- A Guatemalan family recently exchanged a 39-year-old CRT television for a new LCD one
- Samsung accepted the TV as part of its Eco Exchange program
- Engineers completely restored the set and it is now an exhibit at their headquarters in Panama City.
It’s easy to wistfully mutter “things were built differently back then” when you look at your old devices. But recently a Guatemalan couple surprised even Samsung with the longevity of the CRT television they recently swapped for a new flat-screen model.
The Morales family purchased their trusty Samsung set back in 1987. After an impressive 39 years of service, the TV finally had enough trouble convincing them to enter the 21st century with a new flat-screen model.
According to proud owner Ann Morales, the ever-reliable television worked flawlessly for nearly four decades. “We saw the Berlin Wall fall on this TV,” he told Samsung. “We used it a lot, from the morning news to the movies at night, and it was always on. It was a real workhorse,” he added.
When the family reluctantly accepted the TV as part of Samsung’s Eco Trade-In program, a new journey began for the TV. Her local store saw its potential as a museum piece and shipped it to Samsung’s headquarters for Central America and the Caribbean in Panama City. Cue a mix of headache and amazement.
Initially, Samsung engineers were stumped as to how to fully restore the TV to its former 1980s glory – understandably, given that many of them weren’t born when it was launched. But after a bit of technical research, they managed to restore the set and it apparently now produces a clear image and works like it did in 1987.
Samsung says the TV, which is now a display piece at its global headquarters in Suwon, Korea, has become something of a local hero, after attracting a lot of attention when it was refurbished.
A relic of a bygone era
As impressive as this 39-year-old TV is, it’s not a record. In 2011, a working 1936 Marconi television was auctioned and sold for £16,800 (around $22,900/AU$32,600), meaning it was still in working order 75 years after it was built.
Still, both examples remain outliers, and the longevity of some CRT TVs is often due to their analog simplicity, repairability, and superior heat management, compared to modern LCDs and OLEDs.
The estimated lifespan of today’s televisions is between five and seven years, or a decade if you’re lucky. This is partly because LED backlights can disappear in as little as five years, while many owners find themselves stranded without software updates or support for the latest image formats. There are simply a lot more things that can go wrong with today’s TVs, and it’s often more cost-effective to replace them than to repair them.
The ripple effect is that we now rarely develop the kind of emotional attachments to our televisions that the Morales family reported. “At Christmas the whole family would gather around that screen, it was like the fire in our modern fireplace,” recalls Ana Morales.
“I couldn’t just throw it in the trash. Every time I saw it I remembered my first years of work and the joy my children felt. It made me sad to think that their life would end in a landfill,” he added.
To Samsung’s credit, its Eco Trade-In program (which allows you to trade in old devices from Samsung or other brands, in some regions) meant that it finally found a new life. And you’re not the only one: A new trend among TV enthusiasts is to hunt down vintage CRT TVs and keep them alive for posterity.
It’s not just about nostalgia, either, as many value the talent of CRT televisions for their ability to reproduce video game graphics as they looked in their heyday. So the next time you see a sale for cathode ray tubes on eBay and a wave of nostalgia hits you, you may have more competition than you expected.
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