The trinitron conspiracy

I have been thinking of this for a long time. Sony had invented the Trinitron technology back in 1968 I think. Now, there are other companies making tubes with trinitron-stlye technology, such as Mitsubishi's DiamondTron, but none of them sell televisions. If you look at the Japan/Korea market sites for companies like Sharp and LG, you see that they have Televisions with technology similar to the FD Trinitron. It seems that, at least in the states that Sony only allows the competition to sell computer monitors (my monitor is an NEC with a Mitsubishi tube), but not televisions. Of course this makes your trinitron Wega TV cost twice as much as a regular one. Is this some patent issue which doesn't exist in Asia, or something else alltogehter. I sure wish I could pick up a cheap flat-tube TV at my local Circuit City

It is actually quite simple. Whenver you see a trinitron tube in a non-Sony monitor, that tube was usually OEM'ed from Sony. Viewsonic, Mag Innovision, and so on use Sony tubes in their monitors, with their own support electronics. Sony still manufactures the tube, so they get a cut. This benefits both Sony and the other manufacturer; Sony sells more tubes, ahd the other company sells more monitors because people tend to like Trinitron technology.

Gotta love big business. Things are different in the TV arena, though. Since volumes are higher, and people aren't so picky about TV picture tubes, companies can make more money by simply using a tube from another manufacturer.