I've been looking for a good 27+ inch TV to connect my retro systems to. Last night on my way home from work I saw a large TV on someone's lawn near the curb. I didn't want to take it because there were lights on in the house and cars in the driveway. I was 99% sure it was being thrown away because I've found numerous TV's around town placed near the curb for trash pickup. So, I figured I'd wait until morning and go back just on the off chance that the TV was in the process of being loaded into one of the cars and wasn't really being thrown away. When I went back this morning, it was still there. It was covered with dew, which pretty much confirmed that it was being thrown away as nobody would leave a TV outside all night long to get wet. As I was looking at it, someone came outside from the house and confirmed it was being thrown away, although she knew nothing about it's condition.
When I plugged it in, there was a loud crackling sound from the speakers, and the picture fluttered. I didn't know if the TV was already defective (and that's why it was being discarded), or if the wetness caused it. So, I left it out in the sun all day to dry. Sure enough, when I tried it later, it worked perfectly. I was even more surprised when I saw that it was a 32 inch HD CRT TV. I was just hoping it had an s-video input, but I really hit the jackpot with it being 1080i HD as well. You just don't see many HD tube TV's around anymore because flat panels took over shortly after these were introduced.
The thing was heavy as hell, and took forever to move, but I can't wait to hook up my Saturn, NES, and Genesis to it. My NES has been hooked up to a 20 incher for a while now, and my Saturn is currently connected to my 46 inch HDTV. Unfortunately, the Saturn looks like crap on the HDTV because it doesn't have an s-video input, and 480i composite simply doesn't look good on a 1080p flat panel. The new CRT can display the Saturn via s-video at native 480i for the best possible picture.
By the way, does anybody know why I keep seeing an error message when I try to add pictures to my posts? It says something like "can't access attachment path". The pics are pretty small, less than 50KB. I've tried to add pictures to my last couple "finds" posts, but I've had no success.