Sony KV-36FS70 image quality

[Zero1_]

Hi guys.

Just bought one of these off ebay. It was very good condition, but I was quite dissapointed with the image quality.

I'm not sure whether it just needs a good service menu tweaking, whether it's a dud, or whether this is what to expect from a 36" CRT (because I appreciate that things like convergence get worse with increasing screen size). So has anyone owned/used/seen one of these sets, and what would you reckon to mine.

The first thing that hits you is the lack of clarity. When I'm playing games, small text is blurred or unreadable where on my Panasonic TX-28DK1, it was clear as day. To some extent it feels like it's not even running RGB scart (but it is, as the other two orange sockets are S-video/Scart). There is also this horrible halo effect, which I gather is caused by SVM or something, but I know I can turn that off.

There are blue patches in the top left and top right corner. Could I fix this with a degaussing coil? I gather I could maybe fix this by using the ring magnets on the neck of the tube but I don't fancy opening this thing up. Is there any danger of making the TV worse with a degaussing coil (for example degaussing areas that don't need degaussing)?

Geometry is pretty poor. Some of the worst I've seen but I can fix that in the service menu.

There also seem to be some convergence issues as no one point on the TV is what I would call sharp. Fortunately there are some basic convergence settings in the service menu that may assist me.

Also, it may be my imagination, but it seems the lower half of the screen is not as black as the rest (but it is when it's turned off). This might be a scart shielding issue though as I've got some horrible interference that goes left to right as changes in brightness (I hope that's the cause and not a flaw in the TV. It seems mostly fine elsewhere).


So, am I in a spot of bother, or is it worth messing with this CRT? The impression I seem to get is that it was top of the line in CRTs and should pretty much blow most TVs away, but I'm not so sure.

The colours are nice. On my Panasonic it felt like the colours were rendered at 1/4 resolution as they would have "gaps" in intense colours. It's hard to explain, but it's kind of like chroma subsampling on a DVD. This is gone in the Sony, but there are some side effects. I gather there is an option that stops colour bleed, so I may experiment with this.


The absolute most annoying thing about this TV however, is the damn DRC. DRC50 is reasonable, but I get artifacts on some lines. DRC100 is an improvement, but oh God, you get some nasty motion artifacts, so this is out of the question. Is there anyway to disable DRC and get normal 525/625 scanning?

Sorry for the long post.

[Zero1_]

Sorry for bumping this so early (and double posting), but I've just had a play with the service menu and I thought sticking it in this thread would be a better idea than making a new thread, while still getting it noticed (just editing my post would have meant it would have fallen to the back pages without anyone seeing this addition).

Well, my TV is on Personal setting now. I went into the service menu and it went a little darker. I turned off SVM and it looked a ton better. The second I exit the menu, it reverts back to being bright and over processed.

Am I missing anything?

I then switched to Movie mode, entered the service menu and upped SVM (since by default it's off for movie mode), exited it and the changes were saved for movie mode. It now had SVM.

Does it sound right that I can turn on/off SVM for the factory presets but not the personal preset? Is there anything I should try? If push comes to shove I'll just use movie mode and calibrate via the service menu, but I'd rather not have to go through the service menu everytime I want to tweak something. Not only that, but I'd quite like to keep the Movie setting as is. Hmm, maybe I can tweak that awful Live mode

Cheers.

[Tight Git]

With the greatest respect, do to really know what you're doing with the various settings, as it's very easy to make things worse.

Also, unless you have the necessary training/experience, please don't even think about removing the back.

Even after disconnecting the mains, there's plenty of volts still present which might kill you.

Having said that, if you can find someone to align it properly, you have one of the best tv's ever produced and could also have a bargain.

Good luck.

[aekostas]

Have you searched the CRT Forum for KV-36FS70? You may get some answers.

HTH!