My family got our first color TV in 1972; my parents won it in a raffle.
I was in Kindergarten then, but I still remember the huge fuss everybody made over that TV because it was so big! I think it may have been 23-25"; in family photos from the '70s and early '80s it looks so small, but at the time it was a big TV.
It was a hella expensive TV, as well. Somewhere around here I have some old Sears catalogs, including one from '73 or '74. I was really shocked to see that a similar TV to ours went for ~$300 back then. I don't remember the exact amount, but a top-of-the-line color Magnavox in a big console cabinet was ~$475. In 1973 dollars! Mind blown.
When I bought my current house 11 years ago, there were tenants still in it--and a 40" CRT monolith that had been left in the house when the previous owner bought it. It was so big, nobody bothered to move it; it was like a giant electronic fruitcake that just got passed along from one unlucky resident to the next. The tenants moved out, but the TV remained.
It still worked, but I sure as hell didn't want it, so I offered it for free to anyone who would just come take it away. Five Mexican guys came in a van and hauled that monster off; they were going to put it out in one guy's shop so they could have fútbol-watching parties without pissing their wives off too badly. I hope they got some good use out of it for all their trouble, and that nobody got a hernia trying to get it out of the van, but I was so happy to be rid of it.
I bought a 32" flatscreen five or six years ago--only to ditch cable for good three months later. I watch a DVD on it maybe once a month, and when it dies, that's it--no más. I'm done with expensive idiot boxes.