HDMI Standard

[crazydean]

You're not wrong about finding a repair guy, I would love to have my yolk adjusted, the screen degaussed, and the color tuned, but I can't find a local dude or lady to assist, so right now my geo and colors are a bit off, but still leaps and bounds better than my LCD and Plasma HDTVs

I can't help with the other issues, but you can get a cheap degaussing coil online.

[Gredler]

I've been thinking about buying a coil, but I think that's the least of this set's issues. The geometry issue is the most noticeable part - the top 20% of the image has a bend/arc to it. I've talked to steve in chat quite a bit about it, I just need to nut up and mess with it

[Groover]

I played with magnets on the TV when I was a kid. I remember learning to fix it but I would still be hesitant to try that today.

I also enjoy playing on my LCD with my XRGB mini using RGB. I would like a PVM someday I find one.

[ClodBuster]

I worked in a TV repair shop 10 years ago as a trainee for educational purposes.
Doing picture tuning wasn't very hard, most of it is done either via pots on older CRT TVs or via the hidden service menu on newer CRTs. I even went as far as doing repairs on my own Grundig CRT back then which had cold solder joints around the geometry circuits and thus went into self-protection cutoff if the picture got distorted too much.

If the source of the error isn't too complicated or right in the frigging digibox of a 100 Hz Sony CRT TV (they were a pain in the ass to repair) fixing CRTs is quite possible.

From what I experienced, Philips, Grundig (before the merger with Beko) and Loewe were quite nice to service, also since there was a good distribution network for spare parts and schematics in my area. Panasonic and Metz were also favored by my boss.

Sonys were fine as long there wasn't anything broken. If they're fine, hold onto them as long as you can.

Sharp CRT TVs had rather bad build quality. Cheap parts, bad soldering. My boss didn't liked them at all.

I'd avoid late 100 Hz Samsung CRT TVs. They tend to have been setup with dynamic contrast from the factory. So you never get a consistent brightness level out of them. There's no way to turn that annoying feature off in the service menu, sadly.

[Gypsy]

I worked in a TV repair shop 10 years ago as a trainee for educational purposes.
Doing picture tuning wasn't very hard, most of it is done either via pots on older CRT TVs or via the hidden service menu on newer CRTs. I even went as far as doing repairs on my own Grundig CRT back then which had cold solder joints around the geometry circuits and thus went into self-protection cutoff if the picture got distorted too much.

Yep. I was able to get a newer Sony sorted out via the service menu within the last year. Very easy.

I'd avoid late 100 Hz Samsung CRT TVs. They tend to have been setup with dynamic contrast from the factory. So you never get a consistent brightness level out of them. There's no way to turn that annoying feature off in the service menu, sadly.

Yikes.

[ClodBuster]

I've got one of these Samsungs, and it is really a tragic design. While the picture quality itself is nice, real flat tube, colors and all, to lessen the dynamic contrast you've got to dial the brightness and contrast down so much that darker content on the screen fades into black. Yuck. I also had to resolder the Scart sockets several times, since they are only held down by the solder joints, no other means of stress relief. Last year, one of the speakers had malfunctions. I didn't bother fixing that, since most of the time I've got the TV and other stuff hooked up to my Surround sound system anyway.

On the upside, it wworks with both PAL and NTSC signals.

Geometry correction preview in service mode works with that TV only via RF connection. My older Grundig was able to access and preview service menu options for any source signal attached to it.

Once I move, this piece of shit will be thrown out, and I'll check local ads for another CRT TV.