Don't dump your CRT RPTV! - Page 2

Yeah, hope you're aware of it when they do.

Big chains like CC and BB and GG are carting away old CRT based sets right and left every day - they tell their customer buyers of the newer, higher priced sets that they will be glad to cart away their "old one" when they deliver the new one. I hear about this all the time in my repair service tech capacity.

Where they put the old ones and what happens to them is anybody's guess, but my guess would be that contacting them might turn up a gold mine of perfectly good CRT based HDready sets, if you play your cards right.

Unless they are crushed...




Mr Bob

Get it calibrated!

A display can only resolve what it's sent. There are limitations on what comes in OTA, by satellite, etc.

A fully calibrated set will display all it can, but until uncompressed HD is a reality, there will always be levels of compression to have to deal with. A true 1920x1080 display will still have to synthesize whatever is NOT there in the incoming signal, to fill in the blanks.

According to Joe Kane OTA HD, which is the least compressed signal out there, still only achieves a 1400 line horizontal res.


Mr Bob

$$$.

Same reason Panny stopped producing CRT RPTVs that would do 720p native along with 1080i native. I got the last series, the year 2000 series. I asked them at CES why they hadn't done it again, and that was the answer. Too expensive, with the prices of CRT technology having nose dived.


Mr Bob

The difference is only in the depth, which is not all that great a difference to me, compared to the difference in quality between the 2.

But Joe Sixpack outnumbers the videophile probably 20 to 1, minimum.


Mr Bob

Yeaaaeee! A man after my own heart. See what I wrote earlier about the x30 line and its 480->1080 upconversion.



No. Optics only get dirty from the HV inherent in CRT use. If it's not been turned on and run for awhile yet your optics are still crystal clear.

See my website for more details.




Fly me in! I love what can be done with 730's.

With its excellent upconversion, only 1080i needs to be calibrated. That saves major calibration money.


Mr Bob

ALL 73" Mit's use 9" guns. And mylar mirrors. (weight considerations, I suppose)

I have yet to calibrate a Mit 65" with 9" guns, but can't wait. Marantz, Philips and Zenith 65's all had 9" guns, but their convergence systems stank, compared to the one in the Mits's.

The center of their pix was noticeably sharper, with more depth, but the edges could only be made marginally good.

With Mit, the edges can also be fine tuned, along with the center. Pioneer and Panasonic also have edge settings that allow for edges to be fine tuned, but neither of them use 9" guns.

The Mits convergence system is one of the best out there, and as I said I can't wait to see what kind of pic THAT combo will produce!


Mr Bob

Doesn't surprise me. Typical of uncalibrated sets, esp. since the optics have probably never been cleaned either, contributing to a very bleary picture over the years.

Completely reversible situation. BUY IT!



All Sony glarescreens can be removed, and it improves the pic instantly and immensely. The contrast and brightness settings can be worked with in service menu mode.

Unlike other brands, Sonys are best watched with their contrast settings at 2/3-3/4 up, not at half.


CRTs produce their own light, they never use bulbs. Which is why they can deliver the superior blacks that bulb driven devices are always struggling with.

CRTs have a life expectancy of well over 10 years, if watched under videophile conditions. Usually more like 15. That's a lot longer than any bulb will last.



Depth of the box.

But whatever they solve, there are other problems that crop up with them. Challenged blacks. Rainbow effect on DLP. Convergence problems on many fixed pixel triple-panel modalities. I have even seen Runcos where the convergence is a lot farther off than I would ever allow, in their triple panel DLPs. When asked, they say that's the best they will deliver, and you just have to sit a little farther back, to not see it.


Mr Bob

Me too.



Mr Bob

You can also reduce its overscan without totally hosing your geometry and convergence, which is what happens on most brands. Correction of g and c after overscan reduction takes far less time on a Sony.


Mr Bob

I'd beg to differ on that one. Even Vidikron told me on the phone years ago about their $50K camera-equipped ceiling pj, that their CAMERA-EQUIPPED auto-convergence system only got you 80% there. The rest had to be done by an onlocation calibrator. Which I of course did while there.

The only way to make an auto-convergence system - Magic Focus (Hit), Touch Focus (Tosh) and Flash Focus (Sony) - do any sort of efficacious job is to sit way far back from the display from then on, effective reducing the size of what you are trying to watch, immensely. It's really sloppy compared to tightly stitched manual convergence, done from about 2'-3' away from your set.

Feel free to come over to my place and see what a high-precision manually stitched convergence will look like, watched at 8' away from my 65" screen. Or go to my website and go into Screenshots and click on/blow up the CSI image and study the detail.

That level of detail is NOT available via auto-convergence!



Nothing out there presently delivers full 1920 horizontal resolution except the new HD DVD players. As I said earlier, according to Joe kane OTA, the least compressed out there, only delivers 1400. 7" guns have no problem with 1400.

It's not the size that matters here. It's the level of the technology. A CRT is a CRT. A 5" CRT can still resolve 1080i. You just can't magnify it enough, optically, for big screen use. And who's going to supply a 5" display with the extreme electronics it takes to do 1080i? Maybe the military, for special applications, but you won't find it in consumer grade stuff.


You'd still need triple gun technology, tho, because monochromatic guns are the only way to truly get the highest of res necessary for projected HD. Triple chromatic guns, like regular 19" single screen SD CRT units, have all 3 colors on them, spaced out and requiring a shadow mask to differentiate them. As such much of the potential is masked, and always has been.

Not so with monochromatic CRTs. What you see is what you get, directly and with no shadow mask in the way.


Mr Bob

Table models are signifcantly shorter than floor units. Mits has always made table model SD sets in the past, tho in the HDready line, I don't know...


Mr Bob

All it probably needed was professional optics cleaning. "It's so much brighter!" is the most common comment made after my optics cleaning process.

It's really just so much more distinct, and with so much more dynamic punch. Probably nearly the same foot lamberts readings, but with the transparency restored by optics cleaning, its brights and darks are so much more dynamic up against each other now, making it LOOK like it's a lot brighter than it actually is. There's no chance for "gleam" when your optics are dirty, it's much too hazy. With them cleaned, your picture gleams again, like new.

HV ionizes the air and turns the optics into powerful dust magnets, gathering even the smallest of microscopic particulates. See my website under Nuts and
Bolts. After 4 years it DEFINITELY needed professional optics cleaning. Probably woulda saved your set, and you'd still be enjoying it.


Mr Bob

I see well defined scanlines on my year 2000 65" Panny on both 720p and 1080i on its 7" guns, with the right picture. No overlap. I can see them at 8'.


Mr Bob