Operation: Big Boy The quest to save the worlds largest CRT TV from destruction 440-pound 1980s behemoth rescued from an Osaka restaurant days before demolition. Kyle Orland Dec 23, 2024 2:48 pm | 14 Credit: Reddit Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAt this point, any serious retro gamer knows that a bulky cathode ray tube (CRT) TV provides the most authentic, lag-free experience for game consoles that predate the era of flat-panel HDTVs (i.e,. before the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era). But modern gamers used to massive flat panel HD displays might balk at the display size of the most common CRTs, which tend to average in the 20- to 30-inch range (depending on the era they were made).For those who want the absolute largest CRT experience possible, Sony's KX-45ED1 model (aka PVM-4300) has become the stuff of legends. The massive 45-inch CRT was sold in the late '80s for a whopping $40,000 (over $100,000 in today's dollars), according to contemporary reports.That price means it wasn't exactly a mass-market product, and the limited supply has made it something of a white whale for CRT enthusiasts to this day. While a few pictures have emerged of the PVM-4300 in the wild and in marketing materials, no collector has stepped forward with detailed footage of a working unit. The PVM-4300, seen dwarfing the tables and chairs at an Osaka noodle restaurant. Credit: Shank Mods Enter Shank Mods, a retro gaming enthusiast and renowned maker of portable versions of non-portable consoles. In a fascinating 35-minute video posted this weekend, he details his years-long effort to find and secure a PVM-4300 from a soon-to-be-demolished restaurant in Japan and preserve it for years to come.A confirmed white whale sightingShank Mods' quest started in earnest in October 2022, when the moderator of the Console Modding wiki, Derf, reached out with a tip on a PVM-4300 sighting in the wild. A 7-year-old Japanese blog post included a photo of the massive TV that could be sourced to a waiting room of the Chikuma Soba noodle restaurant and factory in Osaka, Japan.The find came just in time, as Chikuma Soba's website said the restaurant was scheduled to move to a new location in mere days, after which the old location would be demolished. Shank Mods took to Twitter looking to recruit an Osaka local in a last-ditch effort to save the TV from destruction. Local game developer Bebe Tinari responded to the call and managed to visit the site, confirming that the TV still existed and even turned on. Quite possibly the world's largest game of Duck Hunt (which doesn't work on stock flat-panel TVs). Credit: Shank Mods After a nerve-wracking quest to contact the restaurant's owner, Shank Mods confirmed that he could take possession of the TV if he could manage to handle the shipping himself. That left Shank Mods with two weeks to figure out how to get a 440-pound TV (and its specially designed, reinforced 171-pound stand) down from the second floor of an Osaka restaurant and to a safe location.Luckily, Tinari had a friend who worked for a company that regularly shipped large-scale industrial equipment internationally that would be able to help. Shank Mods wouldn't detail the precise cost they quoted to get the TV down the stairs, to a warehouse, crated up for air shipment to the US, and then shipped via truck to the garage of his (very tolerant) parents. But he did say that the "used car amount of money" that he was quoted was fronted by a video sponsor, helping him save this piece of television history from the bottom of a Japanese landfill. Shank Mods' full video detailing the PVM-4300 rescue process. It belongs in a museumThe full video includes lots of footage and details of the shipping and unboxing process, and confirmation that the TV still works after its incredible journey. Shank Mods also includes a breakdown of the internal design and processing hardware that went into such a uniquely large CRT and an extended discussion of the intricate process of calibrating and tuning the tube to deliver a sharp, color-corrected picture after years of magnetic and electron beam drift.Shank Mods mentions multiple times in the video that this gigantic CRT looks much better in person than on a YouTube video. We can only hope he can raise the funds to turn his parents' garage into a public museum for classic gaming enthusiasts eager to make a pilgrimage to see the one-of-a-kind find for themselves. Or maybe an old-fashioned whistle-stop tour of the countryside can be arranged, hopefully on a specially designed train car with a reinforced floor. Let's make it happen, people!Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming EditorKyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 14 Comments