Hitachi xF59 - inside glare reduction and gun cleaning - Page 2

My 57F59A is 2 years old, so I decided it was time to do an annual optics cleaning (I was reminded last night by a spider crawling across the inside of the screen ).

First step, I vacuumed the inside cavity with an upholstery attachment. Never found that spider, though... Even after a year, the lenses were pretty dusty. The mirror wasn't bad at all (use a flashlight at an angle to see the dust), so I decided to try lightly dusting with a very soft lambswool duster, and it did the trick.

Then I cleaned the lenses with Sprayway and paper towels, per Mr. Bob's recommendations. After you clean one and compare it to an uncleaned lens, you're happy you took the time.

Total time about half an hour. Well worth it. Can I see a difference in pic quality? Yeah, I can...really...

I'll say, esp. when your set is at least 3 years old. You should see what difference optics cleaning makes on 10 year old sets, where it's never been done before! The owners are literally dumbfounded, they can't move their mouths, you have to shovel their jaws off the floor...

If this had been standard information told to the new owner by the retailer and disseminated with - and in - your owner's manual by the manufacturer at time of purchase all these years, we might not have seen the demise of CRT RPTV tech at all! We would be watching 1080p on CRT, like the ceiling pj guys are!


Mr Bob

I suspect the reason they didn't discuss this, is that it would probably have turned off a lot of consumers, who don't want to have to worry about annual maintenance. Not everybody is as fanatical about this stuff as we are, and I suspect a lot of potential buyers would pass if told about doing annual maintenance that requires a bit DIY skill (hell--I have a few 10 year old CRT TVs in my kids bedrooms, that I've never had to touch).

Yeah, if they had told us about this kind of thing, there's also the possibility that those lenses would have gotten totally scratched by now, from bad cleaning techniques.

Still, it would have been nice to not have had to watch CRT RPTV tech as a genre go under like it has, in terms of having been phased out now...





Mr Bob

Agreed.

Keep in mind that back then CRT RPTV was the only game in town if you wanted an affordable big screen, and one that was patently bigger than the biggest plasma they had back then, as plasmas were rather small back then in comparison.

And of course going plasma was NOT an option for regular TV viewers - at the prices of plas back then, only the super rich could afford the sizes they DID have. Which were nowhere near the 65" plasma sizes they have now for consumers - still monstrously expensive compared to then available CRT RPTV tech - and the 103" and 150" Panny versions of plas were just a gleam in the eyes of their producers back then. Back then nobody ever thought we'd see a 150" plasma, like they now have!

Since CRT RPTV was the only really affordable big screen display available to Joe Sixpack back then, yeah they coulda made this info available. There was no way to hurt sales, because big screens were hot, and selling like pancakes. Judging by results, yes everybody wanted to increase their viewed picture size in their living and viewing rooms, and leave behind the standard 19"-40" living room model sizes available in direct view, before rear projection triple gun came to save the day. They kept selling and selling and selling, and price points kept adjusting themselves to changing times to keep up, but the sales to consumers of CRT RPTVs continued year after year, in record droves.

They shoulda done it. Told us optics cleaning was needed, to keep our sets young. I still maintain that if they had, a lot of us would be watching 1080p on them right now, and that they would still be being produced, with substantial market share.





b

BTW, back then ALL plasma was 480i/p, the HD scanrates were still not around yet on plasma, and very few fixed panels had HD either. So for HD, CRT was the ONLY affordable game in town.


b

I've read this and several other threads on optics cleaning now. I have a 51" Hitachi that is a couple of years old now and could benefit from a cleaning, but I've have never done it before and am a bit intimidated by the process.

It seems fairly easy to open it up and clean the lenses, but where exactly is the mirror located and how do you get to it? Do you simply unscrew the lenses to get to the deeper optics? Are there any dangers involved in unscrewing the lenses?

Thanks for the help.

im a little off topic but i ve been searching everywher for answers,my bro has a 57f710 and his screen is kinda green as if the the tint is off ive looked everywhere and found no topivs on green tint only red or screens thst black out.i thought bout maybe tryin to clean the tv like u guys recommend but dnt kno wats wat cuz the pix arent labeled so i basically dnt kno wat im lookin at.im not a total noob but some assistance would help out so that i know wat things i need to be careful wit as far a lens scratchn goes but primarily i need help to fix his color

thx in advance

Your grayscale being off can affect the tint markedly, so you gotta start there.

I was at a Pioneer 510 owner's home yesterday - 9 year old set - and his grayscale was really bad, lots of blue in the darks with the user black level up where it needed to be to see detail in dark areas after the optics cleaning I had just done. When I arrived his primary complaint about the picture was that it had grown dark over the years, which I knew was exactly what happens on these older Pioneers.

To get the best pic possible under the compromised circs before I changed anything about the grayscale tracking, I altered the tint on the BD version of TFE to get as close to accurate fleshtones as possible. This put the tint at about +8 into the green side of the bargraph, which did give great fleshtones.

After redoing the Screen controls to beef up and rebalance the 3, so the user Black Level could go back to 0 (from needing to be at +14 to see any shadow detail) and the blue in the darks had been tamed and gotten rid of, the tint had to go back to zero (from +8).

This restored the great fleshtones now available so far.

Hopefully he will have me back to do the rest of the work of the basic cal package, but with the repair his set needed - it had the infamous intermittent performance problem endemic to 99% of the Elite CRT 510/610/710 line - he had spent all he could for one day. After the repair and the deeper optics cleaning, which he and I had already contracted for over the phone, upon my demo'ing what else was possible with his pic he added optical focusing - all 3 lenses were out of focus despite the visit from Magnolia way back when they bought the set, with promises of "focusing and convergence" - and basic grayscale restoring.

He'll sit on its new performance for now, which was already head and shoulders improved, his whole family and a couple of guests were all in awe already, at the restored depth and punch his set now has, and how they can all now see the grain of the film used to shoot TFE, at least in the center of the screen...



The convergence was of course altered by the focusing, as there were different levels of refocusing needed on each color, changing the size of each pic, which I warned him ahead of time would happen. He says he wants to do the point convergence in the user menu to take care of that, which he can do, but of course he can't use fine external grids for the high precision part like I can, which would flesh out his high precision to ALL parts of the screen, rather than just the middle...

We'll see if I have shown him what's REALLY possible now, on his $5000 set. But these basic premises also apply to all CRT RPTVs, including Hitachis...

Hitachi is the ONLY brand where you can use the User point sys for a permanent high precision convergence job, without needing to do it in service menu. Of course the high precision part is only after you reduce your too-hot factory set light level at the grids, which is only available in YOUR sm on the more recent model year Hits, check with the intrepid owners here for that info...




b

@superleo

wow these are some huge threads lol, got some major reading to do hope i can find wat i need early in the thread but i know its best to read entire thing. might easier to talk him into gettin new set cuz hes gna owe me big time.to bad ur 4 hrs away i could use the help i live close to houston

had the same problem, gave it a clean and everything went back to awesome!

I bought a used 51 incher for my ex wife, and it had a yellowish tint to it, and the pic was also very dull and kinda washed out. Cleaned the mirror and lenses and voila! Problem solved.

the anxiety is killin me i cant wait to get around to doin now,been to busy to do it here lately with xmas and all but i appreciate all the info guys.i have a toshiba aswell that take its sweet time turning on too cant wait to delve into its issue aswell,altho i replaced it wit a plasma already but i do see wat u guys mean i have a screensaver of my daughter on my ps3 and it looks grainy compared to my toshiba dlp

good luck when you get into it Nemrod! Mine is just about due for another cleaning, recently I have noticed a lot of haloing above and beyond what was normally there on darker scenes and its starting to drive me crazy and totally ruin my viewing Hopefully but this is just pure fingers crossed hope, the cleaning will alleviate the extra halo I have been seeing! if not I may go crazy or have to look into a new set

A cal tour is in the offing for Dallas and Houston and surrounding areas. Let me know if you want in -

b

Tosh dlp? Thought we were talking about CRT -



b

Haloing is either dirty optics or cooties in the coolant. Hit's are not known for cooties in the coolant, so I doubt it's that.

I think a glow or haze surrounding all bright objects that are supposed to be up against a crystal clear background, is the way I would describe dirty optics. Haloing would fit...

How long has it been since it was cleaned? And if necessary deep cleaned (6 additional surfaces of the 10 total)?

Remember, each lens pack has 4 lenses in it, 8 surfaces per lens pack, and the 2 outermost lens surfaces of each lens pack need to be paid attention to, along with the mirror and CRT coolant covers below the lens packs. This means that there are actually 27 surfaces that get projected thru plus a mirror for a 28th surface involved, on CRT RPTV tech. We are only concerned with 10 of them, but these 10 cannot be left untended if you wish your images to be projected clearly to your viewscreen.

That 30KV never stops setting up its static charge field - it draws the airborn particulates, no matter how small, out of the air and onto your optics at all times, every minute the set is on and powered up.

Ideally the regular optics cleaning on CRT RPTV tech - mirror and lens tops, 4 surfaces total - happens once a year.

Then with the deeper optics cleaning done if necessary every few years at the same time as the regular cleaning for that year.

See my website if you have further questions, then contact me directly if necessary. No pms please -


b

Thanks for the info! The set is well over due for a cleaning! I will most likely shop around and see what the going rate to have a cleaning performed is! I am a Stone Mason by trade and can do very intricate work, if its out of or with Granite or Field Stone! lol something tells me if I tried to clean it myself it would end up being a very stressful endeavor!! I tend to get a little ocd about things

Be VERY careful. Those lenses are plastic, and the mirror is a front surface/first surface mirror. Any damage done to any of it is immediate and permanent, and grit never goes away on its own once embedded on the optics.

I know of no easily findable local people in anybody's area who would be qualified for such a task.

Many make a phone appointment with me and do it with me on the line. Others surf the net and get what they find, as bastardized as it sometimes gets, with each retelling. But safe, thorough and secure optics cleaning on a CRT RPTV is not something that is normally taught out there in the marketplace. Much less offered by retailers, who have a vested interest in keeping you thinking your set is worn out - as it gets to looking under normal operation after about 3 years because of the above, and looking really worn out after 5 - so they can sell you something new.

It is NOT worn out. Just dirty! And thru no fault of yours as the owner - no matter how clean you keep your house, this will happen. It's strictly the fault of the 30KV inherent in CRT use. Observe your computer screen if you are using a CRT monitor. Chances are you can wipe a line on it with your finger and get a load of dust onto that finger. Multiply that many times, and you have what happens in CRT tech, which continues inexorably every minute the set is on.

b

I picked up a Hitachi C47-WD7000 (Australian version) a week or two ago, $150 from eBay. Its in mint condition and the picture is reasonable, but im sure needs a good internal clean as there is some blooming and internal reflections visible (e.g. bringing up a light square on a dark background). I bought some black fabric, double sided tape & some black paint to darken the inside. In regards to cleaning the mirror and lenses, I bought some moist disposable wipes (here) for LCD/plasma cleaning, looked up the MDSD online, apparently just wipes containing demineralised water. Would these be OK?

I thought of doing the shim-trick also, but with a smaller 47" screen, it probably isnt needed. Also, which thread is best to discuss some softness of a particular colour (not sure which model the AU WD7000 lines up to with US versions).

Ill take a few before/after pics.

Just did a light cleaning on mine few weeks ago. By light I mean I just did the outer lenses-- didn't take the barrels off, nor the screen... just the rear grille and got to it that way. One thing I found really helpful for the finishing touch on the lens is to stop by the optical shop where I have my eyes examined and used to get glasses (before LASIK) and pickup a new lens cleaning cloth, the kind designed not to scratch plastic eyeglass lenses. Using one of these on the just cleaned lens seems to eliminate any residual smudges left from the wet cleaning (Sprayway brand foaming aerosol glass cleaner).