GE Widescreen 1000: Big time TV for big budgets

The GE Widescreen 1000 was a big time TV for big time budgets in an era of excess, with the tagline “This is GE Performance Television.” Introduced in June 1978, it cost about 3/4 as much as a family sedan at the time. But middle class families weren’t the target audience for this set.

The General Electric Widescreen 1000 (WS1000) cost $2,800. For the money you got a 45-inch screen, hardwood veneer paneling, two speakers, and a spot to plant a matching VCR.

Key takeaways for the General Electric Widescreen 1000

• The GE Widescreen 1000 retailed for $2,800 in 1978, equivalent to $13,700 in 2025 dollars
• The screen size was 45 inches measured diagonally (36 inches across and 27 inches vertically), not 75 inches
• The entire unit measured 50 inches high by 70 inches wide and 24 inches deep
• It featured two speakers, but stereo TV was still several years away

GE Performance Television: Wood grain included

The GE Widescreen 1000’s over the top design makes it a meme today, almost a thing of ridicule. But it was state of the art for 1978.

The GE Widescreen 1000 or GE Performance Television, whatever you want to call it, had a veneered cabinet, because this was an era when a television still took up so much space it needed to look like a piece of furniture. The model number was 45YP9000W.

Although a TV that large looks like it could reasonably contain vacuum tubes, it was a few years after the end of that era. The GE Widescreen 1000 was a fully solid state design using transistors and chips, rather than tubes. Of course it came with a remote control. And it had the ability to detect which stations had a signal. That’s a feature we take for granted today, but was still a novelty in 1978.

The widescreen name is a bit of a misnomer, as it was a 4:3 set like everything else of its day. Widescreen content as we know it today didn’t start until 1998, 20 years later. The screen was wide AND tall.

GE Widescreen 1000 size and weight

The ad has become something of a popular meme in modern times because it pictures the television with a man in a suit standing behind it and leaning on it, illustrating just how oversized this set was. The average adult male was about 6 ft tall in 1978, and the set is clearly about 2/3 as tall as he is. The entire unit measured 50 inches high by 70 inches wide and 24 inches deep. It consumed 185 watts of power.

What about weight, though?

The GE Widescreen 1000 looks like it should have weighed half a ton, but the looks are deceptive. It was largely empty space inside, so the cabinet contributed more to the weight than the CRT or the electronics. According to the Winter 1979 issue of Video magazine, it weighed 359 pounds. So it was considerably heavier than a modern 45-inch screen, and moving it would give two people a good workout.

General Electric Widescreen 1000 options and popularity

Most photos show the General Electric Widescreen 1000 with the optional GE Command Performance VCR occupying the pedestal above the right hand speaker. The VCR, manufactured by Hitachi for GE, cost around $1,000 and it weighed 38 pounds. The TV had dual speakers, but stereo TV broadcasts were still 6 years away, not gaining a FCC approval until 1984. The two speakers were most likely wired to emit identical audio. This was commonly called high fidelity sound at the time, and it gave a different effect than stereo sound does.

GE advertised it heavily, especially in publications like Popular Mechanics. But they didn’t mention the $2,800 list price. If you had to ask, you couldn’t afford it. And that’s a bit of a shame. It sure would have looked great in your wood paneled living room with the avocado green accent wall and orange shag carpet. That’s assuming your living room could spare 12 square feet of floor space.

General Electric didn’t announce sales figures but did say all of their dealers in their network of 1,000 ordered at least one unit. Realistically, more of these sets probably ended up in bars and hotel lobbies than in private homes.

GE Widescreen 1000 screen size

By some accounts, the screen size was 75 inches. That’s a miscalculation based on the claim that it had three times the viewable area of a more conventional 25 inch set. That’s why manufacturers measure screen size diagonally. The screen actually measured 36 inches across and 27 inches vertically, giving a viewing area of 972 square inches. A 25 inch set measures 20 inches across and 15 inches vertically, for a viewing area of 300 square inches. That is indeed a bit less than 1/3 the viewing area of a GE Widescreen 1000. A 75 inch screen would be 60 inches across and 45 inches vertically, and that wouldn’t fit in the WS1000’s design.

Everything about the WS1000’s marketing was designed to make it seem enormous. And it was a big set for its day. It had three times the screen real estate of the set in the average living room in 1978.

But it was marketed to seem even bigger than it really was. The tagline GE Performance Television encouraged it.

Was the WS1000 a CRT TV?

The TV had a CRT inside, but that wasn’t a 45-inch CRT in it like the Sony PVM-4300 had. Inside, the GE Performance Television had a 13 inch CRT with a lens that magnified and projected the image onto the 45-inch screen. Ironically, the portable Sony Watchman TVs from a few years later used a very similar technique to let it fit in your pocket. The GE Widescreen 1000 is the ultimate over the top CRT TV today, but finding a surviving example for sale now will be a challenge.

It’s easy to imagine the ultra wealthy planting one of these in a living room with an Atari heavy sixer attached for an epic game of Space Invaders before or after a movie or sporting event. And the VCR would have made for some good family movie nights. Never mind the VCR’s legal implications at the time.

But more units seemed to sell to restaurants and hotels than to individual consumers. The WS1000 received more editorial coverage in the trade publications for the hospitality industry than anywhere else. That makes sense. A hotel bar or lobby was better able to accommodate the space, not to mention the $2,800 price tag.

That makes finding a surviving example of a General Electric Widescreen 1000 for sale today tough. The audience best able to afford them was also best able to discard them as soon as they were obsolete.