Hitachi xF59 - inside glare reduction and gun cleaning

Never touch the viewscreens with anything unless absolutely necessary. I have found that if not mistreated, the most attention the viewscreen sandwich needs is if it gets dust on it on the inside, at the fresnel.

In which case just use a clean dry terry cloth towel. Whisk it back and forth till all such dust is gone.

NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING WET TO YOUR VIEWSCREEN UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. That plastic on the lent retains residue like crazy, even when only from water.


Mr Bob

Maybe some day I will get up the nerve to do my 2 year old 65F710A

Very informative

thanks

Here's some more proof -


7 year old Pioneer Elite, same day before and after a full cal, including internal blackening with a black Sharpie or 2 - different sizes - plus both levels of optics cleaning including the deeper optics cleaning -


Before -



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After -

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This was the same day, before and after the optics cleaning procedure. As Leo says, it has a VERY powerful effect on your display!

b

Those shiny gleaming lens surfaces need to STAY THAT WAY. And so no rubbing. No scuffing, which is thousands of tiny scratches at a time. And so wet methods only and scooping rather than rubbing, on the lenses at least.

The mirror typically takes at least 5 passes before it begins to look clean, to me. Observe it from above the set, off axis from the image itself, so you are not blinded by the nice bright image you need, to judge how clean it is. You'll never get ALL the streaks off, observing it this way, but a suitable signal to noise ratio CAN be attained, for the black levels. Once you get the streakiness to 95% gone, don't try for anything better, it will never happen.

Remember, the mirror was never supposed to be there. It SHOULD be a 6'-7' deep sys, but that would never fly in a living room, so they folded it.

You gotta make the mirror - and all the optics - so clean they seem to disappear. (Thanks Windex!)



Mr Bob

NEVER use paper towels as you did!!! NEVER!!! Only lint free towels are to be used...Really surprised Mr. Bob didn't catch that...

Great job on the blackening tho...Literally a day and night difference... I can't believe they left the interior that way...I honestly thought all were like my Toshiba...blackened from the factory...

Actually he specifically states not to use paper towels...I have been through this with him...and others...countless times...

Of course if you have a quote from him I'd like to see it...

So where'd you get that? If you have a quote from me on that issue that differs from what I am saying here, I would like to see THAT! I have been recommending paper towels for cleaning optics for many years, and don't intend to stop now.

Paper towels that are partially wet allow for an immense amount of absorbtion, far more than my experience of cloth. It has the tiny microscopic hidey holes that allow grit to disappear into, once that grit has been made to be thoroughly wet first, and thus suspended in liquid. And you can continue to use virgin after virgin sets of clumps of paper towels for your mirror, without ever having to use one over again. Try that with microfibre towels.

Newspaper is great for windows, and is streak free, but in this context puts so much lint in the air of the optical cavity as to need to be avoided.


The important part is to NEVER scratch the plastic, or strip the front surface mirror! When you see me say "5 passes", that is in reference to cleaning the mirror, NOT the lenses.

When you see me say "ONE pass and NO rubbing", that means on the lenses.

All with paper towels, but used the right way.

Now what were you saying? We've "been thru this all before, countless times"? Want to tell me where and when?



Mr Bob

Short term memory I guess...Bob you and I have discussed this when I was to clean my set...Your explanation was the only reason I went with the shop towels I used that you later tried telling me had hand lotion impregnated in them...and they didn't/don't...Now if you are saying everyday papertowels are fine to use on the plastic lenses well...who am I to say you are wrong... Seeing as how it was your methods/suggestions that got me to clean my set to begin with...

Leo...No argument...just stating what I had discussed numerous times with others...including Mr. Bob...I still wouldn't use papertowels and I myself wouldn't recommend them but thats just me...Thanks for the link...

I DON'T recommend using shop towels, or any other paper that's been impregnated with lanolin or anything else. Tried that once, unknowingly, and never could get the dang thing clean, until I switched the blue paper towels to white!

PURE paper towels are the way to go. Some blue towels are pure, but some are impregnated, so I just usually steer clear of blue ones in general. If yours were pure and yet blue, perhaps I said not to use them because at the time I thought all blue ones were impregnated. That was what I thought at one time, but have found that there are versions of blue shop paper towels that are pure and NOT impregnated. Guess those were what you were using. I think it was you who alerted me to that fact! (Thank you! )

That's been a LONG time ago, hasn't it?

But regular pure wood fibre paper towels are the best, IMHO, blue or white. I respect if you don't want to use them and can find something else just as good, but other than the blues being both with and without lanolin and me standing corrected on that, my advice on the subject has not changed in over 20 years.


Mr Bob

My avatar pic is from my brother's wedding, about 10 years ago. My hair is now "slate", as my hairdresser called it recently...

Don't you just love professionals who are also masters of diplomacy?





Mr Bob

The slate club, man. The slate club...

If you want to go a little further, black out the inside of the screen basil. This area is illuminated by image overscan and quiet a bit of light will be reflected back into the cabinet and onto the mirror if this area is reflective.

The last step is to make lens shades, the idea is that only light directed at the mirror reaches the screen, any refracted light from the lens system is blocked by the shields so that it cannot illuminate the back of the screen directly.

Right.

This has all been done before, except for the bezel inside the optical cavity - hadn't thought of that, good call there, Owen -

Many v/philes use duvetyne, a feltlike fabric they use at the movie theaters. Some owners make the insides of their sets look like jewel boxes, but that's not really necessary. Just making the inside of the cavity as anti-reflective as possible is the goal, and as long as the fabric you put in there does not impede the light path, it's good enough.

The lens shade you speak of is called a "lens hood" in other circles, and it is quite effective. I have seen designs for it for various sizes and applications -

Now if they would internally coat the optics in each lens stack - which usually contain 4 individual lenses each, resulting in a total of 8 surfaces each, times 3 - like in good binocs and telescopes and cameras, we'd REALLY be getting somewhere...


Mr Bob

Here are some pics of my old Hitachi.
This is after initial painting of the grey plastic cabinet and bare wood base in flat black.
You can see the shims used to raise the CRT frame about 70mm closer to the mirror to reduce optical overscan.






Below is after installation of cloth cut to fit neatly around lenses and cover adjustment screws as well as everything else, exposed wiring was wrapped in strips of black cloth.






Below shows my proprietary “lens shield” design (Patent Pending ), both are simple lengths of timber covered in black cloth, the front one has a triangular cardboard extension stapled to it to achieve the required shape and hight. The active area of the lenses is not visible from any point on the screen plain. The camera was held inside the cabinet (behind the screen plain) to get the last shot showing the lenses.






Here is an example of blacking out the inside of the screen basil, in this case its my 70” SXRD screen sitting in font of my old Hitachi. To do this the screen was removed from the frame to allow masking and spray painting, the wiring was wrapped in black cloth.
The before and after shot clearly shows the very poor job done by Sony, just look at the bright metal corner reinforcing right in the overscan area, does wonders for ANSI contrast.




This is a before and after shot of the SXRD interior, look at all that pale grey plastic, bad Sony bad. The Hitachi was also grey plastic just like the Sony.
It appears RPTV manufactures are just not interested in doing the job properly even if it would cost bugger all to do so, out of sight is out of mind.



Lenses are another sore point with me, the three huge lenses in CRT RPTV’s are normally uncoated to restrict refraction as is done with everything except the cheapest cameras and binoculars, neither are the lens element edges blacked out. With all that poor quality lens area in the light path and the typically reflective cabinet interior, little wonder ANSI contrast in RPTV’s is poor. At least Sony used decent quality coated optics in the SXRD and there is only one small lens to cause problems not three big ones. The result is that the SXRD has much better ANSI contrast then CRT RPTV’s, bright areas of the screen don’t cause pollution to black areas to anywhere the same extent, especially after the cabinet interior is “fixed”.
I just wonder how much better RPTV’s could be if manufacturers really made a serious effort at producing a high end model without such obvious cost saving shortcuts, profit rules. At least we can address some of the problems cheaply.

That shot of the inside of the viewscreen frame is REALLY telling! Good shot. And all that gray plastic in there! YUK!

The least they could do - and it wouldn't cost all that much - other than at least spraying the inside gray plastic with flat black paint - would be to coat each lens TOP - the ones that get so dirty over time - and the rear of the viewscreen, the one that's usually the flat side of the fresnel, the one that faces the inside of the optical chamber.

If they coated the internal lenses as well that would be great, but oh well... The insides of the old Advent projectors DID have coating. I had to repair one that had been in a fire once, and the water had gotten into and pooled in the slanted lenses, eating away at the coating over the next weeks, which disappeared where the water had been. Once I got in to relieve that water supply inside the lens stacks, you could see the coating still on the parts that had NOT been exposed to that water.


You can see what doing what I just suggested above by getting a pair of coated eyeglasses and comparing the same model to uncoated eyeglasses.

This test can be performed at any professional eyeglass store, where a coating service for the glasses you order is a option.

The UNcoated one reflects your own eyes back at you, and it can be very distracting. The coated ones don't.

I have a great pair of very powerful binocs, that I intended for use at concerts. Can't. Have to keep them for outdoor bright light usage.

At concerts their optics are incredibly crisp and coherent and very powerful, but the internal reflections are unbelieveable. VERY distracting.

My Bauch and Lomb pair - even my Halco pair, which actually STATE "Coated Optics" - tho much less powerful, ARE coated and have NO noticeable internal reflections at concerts.


Mr Bob

I took my screen off to see about blackening the insides of the screen and what do you know, it's already black. I will need to get something to cover up the wires though as they are all clipped together with those white jobeys.

Just wrap the wiring and retainers in black cloth or non shiny black tape.
The only wiring on my Hitachi screen was for the “Magic Focus” sensors which where never and would never be used, so I removed the wiring and the sensors.
A black marker pen is handy for blacking out small things that are not practical to do in other ways.

Bob, looks like you have a task ahead of you, disassembling the lens stacks of your Mitsibishi and having both sides of every element coated.

I fitted a neutral density filter to the lens of the SXRD and since the lens is already coated I went with a high grade multi coated filter so as not to risk any degradation.

Oh yeah, me and what army...





Yeah, that's a well known mod for bulb driven tech, tho I like your spin on the subject -


Mr Bob