This is GE Performance Television

Look closely at that screen. Although the unit is turned off, you can still see the shadows of several dozen orphans pressed hammering against the inside of the screen. Now that's GE Performance Television. Chuck here would like to sell you one. Do you have a seraglio of a thousand slaves to help you lift it out of the store? Please note: Enola-Gay-sized VHS video cassette recorder is not included.

[via Retro-Thing]

[#1 posted by PainintheAnalyst , August 6, 2008 9:39 AM]

I wonder if they covered the cost of removing then repairing the wall that had to come down to put this thing in your living room?

"GE Perfomance TV, now using as much electricity as your average city block!"

[#2 posted by EricT , August 6, 2008 9:55 AM]

OMG I had that recorder

[#3 posted by SimeonW , August 6, 2008 10:01 AM]

Sure, we all laugh at it now, but someone is going to find one of those, and then do a case mod on their Wii with wood grained contact paper and aluminum tape, hide an Apple TV or a Mac Mini in that tape deck, and then we will see who wants one.

[#4 posted by SuperMario__Galaxy , August 6, 2008 10:04 AM]

Is that Huey Lewis?

[#5 posted by PainintheAnalyst , August 6, 2008 10:28 AM]

Why is Hugh Hefner trying to sell me this giant TV???

[#6 posted by Clay , August 6, 2008 10:54 AM]

I was just watching Mad Men last night and, as Don Draper adjusted the station on the recessed control panel of a magnificent, oak-veneer console stereo, I thought: Will appliances ever again be furniture?

Ah, but thanks for helping dispel my naïvely romantic notions of such things.

[#7 posted by xzzy , August 6, 2008 11:20 AM]

I'd like to see someone dig up one of these units, strip out the guts, and replace them with a modern projector.

Retro 70's style, modern HD picture! With all that surface area on the top, it'd be no problem adorning it with plants. Can't do that with a modern LCD screen, can you?

[#8 posted by jerwin , August 6, 2008 11:29 AM]

It's not widescreen. It's just a big screen-- that has the proportions of a conventional TV.

(though judging by the prevalence of stretched images on airport/hotel/pub TVs, people might have a hard time understanding such a advanced geometric concept).

[#9 posted by Jack , August 6, 2008 12:12 PM]

@#6 (Clay):
Well, appliances are small enough nowadays to be better placed within furniture or fixtures. But sadly few designers do it well. I mean, look at iPod docks. They are all pretty much ugly as sin. Why? I don't know. But there is a whole world of possibility out there of some designer would just use their imagination and make it.

[#10 posted by kerry , August 6, 2008 12:33 PM]

I'm pretty sure this thing is bigger than my entire TV-watching room. Of course, I keep the TV in the closet, so it's not like there's a lot of space to begin with.

[#11 posted by DeuceMojo , August 6, 2008 12:53 PM]

That thing would've sold like hotcakes if only they'd hired George Plimpton to pimp it.

"Now I don't know what you're watcing right now, but it's not TV. Wouldn't you rather be bathed in blue light by a device the size of an airplane hangar?"

[#12 posted by John Brownlee , August 6, 2008 1:33 PM]

@8: not a single soul here said it was widescreen.

[#13 posted by AverageJane , August 6, 2008 1:39 PM]

Hey, that's the VCR we had when I was a kid!

[#14 posted by colonel gentleman , August 6, 2008 1:44 PM]

Those are some performance glasses.

[#15 posted by jerwin , August 6, 2008 1:50 PM]

@12

I must be confused between the BoingBoing comments and the BBGadgets comments. alas.

[#16 posted by DMcK , August 6, 2008 2:00 PM]

Quit smirking at me, Chuck! I happen to like Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.

[#17 posted by Anonymous , August 6, 2008 2:05 PM]

Wow, such a huge TV console and yet the speakers are NOT CENTERED beneath the TV. How whacked is that?!

- Jack, All-Seeing Wine Snob

[#18 posted by BuildUupBuzzKill , August 6, 2008 2:23 PM]

The smug look on this guys face is priceless. He's looking into the camera almost as if to say... "Yeah I work for GE... Yeah thats a bigass woodgrain TV I helped put into production... but now let me ask you a question, why is your top still on?"

[#19 posted by Ryan Rapolsive , August 6, 2008 3:00 PM]

I see Harrison Ford under those glasses...

[#20 posted by warloc66 , August 6, 2008 3:07 PM]

I had that VCR! My father still has the tapes we recorded of the original Battlestar Galactica.

[#21 posted by pork musket , August 6, 2008 3:25 PM]

Nice subtle nod to Hiroshima day.

[#22 posted by cubey , August 6, 2008 3:31 PM]

That thing is beautiful in a 1980s it's-enormous-but-has-never-existed-before kind of way. That thing would fill half my living room, and would be worth every cent.

[#23 posted by Bender , August 6, 2008 4:03 PM]

Is the shorter part of the console created just to hold that gigantor VCR?

[#24 posted by duskiboy , August 6, 2008 4:15 PM]

#22 apparently there's at least the right speaker built in that part of the tv hut.

[#25 posted by jerwin , August 6, 2008 4:22 PM]

@bender:

The shorter part of the console may house the projection guns.

[#26 posted by Jaan , August 6, 2008 4:34 PM]

I got a feeling most people here would like what I did with my own 40" High Def TV...I took our old 27" TV furniture unit, took out all the shelves that housed the VCR etc, and it fit perfectly, and can hold plants up top too.

[#27 posted by getjustin , August 6, 2008 5:12 PM]

I miss the days when wood grain, not sleek white or black was the true calling card of "high tech." And you knew it was well built because it weighed a friggin ton and looked like furniture.

[#28 posted by saltcured , August 8, 2008 10:54 PM]

@17 It didn't really matter if the speakers were centered because tvs & vcrs were mono then.

[#29 posted by OM , August 9, 2008 9:43 AM]

"Sure, we all laugh at it now, but someone is going to find one of those, and then do a case mod on their Wii with wood grained contact paper and aluminum tape, hide an Apple TV or a Mac Mini in that tape deck, and then we will see who wants one. "

...I'm already looking for one, but only for myself, and not for a damn Wii. I'm one of those who abhors console units because if a game doesn't play like I want it to, I want to be able to hexedit the damn thing to jump through *my* hoops and not what some crack-addled game tester thinks is "easy".

...But yes, laugh all you want, but they just don't make TV's as elegant as this anymore. A TV was meant to be furniture, not a flat slab on a wall!

[#30 posted by loonidood , December 27, 2008 11:39 AM]

anybody have any idea how much this monster went for originally? i would think somewhere between $3000-5000, but have no clue, really...