For TVs, that’s just because they didn’t need any more resolution because the signal they were displaying was 480i (or even worse, in the case of things like really old computers/video game consoles).
My circa-2000 19" CRT computer monitor, on the other hand, could do a resolution that’s still higher than what most similarly-sized desktop flat screen monitors can manage (it was either QXGA [2048x1536] or QSXGA [2560x2048], I forget which).
And then, of course, there were specialized CRT displays like oscilloscopes and vector displays that actually drew with the electron beam and therefore had infinite “resolution.”
Point is, the low resolution was not an inherent limitation of CRT technology.
For TVs, that’s just because they didn’t need any more resolution because the signal they were displaying was 480i (or even worse, in the case of things like really old computers/video game consoles).
My circa-2000 19" CRT computer monitor, on the other hand, could do a resolution that’s still higher than what most similarly-sized desktop flat screen monitors can manage (it was either QXGA [2048x1536] or QSXGA [2560x2048], I forget which).
And then, of course, there were specialized CRT displays like oscilloscopes and vector displays that actually drew with the electron beam and therefore had infinite “resolution.”
Point is, the low resolution was not an inherent limitation of CRT technology.