I am interested in the Sony QUALIA 015 36" CRT. This is one of Sony's best and I was wondering if it supported 1080p like my 24" GDM-FW900 can? Also if you know where I can find one for sale, please let me know.

I am interested in the Sony QUALIA 015 36" CRT. This is one of Sony's best and I was wondering if it supported 1080p like my 24" GDM-FW900 can? Also if you know where I can find one for sale, please let me know.

I don't know but having never heard of it I googled and all the hits were in Japanese. You could probably get the specs from those sites if you dig around and use some of the online translators. Also I am not sure that even the GDM-FW900 full resolves 1080p though it supports that resolution. As I recall the dot pitch varies on the FW900 and the outer edges have less resolution and center. Just because a CRT can sync to and display a particular resolution does not mean it can fully resolve it.

As for your sale question it doesn't appear from my google search that this was ever sold in North America assuming you are located here I think your odds of finding one are next to nil and the cost of shipping one would probably be prohibative.

I am running my GDM-FW900 at it's optimal 1920 x 1200 @ 85Hz. And certain uniquely Japanese electronic goods do make it to American shores. I feel semi-optimistic that at least one of each qualia product made it to our continent.

I feel semi-optimistic that at least one of each qualia product made it to our continent.


I wasn't arguing that, just that you have your work cut out for you finding it/them good luck! The two GDM-FW900s I have seen were not a capable of full horizontal resolution of 1080p at least using the 1 white/1 black pixel horizontal resolution test pattern that is a nightmare for CRTs to display though the image does look good at that resolution. Now the two I saw were purchased used so maybe they lived rough lives and had issues I don't know.

I wasn't arguing that, just that you have your work cut out for you finding it/them good luck! The two GDM-FW900s I have seen were not a capable of full horizontal resolution of 1080p at least using the 1 white/1 black pixel horizontal resolution test pattern that is a nightmare for CRTs to display though the image does look good at that resolution. Now the two I saw were purchased used so maybe they lived rough lives and had issues I don't know.

Monitors can almost always display much higher resolutions than TVs. According to Sony, maximum resolution for the monitor was 2304 dots horizontal and 1440 lines vertical.

According to my Googling, that "Qualia" nonsense was only sold for around 2 years here in the US, and a year in Japan before being canned. Nice products at ridiculously high prices was an idea that should have and did fail. The TV retailed for $11,000, so the real question is did anybody ever buy one? I would personally drop the Indiana Jones adventure before even starting, and just look for a good clean used 34XBR960. Best PQ in an HD CRT for a reasonable used price.

Craigslist has a few of these Qualias; they have LCD optics of one kind or another though, not CRT.

Actually I doubt that the FW-900 has much better relative stripe pitch than the 34" SFP tubes. Scan rate and spot size would be relatively better on the FW-900 of course.

An obsession with Qualia's cachet makes less sense than Raymond's commitment to Qantas, IMO.

Monitors can almost always display much higher resolutions than TVs. According to Sony, maximum resolution for the monitor was 2304 dots horizontal and 1440 lines vertical.



To paraphrase Mark Twain there are lies, damned lies and manufacturers specs. CRTs were frequently marketed using the maximum resolution/refresh they could sync to rather than the resolution/refresh they could fully resolve. My Barco front projector had some crazy high resolution speced that was well above what it could truly resolve. There was a discussion in the CRT front projector forums a few years back about the FW900 and its ability to resolve 1080p and folks a lot smarter than me said the dot pitch of the FW900 would not allow it to fully resolve the horizontal resolution of 1080p. My testing with a black and white single pixel resolution test pattern on two FW900s seems to align with this theory. Yes 1080p looks very good on a FW900 but it is not fully resolved.

To paraphrase Mark Twain there are lies, damned lies and manufacturers specs. CRTs were frequently marketed using the maximum resolution/refresh they could sync to rather than the resolution/refresh they could fully resolve. My Barco front projector had some crazy high resolution speced that was well above what it could truly resolve. There was a discussion in the CRT front projector forums a few years back about the FW900 and its ability to resolve 1080p and folks a lot smarter than me said the dot pitch of the FW900 would not allow it to fully resolve the horizontal resolution of 1080p. My testing with a black and white single pixel resolution test pattern on two FW900s seems to align with this theory. Yes 1080p looks very good on a FW900 but it is not fully resolved.

Yes, marketing can be misleading. But these are indeed output resolutions quoted, not input. According to my shaky math, your monitor's viewable width is 448 mm, and divided by its .25 stripe pitch is indeed just shy of 1920. But display resolution (pixel number/size) is not actually limited 1:1 by stripe pitch. The biggest limiting factor is the quality of the electronics and guns.

Check out the "A Discussion of Issues Relating to Monitor and CRT Resolution" section at the below link for a pretty insane look at all this stuff. It makes the definition of "resolution" itself debateable.

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/crtfaq.htm#crtsha

It is close but the pitch of the FW900 is .25 - .27 variable (as speced by Sony) so it misses it at the outer edges by a bit. Whatever the case the two used FW900s didn't fully resolve 1080p as defined by a 1 pixel black and white alternating pattern for horizontal resolution. It was nice but a tiny bit soft to me. I agree that perfect resolving is hard to define but the FW900 was not doing it for me at 1080p for computer graphics (video looked awesome of course). The performance I was seeing was on used monitors that were 4 or 5 years old at the time so who knows how many hours were on them. That is going to effect the monitors abiltiy to resolve high resolution.

But display resolution (pixel number/size) is not actually limited 1:1 by stripe pitch. The biggest limiting factor is the quality of the electronics and guns.
No, if you're talking specifically about horizontal resolution, only a projector or a monochrome direct-view CRT is as you describe; they have no grille or mask. You shouldn't turn on ClearType on a CRT, and you shouldn't refer to a very dim, nonspecific luma glow as useful additional resolution beyond what the stripe pitch allows. Blue looks too dark to human eyes for that, and red is driven harder by its own gun electrode because its phosphor gives off the least light per electron impact.
:)

That usenet faq is good indeed, though! I get inspired to check it out whenever I find a deal on a CRT.