Pioneer Elite Pro-510 problem - Page 92

Originally Posted by najames

Holy Cow Dave Harper!!! You said ISF is in Florida, so I decided to see where they're located. They're about 5-10 minutes from my house!! Didn't even know it, too darned funny.

I have an elderly Pioneer SD-532HD5 like this one.

http://www4.shopping.com/xFS?KW=pion...Video&FD=85747

I might just need to have this thing calibrated some day. It works OK and has been moved across the country twice, in storage for a couple years, never been touched except when I used the Avia disk set it up initially and when I moved here in Boca Raton 3 years ago.

Oakland, CA

11/7/2011
Yelp explains on its website that it "has an automated filter that suppresses a small portion of reviews - it targets those suspicious ones you see on other sites." Small portion??? If their automated filter were an employee I'd fire it. Then I'd hire PEOPLE to assess the authenticity of customer reviews.

Yelp's automated filter hid 75% of the 5-star reviews about Image Perfection.

As someone who helps Image Perfection out with the administrative facets of its business (oops, I guess my rant will go into the filter), I can say that every one of those reviews were written by real, PAYING customers. I personally spoke with them when they first called about the problems their Home Theater Systems were having. Now happy campers, they are thrilled with how the owner, Bob Jones, saved them THOUSANDS of dollars by not only reviving their dead systems but tweaking them to a point where they deliver as stunning a picture as when they were new.

Bob is known across the country as one of, if not the, most knowledgeable professionals in his area of expertise. If anyone were to search "Mr Bob avs forum", they would find Bob started a thread at http://www.afsforum.com six years ago. This thread is dedicated solely to the repair and optimization of Home Theater Systems. It contains 9,000 posts, including hundreds of testimonials, and it's still going strong. Bob's out-of-town customers (that is, outside of the San Francisco Bay Area) are willing to shell out the extra bucks it takes to fly him to their locale, because they know how satisfied they will once Bob touches their sets.

Yelp's filter does an incredible injustice to Bob and other business owners whose clientele have nothing but good things to say about them. It does a disservice to those who read its reviews as well, because it doesn't give a picture that is accurate enough to help them make a sound decision as to who to call and ultimately buy from.

Image Perfection has prospered for years and will continue to prosper without the "help" of Yelp. Other businesses might not be as bullet proof though, so like a bull in a china shop, Yelp's Automated Filter has the potential to break them.

If you are interested in learning about Yelp's filter check this out: http://www.youtube.com.... Notice they have the Comments feature disabled. I wonder why.

Originally Posted by Mr Bob

No, we are on page 89.



b

Originally Posted by Mr Bob

SVM goes to coils that one each surround the neck of each picture tube. Each coil has 2 little wires going to it, maybe white or yellow, can't remember right now, and you usually unplug them.

HOWEVER~!

You gotta stay away from unplugging any of the sweep wires, which are much more thick. Without hor and vert sweep there would just be one super powerful dot in the center of the screen, hundreds if not thousands of times more powerful than it should be. It would vaporize those phosphors in that area instantly, faster than a phaser would, and the area surrounding the blast zone would be affected too. The resulting dot blast would show from then on, in every scene that has any content in it. I was not paying attention once and did that on a Mit set long before HD, and the entire gun had to be replaced and fully set up/calibrated to the red and blue guns. All techs have done things they don't necessarily want to crow about, and this is one reason I am SUPER careful these days on every move I make on my set or anybody else's. It's also why I advise anybody not already knowing what they are doing to NOT experiment in there! Way too much is riding on it.

So be ABSOLUTELY SURE you have the correct coil wires in mind before disco'ing anything and turning your set on again!


Personally I'd stay away from that mod, Joe. Too much is at stake. Your pic needs some level of ee anyway. I did the CraigR ee mod on my Mit, and even a calibrator who uses o'scopes in his cals like Craig does, emphasizes that the correct way to get the best crispness - notice I didn't say sharpness, which has garnered itself a questionable reputation - is to have just the right level of edge enhancement. Not none. Which is what his mod does and what I did when I used his mod to fine tune mine, on my 73". It installs a variability circuit to replace the fixed settings of the factory design.

The same message came from Runco when I did my training there - they said to use the lettering in graphics to set your ee level, going for the best crispness, all by eye.


So I would leave it alone, as far as invading the wiring or disabling it fully. I'd play with the User settings, and see how much crispness you can get without objectionable edge enhancement/Sharpness.

In the service menu, I usually nearly max out the service menu Detail setting - I put it at 120 of a possible 127 - and play with the Sharpness register, which many times needs to be rared down quite a bit from factory levels. But I always fine tune it. I never turn any of those things off or disconnect them.

On Mits's I take the service menu setting for VM from factory 2 to 1, but never to zero, which I could also do. It's there if I want it. I could also quite readily disco their coils, it's very obvious on a Mit. But I never do that either, because too little gives you too soft a picture. It's as bad as too much.


So my recommendation would be to stay away from disconnecting or disabling any of that stuff, on any CRT RPTV, regardless of brand. Not only is it unnecessary, it is invading the design and wiring of the unit, which can always turn into a potential landmine instantly, cooking your goose before you can blink, without even warming up the water.

Professionals know this and stay away from any unnecessary experimentation, unless the upside is going to be absolutely worth it, like the CraigR ee mod, or Owen's shimming op.

The downside is just too risky.

b

Originally Posted by jgruessing68

Bob,

Thanks for the quick reply. This is pretty much exactly how i expected you would answer. The warning is well understood. I was hoping you'd confirm the wires I was planning to disco, and you did.

The annoying problem I am trying to solve is that even with the SVM off and the sharpness register dialed way down, there are still artifacts around the edges of things in HD around areas of high contrast (content--not setting). I have not found an acceptable level of sharpness to detail in SM to eliminate this. I have my detail set to 120. What range do you normally find works for you for the sharpness register?

I noticed that some techs were indeed disconnecting SVM on other sets...like Toshibas... and the results were generally very good for true HD, and not as good for live content. It turns out that the artifical EE is quite beneficial in those cases. Since I am mainly interested in watching Bluerays and streaming HD, I am not as concerned about the resulting "softness" they seem to be talking about. Does that make sense?

I wasn't going to try this first on my beloved 710. I've got the 510, and a bunch of sets I fixed for my brother. One of those can be the guinea pig. There is one in particular that needs a complete cal. Worst case, I have a box full of multiple spare driver boards, and a complete set of spare CRTS... a whole rack ready to drop in. I am no wanting to damage anything, but I am in a position to be more bold in my desire to make improvements.

Is it possible to disco just one of the drivers... say the SVM on the red board, with the red drive turned way down to start? Or, do I need to commit to all of them? If the latter, I will bail on this idea.

Otherwise, I will sit on this some more and look at the board and the SM some more. Chances are, I will back down and leave it alone.

Which brings up the CR EE mod. I have the requisite tools to do this on a Pioneer, including the scope. The pioneer uses basically the same chip as the Mit in CR's paper, but the Pioneer's circuit is a little more complicated than the simple 2 pin filter circuit employed on the MIT. So, it looks like I need to write out the equations for the filter to figure out the value and placement of the pot in this case. It looks like it may need more than one variable cap. Still, it ain't rocket science.

If I were insane enough to head down this path, would you support me? Deal would be if I am successful, I will publish the circuit and results for everyone.

BTW, I pull this crap all the time. I am more than just a weekend warrior when it comes to tech... LOL I drive my wife nuts...basically.

Joe

Originally Posted by Mr Bob

Yeah, internal reflections are a bane, and there in all CRT projected tech. I assume your optics a thoroughly clean, all 10 surfaces of them, plus mirror?

Since you can't control yourself around these things (man after my own heart!), I suggest you contemplate coating each of the internal lenses, like they do in the fine microscopes and telescopes. There are 4 lenses in each lens barrel, meaning 8 surfaces. We clean 2 on each barrel - the front and the back - but we never touch the internal ones, it's not necessary.

Yet none of them are coated. I saw an experiment many years ago at the Exploratorium in SF, where 10 little glass lenses were in the way of what you were trying to see. Each one could be put into or out of the light path.

2 sets, one set of 10 coated, one set uncoated. The differences were absolutely amazing. On the string of them that were uncoated, when all 10 were in the light path you couldn't see pretty much anything at the other end! On the string where all were coated, you could see just fine.

I once passed on a perfectly good high power set of binocs because of this, since I would be using them at concerts.

b

Originally Posted by jgruessing68

It is the same chip, TDA61020Q(N2), in terms of pin layout (1,3) and basics specs, but where Mits used the exact circuit recommended on the data sheet for the chip, Pioneer made a more elaborate filtering circuit. Check out page 83 of the SM - R CRT Drive.

You can see on the datasheet attached Fig 5 on p.8 on pins 1,3 ... same circuit Craig references. But if you look at the pioneer schematic...nope, not the same. It's still a RC filter circuit, just more complicated. A filter ladder active, multi-order... same caps, with lower resistance and added inductors... See what I mean? It looks like they tried to dial it in closer...maybe trying to get rid of that overshoot that CR was trying to tackle, without muddying up the waveform? So, the issue here is where is the right tap for adjustment? It's not as clear, without running the equation, I think. Or, am I missing something fundamental?

I guess the simple thing is two replace all three caps with variable ones... but that's a lot of extra work probably.

Joe