Don't dump your CRT RPTV! - Page 67

I am assuming you mean springing 5-6 hundred for a calibration on the set you know own? Wasn't quite sure what you meant by "another 5-6 hundred" till I tried reading between the lines -

Was I right?


Mr Bob

For Mit's, I would also recommend the CraigR anti-ringing mod. I have seen what it does, and was VERY impressed. It puts it up there with the ceiling pjs.

You definitely should apply it to yours. It does things for all RPTVs using a certain IC in their CRT socket boards - the last line of defense in CRT tech - that even a Lumagen can't take care of.

I believe Sony also uses this IC as well.


Mr Bob

Sorry, Charlie. A Tosh CRT RPTV does not upconvert everything it sees to 1080i.

It upconverts everything that comes in as 480i to 480p, as all HDreadys do, and some brands do upconvert 720p HD to 1080i HD. Others that are CRT based don't recognize 720p at all.

But the Pioneer x30 series - the 530/630/730 series - was the only model year where the set was equipped with the advanced circuitry necessary to, upon command, upconvert 480i/p to 1080i.

My roomie says his Sony RPTV was also capable of this upconversion.

I have not seen any other CRT RPTVs do this, definitely not the Tosh's.

Sorry!



Mr Bob

And there won't be for many, many years. Look how long it took to get digital implemented into the infrastructure, much less HD. 1080i capable broadcast electronics installation/implementation has taken years and years just to get this far, and there still needs to be a federal mandate in place to keep it happening to its totality.

NOBODY is going to be upgrading to broadcast 1080p for the forseeable future, just think of the bandwidth limitations THAT would cause!


And some displays do it better than others. For 1080p from 1080i - ALL broadcast media for the forseeable future - p displays MUST upconvert from i broadcasts. Some brands are good at this, and some are REALLY schlocky.

Stick with CRT tech and you don't have to worry about that.


Mr Bob

Nothing beats the Cantilever Technique. I have tried them all, and nothing else is easier compared to its absolute effectiveness, nor gets it any better.


Mr Bob

Your set, as all CRT RPTV tech is, has a native res of 480p and 1080i, the image structure of each being in a completely independent memory bank from the other. It can't be any other way, as those 2 scanrates are completely different, the HD one being roughly 2.5 times more dense than the 480 one.

Some do more, but all of them are the same on that basic minimum of design of HDreadys.


Mr Bob

OK, I have changed my original statement above - you're right, it was an over the top statement, and not thoroughly thought out on my part. Sorry.

I must confess I am only now hearing about your camera/monitor method, and am very impressed with it.

But do you carry all that stuff with you on calibrations???

I would challenge your camera/monitor method to being better than mine, tho, and I think it is a lot more cumbersome.

I don't think it can get any better than the CT, even with monitor/screen usage. And the whole RPTV display screen has to be taken into consideration. Just getting the middle perfect is not always sufficient, in terms of the scheimpflug of each individual screen scenario. Sometimes a balance has to be struck, as is the case witn many facets of calibration.

Shall we agree that both of our methods are the best available, and will render the finest results possible?




Mr Bob

You got that right! On all counts.

I once did the Raychem amphitheater, with a rear pj'd 20' screen pj'd from a Barco triple-gun, with manual trimpots for the convergence, and mounted on the celiing (can you say, "ladder"?...). Screen being maybe 18' away from the pj.

To really get it right, it woulda been very helpful to have had binocs, but most binocs woulda been too strong!

I got a lot of exercise that day -



Mr Bob

Mit made an 82" LCOS RPTV for awhile there. Only $20K out of the starting gate, prolly find one for $2-3000 now - if you can find one at all. All Mits's above a certain size have always come apart, would think it would be no different for this model, but be sure to doublecheck on that, I am not certain.

Pretty sure it was 1080p, too.

All Mits above 65" have always had a mylar mirror for the weight factor. Would expect that would apply here as well. With a front surface HD grade glass mirror you'll get 25% more light output than from mylar, from what I've heard. Which is irrelevant if it's bulb driven anyway, I suppose -

It was several years ago.


Mr Bob

Absolutely!

Just doing the optics cleaning on your CRT RPTV restores it to virtually brand new condition as it is, when run at videophile non-Torch Mode contrast levels, meaning midway of the bargraph on most brands, and 35-40% up on the bargraph on Mits's.

Not calibrated, of course, and drifted off on the convergence, as happens with all brand new sets during the first 100 hours of operation anyway. And with the grayscale drifting off over the years, but never ON in the first place anyway, when brand new.

But virtually brand new nevertheless.

Buying a used one cheap and getting the optics cleaned is the deal of the century.

Under videophile viewing and usage conditions, CRT RPTVs have an EASY 10 year lifespan, of looking as good as new at all times.

And with videophile calibration, looking BETTER than new for the entire 10 years!




Mr Bob

Great! Email is on its way, with pricing info.

Be sure to report in here with the results, after you've gotten them clean again.


Mr Bob

Keep in mind, the affordable plasmas today are all 720p, which your fully calibrated Sony will stomp all over. You have to get 1080p plasma - still VERY expensive - before you can begin to compete with the picture from fully calibrated 1080i CRT RPTV HD.


Mr Bob

Regular NTSC and HD are 2 different scanrates completely, using 2 different memory banks in your set. What your set does on SD as far as geometry goes, tells you nothing about what it does on HD/1080i.

Overscan is built in to every CRT based RPTV. It is a given. If you want it remedied, reducing it is easy. Correcting how badly the picture gets hosed when you do so, is where the talent comes in. It takes several hours to do this op correctly, and lots and lots of previous experience in doing so - or at the very least, a hell of a lot of intuition and puzzle-solving ability - to really get it right. The learning curve on overscan reduction is intense, to say the least. Don't expect a repair tech, or any calibrator whose only training is ISF certification, to have a clue.


Been awhile since I did a Philips, so would have to be inside the sm to be able to tell you anything, but one thing I can tell you: DON'T EVER PUNCH THE "DEFAULT" SELECTION! This would wipe out all setup work done by the factory and restore it to fresh-off-the-assembly-line status. You do NOT want to do that. Schlocky as the setup presently may be, it would be infintitely more haphazard and in need of professional attention if you wipe out all the work the factory has done so far, in setting up your unit.

Calibration prices are predicated on altering and improving upon existing, mostly reasonably coherent setups, from the factory. Start needing "from scratch" work, and the prices will go up noticeably, if not dramatically, depending on how badly everything gets mixmastered, in there.

I realize that not everybody will want to just fly me in. If you want to send me the current service manual info, I am available for phone consultation, on all things related to the calibration process.


Mr Bob