‘Technologies don’t usually die because consumers move on, they die because the inputs disappear’: I asked CRT TV experts if the technology could ever make a comeback — the biggest obstacle wasn’t what I expected

A Samsung CRT TV with a built-in VCR in front of a brick wall, with a green question mark floating over it.

Long before today's wafer-thin OLED TVs became commonplace on our living room walls, televisions were big, bulky boxes built around cathode ray tubes, known as CRTs. They were heavy, deep and, for decades, they were everywhere.

But then back in the 2010s, manufacturers stopped making them, and now most people would consider CRT TVs to be an outdated technology — a stepping stone in the evolution of television before they were replaced with flatter, lighter and more capable displays took over.