Trying to save cathode-ray tube TVs

updated 8:57 a.m. ET Aug. 15, 2005

TIJUANA, Mexico - Samsung Electronics Co. has an odd sales pitch for one of its new televisions.  A slide show for dealers features a drawing of a TV on a tombstone that reads, "The news of my demise is greatly exaggerated!"

The South Korean manufacturer is referring to cathode-ray tube, or CRT, televisions — the heavy boxes that have dominated the business since television was introduced at the New York World's Fair in 1939.

As rival technologies become cheaper, the era of the conventional tube TV is ending.

Yet Samsung and a South Korean rival, LG Electronics Co., are refusing to abandon the old-style tube TVs entirely.  They continue trying to improve CRTs even as they and other television makers are building more and more factories that churn out super-thin LCD and plasma televisions.

Samsung's "slim" CRT, which began rolling off a Tijuana assembly line in April, is an effort to stall the technology's anticipated demise.

CRTs — which some videophiles insist produce the best pictures — use a gun that fires electrons in a heavy, glass tube to light phosphors, far different from flat-panel TVs.  LCDs affix liquid crystals to thin plates of glass, while plasma uses special gases to light the screen.

Manufacturers have tried for years to flatten CRTs but failed to design an electron beam that's wide enough to light the screen's edges, said Paul Semenza, an analyst at market researcher iSuppli Corp.  Samsung appears to have cracked that riddle, though whether it can produce them on a large scale remains to be seen, he said.

Forget wall mounting
Measuring 16 inches deep and weighing 120 pounds, Samsung's new 30-inch screen slimmer CRT is still far too clunky to hang on a wall.  But its $1,000 price tag beats many high-definition digital displays.  Samsung's 32-inch screen liquid crystal display, or LCD, television may be only 4 inches thick and 36 pounds, but it lists for more than twice as much, at $2,500.

The company also plans a 27-inch model for $900 this fall and a 26-incher next spring at an undetermined price, though Samsung says it will sell trim CRTs at about half of similarly sized LCD screens, even as their prices plummet.

Meanwhile, LG Electronics began selling a 30-inch slimmer CRT in Korea this year and will introduce it in the United States next year at an undetermined price.  Like Samsung's, it is about one-third slimmer than conventional TVs.

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