Don't dump your CRT RPTV! - Page 7

It's possible to tweak up any triple gun CRT, but some are designed with more supertweakup ability than others.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the Mits's have the most sophisticated convergence system out there, capable of nailing the convergence virtually all the way out to the edges and beyond, to superb viewing quality. There will still be a little feathering in the last inch or two on each side at some points, but this is unnoticeable without looking for it, which you never do when watching regular viewing material. Reducing the overscan - with its perks of not only revealing lost areas of picture, but also tightening up the resolution because of a denser pixel pack - is worth this slight accommodation/limitation.

Many of the horizontal lines can be completely nailed at each side edge using invisible points outside the viewed area, and others have to be averaged, as on one side they will go up at the end while on the other side they will go down. (No getting rid of that - but as I said above, this is unnoticeable in normal viewing.)

But for an overscan reduction down to 4-4.5%, taken in from the regular 6-7%, there is no RPTV convergence sys out there that can accomplish it better. Some of the newer models can even be sized down to 2% overscan. Both Zenith and the Philips/Marantz 65"ers had 9" guns, but I could never supertweak them all the way out to the edges.

I have not had the pleasure of supertweaking a Mit with 9" guns, only to play with one in one area of the screen at a store, so I have not seen the end result of supertweaking one. But I am sure it is fantastic.

The built-in red push can be all but eliminated with their new PerfectColor in user, which not only includes the 3 primaries, but also the 3 corrolary colors, for silky smooth color decoding. Not quite perfect, but definitely head and shoulders above not having anything there at all, and in most viewing instances every bit as good and true to life as perfection would have delivered.

In the first 2 Mit models of HDready, they had registers which could completely nail 100% linear color response, delivering 100% true to life color. In the 3rd year, the x7 series, all those juicy registers were gone, never to return on a universal basis, tho the ones with built in HD tuners continued to have at least the color decoder regs in there for another few years. The color isolators in the Video Chroma menu tho - which made linearizing the color decoding a fairly straightforward process, the first 2 years - went the big sayonora forever, in the x7 series, never to return. The convergence sm had color isolators that have stayed around, but that meant bouncing back and forth between the Video Chroma sm and the convergence sm, for your constant double-checks, from then on. Doable, just a lot more convoluted than straightforward.

After that, in the year of the x7 series - spurred on by the still persistent practice of Mit to install red push in their sets on all scanrates with no thought of how it at all times translated irrevocably into blue/green diminish when fleshtones were prioritized - intrepid computer guys who know much more about computers than I ever will, successfully hacked the I2C interface and started taking control of the programming of the eeproms WITHOUT service menu access. We again had control of our color decoding and could re-linearize out the blue/green diminish.

Mit was not happy. I had a conversation with George Palmer at CES a year or 2 later, where they and other brands had supplied big screens for the Sports Bar attraction, and it became pretty heated. He told me in no uncertain terms how pissed off Mit was that we had invaded their I2C bus, tho he was a gentleman enough not to use those exact words. But he was steamin'.

I finally told him that he was leaving the videophile out of the equation. That the only reason we did that was because Mits's are such damn fine sets, that we videophiles don't WANT our pictures trashed by red push.

He heard how fine we thought their sets were, and I think he finally started listening. We shook hands and parted company, both of us still steaming, but changes started to happen. The next time I talked with someone from Mit, they had brought PerfectColor out of just being in SD - where Joe Sixpack didn't even know about red push and could have cared less - and into 480p and HD, for us videophiles.

They also had come up with a de-interlacer for 480i that was Faroudja quality, and the new 65" with the 9" guns.

9" guns on a 65" screen give you just a slightly more spacious staging of the video material, more depth in the picture. Probably akin to hearing a slightly more spacious soundstage when listening to Mark Levinson audio compared to MacIntosh audio. Both superb, the one just a little more lifelike and spacious.

I saw this in both the Zenith and the Philips, but only in the center of the pic. As you got out to the edges, you'd start to lose it because of their limited convergence systems. My working with a small area of a 9" guns equipped 65" in a store really didn't impress me. Can't wait to see the full monty on a Mit, where it can be dialed in out past the edges of a 4-4.5% overscan.

9" guns on a 65" screen also give you 9/7 more light potential than 7" guns will.

Their electronics are also great. Not QUITE as good as Panny's, but still incredible.


Mr Bob

My basic cal package runs travel - $75/hr ground travel, and/or plane flights/shuttles - plus $485 for your primary scanrate, plus $285 for your secondary scanrate for the basic cal package. Which includes general optics cleaning, focusing via the Cantilever Technique (which I wrote), high precision convergence, grayscale and resetting of your color and tint user centers, plus playing with your Detail and Sharpness settings in sm if necessary, for the sharpest picture with the least amount of edge enhancement.

Deeper optics cleaning, if needed, is an extra which costs $150, and we have to do the regular optics cleaning before we'll know whether it needs the deeper. Reducing the overscan, if desired, costs $200 extra per scanrate on a Pioneer, only $150 extra on a Mit. Don't know yet on a Sammy, we'd have to play that one by ear. On Sony I didn't charge extra at all last time I did one, because reducing its overscan did not significantly hose the picture, like it does on both Mit and Pio.

Anyone who has an upconverting DVDP that OPs 1080i on component, like my LiteOn or the Momitsu 880, can save money by having only 1080i done, rather than both 1080i and 480i/p.


Mr Bob

I am assuming you are experiencing color separations as well, not just the intact pic doing this (which would indicate both hor and vert pincushioning).

This is the convergence sys breaking down. You have 3 guns, all aiming at the screen from different positions and so different angles. If the colors are separating, what you are seeing is most likely what happens from those different angles without any convergence correction at all.

It eventually happens on lots of CRT bigscreens, as that section is run pretty hard. But some are run harder than others, depending on how it is set up from the factory. I have seen some doozies out there in the Mit line, the point sys fighting the coarse sys all over the place, causing the ICs to run loads hotter than they need to. As a calibrator, I always make it a priority to correct that situation whenever I encounter it in one of my cals, relieving the unnecessary pressure in there.

It can be relatively simple, like cold solder joints, or pretty messy, like blown convergence generator, which fortunately is very rare. Usually it is blown convergence ICs.

If it's intermittent and you shut your set down immediately until fixed, chances are you can get away with resoldered conns at the ICs.

If you keep running it, however, in the bad condition, chances are you will damage those ICs and need them replaced. Whenever they are messing up they are not running within their design specs, and that causes undue stress on them.

I would always recommend replacing all if you are replacing one, even tho it would mean new reconvergence everywhere. If one is stressed out the other one may not be too long behind, and every time you open up your set for a repair, you are leaving it vulnerable. I do it for a living, and I could tell you stories that would curl your hair about how I would have made out like a bandit if I had not done that one, last little thing in there...



Mr Bob

Forgive me, but when you said warping happens on the edges of the screen (maybey 8" in from every side) I took that to mean that the edges had come in 8" from all sides.

From your most recent post, it seems that they have come in only 1 cm, not 8".

Guess I am not making out what you are trying to say. I'll let others take a shot at it.



Mr Bob

With a superb convergence system, fully tits'd out - see my comments a few posts back about that - a 65" with 9" guns will give you a brighter picture, and a more expansive, more 3D-like picture in terms of depth, than either a 73" with 9" guns, or a 65" with 7" guns. It's a matter of relative scale.

That's why when they went to HDready, they abolished 5" guns for HDready RPTVs, which many - if not nearly all - RPTVs had, at the time BEFORE HDreadys. Picture a 5" gun being used for a 73" HDready. Just too much projected magnification, it would microscopically fragment the detail.

That's why Barco makes a ceiling pj with 12" guns, which is used with the same set of sizes of screen as those with 8" and 9" guns.

It's huge...so huge that it comes in 2 pieces, with the actual pj only containing the guns themselves and a couple of relatively simple small circuit boards. The main electronics has it own entire box, the same size as the CRT box!


The Mit 73" CRT RPTV uses a mylar mirror, which I don't think is as good as a glass front surface mirror. I can see the reflection off the mylar appearing ON the mylar with the screen off, no matter what the size of mylar mirror, whereas I cannot see it bouncing off a freshly cleaned glass mirror with the screen off, no matter what its size. To my mind this affects the signal to noise ratio - the ability to achieve the best blacks available, relative to the whites. This translates directly to a set's depth perception ability, in dynamically lighted scenes.


I would get a 65" and simply sit proportionately closer. That's what I did when it was time for my purchase, in 2001. I was considering a Mit 73", but decided that sitting a little closer would save me about $3000, and have never regretted that decision. At 8' viewing distance, I get the same proportionate perceived picture size as at 10' away from a 73". (One has a ratio of 8 to 10 in viewing distances, while the other has a ratio of 7 to 9 in gun size. Not exactly the same, but close enough.)

The pic from a 7" CRT onto a 65" will be almost exactly the same as from a 9" gun onto a 73" screen, in terms of relative size, gun to screen. Do the math.

All things considered, in an ideal world I would have my 65" Panny be with 9" guns if they had offered it - they didn't, and never have - and it had the same features as my current one.

The Hit's main claim to fame these days is that its color decoder can be linearized 100%. If not perfect anymore, the Mits has PerfectColor, which is so near perfect that once linearized with the proper patterns, it would take special scenes - VERY fleeting, and few and far apart - to see any difference.


Just a note - linearizing the color decoding on DVD is fairly straightforward if you have one of the good test discs. Not so for HD.

For linearizing the the HD color decoding on ANY HDready, you need HD patterns, which usually only calibrators have the equipment to put up there. Linearizing HD color decoding, either in Hit's sm or with Mit's PerfectColor, it is one of the extras I offer in my calibrations. When I am done with your set, the color is silky smooth and ultra realistic, with true fleshtones along with vivid blues and greens at the same time (with red push you only get one or the other. You can't have both.)

True reality programming in action, with hypnotic suspension of disbelief thrown in for good measure.

After all, what good is D6500K if your color is still not right? For true suspension of disbelief you need both, as their hypnotic interplay is what you are looking for.


The convergence sys on the Hits is also not as good as on the Mits.

I would go with the Mit 65" with the 9" guns.


Mr Bob

Brightness is best where best set, given the picture on there. In cals we recalibrate where the centerpoint should be, to center for most material. Yet even tho mine now looks great on virtually everything with my Br centerpointed, I still crank it down 5 clicks for Leno every night, as that show is set so that all parts of the screen are averaged, and in the shadow areas during his monologue you really want it unseeably dark, and NOT filled in properly. This makes everything else on his show look good. Then afterwards I set it back to centerpoint, for most everything else I watch.

It is not necessarily personal preference, but it can be set for your pic to look excellent, IF at 65% it properly fills in the detail in dark areas on most material.

Space scenes are a great way to play with it till you have it down. I use a certain set of space scenes in Starship Troopers.

As was said above by Chris Wiggles, you won't screenburn your set with the brightness, only with the contrast.


Asked and answered very well above, again by Chris.


Mr Bob

I am one calibrator who does not believe in depriving owners of RPTVs of sometimes badly needed headroom, so I do not usually "permanently" bring down the overall contrast settings, while in sm. I bring them down to half during grayscale process, but crank them back up to factory levels before ending the cal.

My owners, however, are virually always already savvy as to the fact that Torch Mode is not just deliterious, but actually dangerous to RPTVs, and must be used only once in awhile, with half the OOB settings used for Contrast being in play at all other times.

In other words, I trust my owners to do what Chris states here, in terms of keeping white levels down from OOB settings, by keeping their Contrast settings down accordingly. If there are kids involved, of course upon request I go the way of many other calibrators and take it down "permanently" in sm.


Mr Bob

The Mits's are the product of a warped sense of humor on the part of their designers in Japan, as far as user Contrast bargraph goes. If you look very closely, you'll see that the halfway point on the user contrast bargraph is already 90% up. This was confirmed with luminance footlamberts readings recently, from a color analyzer. I have been reporting for years that clicking up on the right half of the user contrast bargraph produces visible increases in contrast on only 4 of those many clicks. I have been saying 75-80% up for all those years, but now it is confirmed at 90%.

That's in User. In sm it's different.

The sm contrast is NOT typically maxed out at 63, tho I have seen it work very well at 63. The one I did yesterday was set at 37, and that was max contrast - Torch Mode - where half that is what should be used. Torch Mode is not set by maxing out the sm settings. It is caused by maxing out USER Contrast settings when in OOB condition, where the sm settings are rarely anywhere close to max.

They set the sm contrast via instrument at the factory, and different models of HD have had very different settings of sm overall light level registers over the years, from series to series. It is ALWAYS set to produce Torch Mode at 100% on User bargraph, no matter what the setting in sm turns out to be via instrument at the factory.

As such, an sm setting of 40 of a possible 63 in sm could very well be MUCH higher than it should be, if you are recalibrating contrast during a cal, in sm. It would definitely be much higher than it should be for the 55907 I just completed in Sacramento, whose sm contrast setting was 37 - out of a possible 63 - producing Torch Mode as scheduled, in user max'd out user contrast settings.


Mr Bob

Wow. Wow. WOW!

Did I say before, that right now CRT RPTVs are:


THE DEAL OF THE CENTURY!!!



Mr Bob