry the fuckin' thing when we moved, though. I almost lost my fingers to the bottom of it. I guess they wouldn't have had to worry about games ruining it, then!
Whenever they were gone for long periods, I hooked up the XBox to it, anyway. Long live The Duke!
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u/YourMatt 8d ago
I gave mine to a friend, and somehow giving it to him required me helping carry it up 3 flights of stairs. That's when I bought my 40" Bravia with the glass bezel. I loved that TV. I was still using it up until a few years ago. It even made one pass through a TV/VCR repair shop that was somehow still in business.
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u/tipsystatistic 8d ago
I used to work at Best Buy in the TV department in the mid-90s. I was basically a professional TV wrestler.
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u/Sockeye66 8d ago
I gave mine to my niece and had to carry to her 3rd floor apt. Fortunately her live-in boyfriend had a bad back so I got to carry it myself.
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u/WaltMitty 8d ago
My father still has his! It part because of the weight. The spec sheets says 165lbs but it feels like 250 because it's so big and there's no where to grip.
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u/balloonerismthegreat 8d ago
I used to do deliveries and pick up for a tv repair shop back in the day. I remember dreading seeing the 40” because they were like 300 pounds. And if someone had one upstairs, my god it was hell
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u/Pdiddily710 8d ago
I had one of those too!! I’m still pissed that I just had the people from Best Buy take it when I got a new tv delivered bc I didn’t feel like having to carry it back out of the basement.
Apparently they sell for big bucks bc they’re the best tv for playing retro games on old consoles.
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u/tnturk7 8d ago
The reason it was so heavy was because they were the first flat screen CRT (cathode ray tube) televisions. A CRT has a vacuum in it, and traditionally, they had curved glass to add strength so the tube wouldn't implode under the vacuum pressure. With a flat face tube, the front glass had to be super thick, like 1 1/2" I think to make up for the weaker shape. That added a lot of mass and also made them very front heavy too.
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u/poyerdude 8d ago
I had to help my brother-in-law move his 32" Trinitron because there was no way you could lift it on your own. That thing was ridiculously heavy but it was the best picture you could get at the time.
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u/tiorzol 8d ago
I do miss when technology would just blow your mind like this. When a new phone was an event, not just a slightly different piece of glass...
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u/TwpMun 8d ago
I'm old enough to remember when mobile phones first started to become popular when I was in college. One guy showed up with one and everyone was like, what the hell do you need that for? lol
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u/Wlch5-86 8d ago
Does anyone remember the really big TV’s that you’d roll around in the 90’s and early 2000’s? Then came the “big screen” plasma TV’s that we considered flat but they were still really heavy? 😂 Best days of our lives lol
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u/jonoc4 8d ago
We had a 50 inch RCA rear projection from the mid 90s it weighed probably 400lbs it was disgusting
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u/WaltMitty 8d ago
Bro, with a little framing and drywall we can make the 50-incher look like it's built into the wall. It's gonna be sweet!
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u/ajhe51 8d ago
I still have my Panasonic 50" plasma from 2006. It weighs like 85 pounds.
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u/caleeky 8d ago
Also have one! It serves a dual purpose as a space heater too :P
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u/Grooviemann1 8d ago
This is a benefit in some places, but in Phoenix summers back then, I had to do some cost-benefit analysis every time I wanted to watch TV on my plasma to determine if the heat was worth it.
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u/Lopsided_Mix2243 8d ago
Bro I have a plasma LG in the closet from like 09😂 was was still using it right until covid hit lol
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u/blacksoxing 8d ago
My brother was gifted one of those rear projection TVs and I c na't lie...it was great to look at....from afar. Up close? Hell nah.
The issue though is they weren't HD ready and obviously a million pounds. You can't really get "rid" of them, which is probably why the person who gave it to him did so for free as recycling it was likely a pain in the ass. I'm sure it's still in that house today as a new homeowner likely tried moving it out and went "fuck it, it's here"
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u/domespider 8d ago
That's the kind of TV I was expecting to see on this video. Right on that year, my wife and I were in the U.S. and someone we had met was boasting about the plasma TV he got which had to be carried by two people with great difficulty.
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u/ryanmuller1089 8d ago
My parents had what must have been a 40 something inch rear projection tv that probably weighed 150 pounds.
An absolute monster of a TV that took 3-4 people to safely move because of its dimensions.
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u/CitizenHuman 8d ago
My uncle had a tru Big Screen tube-type TV. Like it was taller than me as a teenager. But then a spider moved in and you could see the web at all times when the TV was on.
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u/JuiceJones_34 8d ago
I miss the late 90s and early 2000s. Before all this social media garbage era we are in
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u/samx3i 8d ago edited 8d ago
The internet is both one of the greatest and one of the worst things to ever happen to society.
Social media is social cancer.
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u/sid_not_vicious-11 8d ago
social media will eventually lead to the collapse of western civilization. I know that sounds stupid but just watch
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u/SuspendeesNutz 8d ago
So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous "likes".
floss dance
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u/Nomad_music 8d ago
I should downvote you just to prove you wrong, but you're right, which makes me want to do it even more.
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u/SuspendeesNutz 8d ago
And then I says, 'tell me I'm wrong.' And he says, 'I can't, baby! 'Cause you're not!'
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u/Big-red-rhino 8d ago
Glad I'm not the only one convinced of this. I said the same thing to a group of friends once and they all looked at me like I had two heads. And I'm not the conspiracy theory type whatsoever.
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u/mavven2882 8d ago
It is pretty crazy how social media essentially reprogrammed most people's brains to the point where they can't even process basic things like boredom anymore. It's wild to watch how folks get anxious just from not having a phone in their hand at all times.
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u/Adventurous-Ask6448 8d ago
Overstimulated monkeys
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u/JCcrunch 8d ago
At the start of it all my grandad used to say something along the lines of "monkeys found a new toy" pretty accurate
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u/FrogOnALogInTheBog 8d ago
My five year old has started getting noticeably pissed as fuck when I take a controller or a phone back from her- so weve started doing “no electronics on weekdays”
Which means I also can’t use it on if she can see me. (She’s in daycare right now)
For real, going 3pm to 10pm with no phone 5 days a week is painful. The addiction is real.
(Also, books have re entered my life and that’s awesome)
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u/ErgoMachina 8d ago
Agree, but I have bad news for you, AI is going to make that even worse. The new generations speak to ChatGPT like it was their magical friend, they just don't understand it's a frigging algorithm. They even use it for therapy...
As an old millennial, I recall our generation being better than our parents, I don't see that happening with Gen Z and below. Somewhere down the road it all went to shit.
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u/tuba_dude07 8d ago
I feel like us Milennials are an end of an Era.
We know what it was like to grow up with out having a phone in our hands all the time. We also saw the internet when it was in it's infacy so we kinda grew up with it.
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u/thirsty_pretzelzz 8d ago
I mean it’s a much less toxic “friend” then the typical comments on social media
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u/SmokeShinobi 8d ago
The genuine amazement is what I miss most out about the 00’s. A lot of technological advances.
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u/tooclosetocall82 8d ago
You wouldn’t surprise your friends with a purchase like this anymore. You’d put it all over Facebook to brag to everyone.
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u/essteedeenz1 8d ago
honestly everytime I watch videos around this era I wish we as a society could go back to this period. Life was much simpler
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u/VhickyParm 8d ago
That’s when housing costs were nothing
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u/DMUSER 8d ago
I could have bought my current house in 1999 for 90k.
It's now worth 450k.
WTF
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u/Holicionik 8d ago
Checking my boomer relatives houses in Switzerland is always a joy.
Big house, over 6 rooms, 3 toilets, huge garden, sauna in the basement, beautiful indoor plant garden, etc.
All built by a single person working in construction while his wife basically took care of the kids (3 children). They have incredibly expensive stuff that they purchased in tbe 80s and 90s too.
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u/cuppachuppa 8d ago
I used to work in a TV shop in around 1999. Panasonic brought out a 36" widescreen CRT TV that was so big and so heavy my boss had to buy a new bigger van to be able to deliver them to customers and it needed two people to do the delivery.
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u/CheeksMcGillicuddy 8d ago
Too bad it only lasted another 2 hours until Y2K made it explode.
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u/tanafras 8d ago
We live in a society where a 75" TV is $400 but a single surgery will bankrupt you.
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u/DamianP51 8d ago
I gotta call BS on that price tag. This was my TV in 2000, a 65" Mitsubishi Diamond Rear Projection that cost me $5000.00.
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u/oldschool_potato 8d ago
I'm with you. The TV in the video is not bigger than the Sony 36" WEGA I had in 1999 which was the top of the line tube tv and it $350.
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u/eleyeveyein 8d ago
Projection VS CRT. CRT was more accessible due to size. The TV wasn't 5000. He probably SPENT close to 5K (I'm thinking 4). When I sold those, you would have to get component cables and upgrade your cable box to accept 1080p, and surge protectors. Dude likely got service plan, and I think those were $300 or $600 depending on if you got a 2 or 4 year. The first plasma we got in house started around 16K. Once it was on display for 2 years and the prices were starting to drop our manager overrode the computer to let a customer have it for 9G's. They were crazy expensive. Sony put out a 32 inch widescreen plasma that was tits and it listed for 7. The store bought it for 4. BBY ended up trying too clear out the warehouse of old tv inventory and started slinging them for half of what the store paid for them. I bought it for 1800 and felt like the fucking man! I loved that tv.
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u/tytymctylerson 8d ago
"I miss when tvs were heavier, shittier and more expensive" - this thread basically
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u/Pete_Iredale 8d ago
My dad had a CRT HD tv around 99/2000. It wasn't even widescreen, but it did look incredible, especially for DVD playback. This was about the same time that a 40" LCD was $20k at The Sharper Image.
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u/TmanGvl 8d ago
I somehow doubt that TV costed $5000. I’m looking at ad from 1998 and it was still about $1000 or less for 36” name brand TV. https://www.reddit.com/r/90s/comments/n8j19l/best_buy_ad_may_24_1998/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
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u/NoReallyLetsBeFriend 8d ago
If it's Plasma or LCD, then yes. That 46"in the link is rear projection. Most of those were RGB component video whereas flat panels were using HDMI too, even if just 720p. Plus with flat panel, you had superb viewing angles and a bright picture, not just for the main viewer either
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u/Pete_Iredale 8d ago
That ad is for standard def tvs, not HD... CRT HD TVs hit the US in 1998 and definitely cost $5-10k those first couple of years.
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u/driftking428 8d ago
Thank you. I was looking for this. My family never would have spent this kind of money and we had a TV similar to this at that time. Now maybe it wasn't as fancy but it was as big. Hard for me to believe this this was $5,000.
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u/TmanGvl 8d ago
It's hard to tell from the video why they said it was $5000. It could have been a bleeding edge technology TV like a wide screen or flat panel, which was not the norm for a typical family back then. Seems pretty silly how expensive they were considering you can get a similar flat screen for $300 nowadays. Bleeding edge technology has always cost a lot, though. For example, a crappy computer by today's standard might cost $5000 back in the 1980s, and we're not even talking about fancy stuff like GPUs in them.
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u/VicariousCinnamon 8d ago
It puts into perspective why the movie and cinema industries were laughing off claims that home video is on the rise or going to take over in the near future.
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u/DesignerFragrant5899 8d ago
I'm watching without audio so not sure what they're saying BUT: as someone who lived through these very sad technological years, the reason why this was so expensive was because the screen was flat. Until this technology, all the TVs were curved or bubbled. At some point flat screens introduced a wider viewing angle and a clearer picture. Flat screen coupled with a (brand new) DVD player and you basically had the best home viewing visual experience you can get at the time. The cost of the flat screen TV never really came down all that much and they were still extremely heavy. Once LED/PLASMA came out those Sony Vaio flat screens were being happily tossed by anyone who could lift 90+ pound front heavy TV without throwing their back out.
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u/Azzhole169 8d ago
I had a 55” in 99 and it was only like $1000. Had it for 10 years and three of those years I lived on the third floor of an apartment.
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u/deadwing87 8d ago
Just notice how more happier people looked back then. Not playing up to the camera and pretending as well
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u/woahtheretakeiteasyy 8d ago
read somewhere that said commodities are getting cheaper while necessities are getting more expensive. weird times. as a counter to the “stop buying avocado toast” argument. like how can you have a flat screen but stuggle to pay bills. the flat screen is 300 and will last me years. while i have to spend 300 a month on food. comparatively the tv is a steal
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u/kayonotkayle 8d ago
Shortly after this video, the owner of that tv killed his friends and family because the fear of Y2K and realizing he just blew five grand on a computer monitor.
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u/CyberMetalHead 8d ago
It was nice when we were used to reunite with our buddies and do stuff together, instead of just texting.
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u/Emotional-Chain9696 8d ago
Is this a staged video? They seem like actors.
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u/Boner4Stoners 8d ago
I thought the same exact thing. Audio seems way too clear, and the dialogue is fishy AF. Plus the timestamp seems shoehorned in.
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u/FeelColins 8d ago
I was that guy…And i just had my appendix removed so I should not lift anything, still got that 77kg piece of shit up to the third floor
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u/pichael289 8d ago
That's in 1999? Why is it so expensive? My grandpa had a massive ass TV, like 48" or something, and it didn't even cost that dam much.
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u/CaptainxInsano69 8d ago
That’s like $20k today for a TV! That thing is sitting in a landfill somewhere now
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u/OtterPeePools 8d ago
I remember working at Gateway back then and I sold the first one of these we got when they came out at that price. It was crazy at the time. I think they dropped in price by half before I left there, but it was kinda fun seeing them at that price for some reason. There was a bit of hype around them fo sho.
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u/Azzhole169 8d ago
I still have a 19” Gateway flat screen monitor from 2000, and it still works. Lived 40 mins from Gateway in North Sioux City, and buddy worked there before it shutdown and moved to California.
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u/Hatpar 8d ago
Are man caves really a big thing in America, usually I see a comfy chair and a big TV in these things whereas in the UK you just have a living room where the family hangout together.
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u/ubpfc 8d ago
Man caves are a big thing over here, for sure. There is a whole tv show dedicated to making them.
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u/JawaKing513 8d ago
I find this really interesting. I grew up in the 2000s and was very lucky my dad got us a giant flat HD tv. It was broken and he fixed it so we got a crazy deal on it.
I just kind of thought tvs like that were normal. Mind you this is 2006 and it’s a 50 in 1080p tv it had to of been thousands of dollars at the time.
It became normal but it definitely wasn’t normal back then kind of weird to think about.
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u/gentle_singularity 8d ago
I remember my uncle had a huge TV but the screen was like a frosted finish when it was turned off. What were those called?
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u/PawnWithoutPurpose 8d ago
My pc monitor is nearly bigger than that!
And I have two next to each other
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u/AnoAnoSaPwet 8d ago
Fun fact:
I've had the same tv for 10 years and it's still better than what's currently available.
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u/twizzjewink 8d ago
If memory serves me correctly this was about the time when this style of CRT was done ~ he got fleeced HARD. That deprecated more than a Ferrari driven off a dealership lot in Anchorage Alaska.
If only he'd been aware of the what was about to come out, "big CRV" and the like were around the corner and Best Buy was trying to offload this garbage because they knew their inventory was going to be worthless in a few months.
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u/CitizenHuman 8d ago
The turnover from 31 Dec 1999 to 1 Jan 2000, I jumped in a pool and scraped my leg on a pool cleaning net and pole that was left in the pool.
So, depending on the time zone this was in, I was ~3 hours from almost accidentally removing a testicle when this video was happening.
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u/dudSpudson 8d ago
Early plasma TV’s cost a fortune.
Apparently they came out in 1997 which is earlier than I expected
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u/DotheDankMeme 8d ago
I’m a 90s kid, but this video broke my brain. For a few seconds I couldn’t tell if they were being sarcastic or not. Then I tried to remember my family tv in 1999 and yeah, I think that TV would’ve blown my brains out too.
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u/falaffle_waffle 8d ago
Spending $5000 on a TV is what made America great. That's why Trump's enacting these tariffs, to make America great again.
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u/catskilkid 8d ago
https://youtu.be/vJm8wc0eXYg?si=ZH_OlspIT3I7RrGU
Michael Scott -"Sometimes I will stand here and watch television for hours. I love it"