As I understand it, speakers were shielded so that they(the speakers) would not interfear w/the tv picture. The magnetic fields of the speakers can make the picture in a conventional tv (crt) jump or distort.

"Flatscreen" is unfortunately as descriptive as "improved".

If your monitor is a CRT type (conventional tube), you will know whether the speakers are shielded by the image on the screen. If you have color distortions at the top of the screen around the area where the speakers sit, then you have unsheilded speakers sitting on top of a CRT monitor. If you see no abberations, then you either don't have a CRT or you have shielded speakers. If you are seeing the color errors, you need to move the speakers, buy a new TV or never have the TV in use when the speakers are sitting on top of the set.

There is no possible physical harm to the speakers and if you aren't seeing distortions in the picture of the TV the same goes for that too. There are very few speakers that offer the shielding option any longer because it adds to the cost and magnetism does not affect the performance of LCD, PLASMA, or LCOS. Magnetism is only a problem CRT TV's.

60" would be a projection type TV. CRT's pretty much maxed out at 40" and 400 lbs. There are three "guns" the the bottom of the tv which project their specific colors onto a mirror which reflects the image to the flatscreen. The guns can be thought of as "tubes" of a sort but not as CRT's. There's no problem with unshielded speakers and a projection set.

They are true Honest-to-Betsy monochromatic CRT tubes. One Red, one Blue, one Green. Very likely Liquid cooled faces, to boot. Still capable of producing the best image available, when used in the finest gear. Hitachi is one of the very few companies that made their own CRT projection tubes.

There was:Panasonic (or MEC--still used in Pro graphics systems), Hitachi, Mitsubishi, NEC, and Sony.

The 60" versions likely used 7" or 8" colour guns (tubes). Optics were made by US precision Optics, and are among the best that that money can buy. Well into the Nikon/Canon/Leica/Etc range of quality of optics.

Like high end turntables vs high end digital..at the highest of the high, the analog still does the best. Ie, Electrohome 9500LC 9" tubed CRT graphics projectors (modified or unmodified) STILL do notably better in fidelity of image than any digital projection units. They were and are capable of taking ~3000x3500 (higher frame rates lower the resolution limit to about 2500x2000) image and displaying it. Or ANY resolution of any kind, for that matter. Like working on a Enzo Ferarri, you better know your stuff, tho. I used to do extensive mods on them. God's own projectors, they are. I kinda miss them. Creating and viewing at the level of the best the world has ever seen is kinda exhilarating.

The newest Samsung LCD monitors with LED backlighting are finally creeping into the territory that CRT projectors held for so long. Except they can't do a 120" image. Yet.

What you see on the newest Samsung LED backed LCD monitors..I was enjoying that image fidelity at an image size of 8.5 feet across...a decade ago.

If there is no distortion on the tv screen the speakers will not be damaged - unlesss you get walleyed stupid and knock them off the top of the TV.