Sony Kp44 PS2 mirror clean

[scooby do]

Managed to clean the mirror on my Sony Kp44. Procedure took less than hour and is very easy. Remove decorative bottom cover just pulls off sharply from each end. Remove the speaker grill cover that holds the power button etc ( 5 screws) this cover needs to be tilted at the bottom and pulled downwards. Now go round the back of the set and start removing the screws that hold the outer bezel with the SONY emblem on it leave the middle on on to aid removal. Go to the front of the set and remove the last remaining five screws that hold the the bottom of the bezel. Now get someone to hold the front bexel on whilst you remove the middle screw from the back. The bezel will now come forward. You will find that the slack on the sensors for auto convergencence will be taped up. Remove tape and disconnect connector and cable clamp for auto convergence wire. The front bezel and lenses can now be moved some distance from the set and start cleaning. Once mirror is cleaned and CRT lenses put the bezel back on and whilst the front covers are off remove the rear bottom one and do the mechanical focus followed by electrical. Electrical focus pots are behind the black hardboard cover at the front of the set below the speakers.

Best of luck

 

[shaunthedude]

hi matey

what did you use to clean the guns with??

cheers
shaun

 

[scooby do]

Shaun

Just used camera lens cleaning tissues followed by lens cleaning cloth, didn't use any chemicals. Guns were where most of the crud, was mirror and lens was not too bad really. Picture is much brighter with the same settings. Best mod so far was disabling SVM.

 

[shaunthedude]

cheers matey.

 

[bobones]

Excellent stuff scooby. Thanks to you I've had the confidence to whip off the screen and give my PS2 a good clean and remove the SVM wire. What a difference! I had some visible clumps of dust on the inside fresnel screen which were easily wiped off and my CRTs were a little dusty too. The vmlevel mod is fantastic too: so much more natural and detailed pq. I didn't bother with focus adjustments as I don't think I could improve on the detail resolution anyway - maybe another day. Anyway, great tweaking tips!

PS did you manage to get your blue corner tinge sorted? Also, I've never noticed any "tearing" on panning shots. I think this is more likely to be a source related issue. If you do get it on dvds, have you tried a different player? I've heard some equipment is sensitive to too high RGB voltages and some players/stbs are problematic. (Incidently, I have Panny S75, E50, Nokia 221T and Tivo (tweaked to hi-res and VBR) as my sources).

 

[scooby do]

Bo glad I could be of help. Blue tinge still slightly there but I know I can sort it but finding time is the problem. Really want to sort the geometry out and get the green grid spot on but time is of the issue. Spent some time this morning and the green is 4 mm out of centre so get that sorted and I should be laughing. Tearing is during fast pans but as you say probably source related. SVM once defeated certainly takes the TV to another level also played around with DPIC level at the same time.

 

[bobones]

I must have got lucky with my set, because geometry is spot on. It's a RW graded number, so perhaps it has been calibrated well in the recheck. I've only made a few tweaks to sort some minor curves in the corners introduced when I reduced the overscan to around 4%, but if I now stick a grid or avia pattern up, it is nigh on perfect with no convergence problems at all.

As you say defeating svm takes the set to a new level, even though it was pretty damned great to begin with. Sharpness needs to be cranked up a good bit to retrieve the detail, but the svm processed look is now gone and images on some films take on that elusive 3d look. MPEG NR makes a massive difference to the amount of sharpness that can be applied without ringing or haloing taking place. I've kept MPEG NR on as it helps with freeview mosquito noise, and sharpness can go a couple of notches above halfway now without ringing so detail retrieval is still right up to the limits of dvd.

I'm also really chuffed at the results of cleaning it too. I used to see splodges of dust from behind the screen that were really starting to bug me, but it was so simple to fix. Did it all without an extra pair of hands too.

Think I'll now give her a full avia going over again. It's almost like getting a new telly. Thanks again.

 

[scooby do]

Bobones

Have played around with overscan and set to 4% allround. I now have full control over the convergence even up to the edges where as before I was struggling. Got it perfect in NTSC drc 100 mode which is not what I use (very often). I forgot I had set the set to this mode to change the deflection. So continued in DRC 50 smart & wide which is the only settings I use. Cant quite get the top red converged with green but ran out of time even made me late for work! Will continue tonight hopefully.

 

[bobones]

Hi Scooby,

I can adjust deflection in any mode except DRC50. No need for NTSC.

I reconverged my set the other day, and thanks to that manual you sent me, I'm getting to be a bit of an expert on the old projector engine. If you look at the manual you'll see that there are a number of options for copying registration data from one mode to another. The one I used was to copy all DRC-50 PAL modes to all other (DRC 100 PAL and all ntsc) by pressing "2" then "0". It worked really well and was a big timesaver. Remember also the coarse adjustments you can make to fix pincushion and other errors (toggling "9" switches between fine and course adjustments - look at the service manual for details).

You probably know this, but you can switch on and off the individual crts when in production mode (TT 62) for ease of convergence (helps with avia colour bars tests too). I also found that using "1" and "4" to move around the PJE in a circular motion was quite helpful. I never use the "auto-convergence" button, but you can reset the offsets for it once you've completed you manual convergence. Again service manual has the details.

I'm really chuffed with the way my set is performing after disabling SVM and giving the screen (inside and out) and CRTs a clean. I've just watched Finding Nemo and The Rock and the pq was breathtaking. My latest tweak was to adjust sub-colour, sub-brightness, and sub-contrast with the help of avia and thx optimizers so that my set is properly calibrated when all the controls are at 50% (i.e. after "reset"). Sharpness doesn't have a "sub" control but 50% is spot on when MPEG-NR is on in the service menu and svm is disabled.

In case you are interested, I've settled on these settings:

SVM: disabled (thanks again!)
Picture Mode: Personal
Contrast, Brightness, Colour and Sharpness all at 50%.
AI: off
Noise detection: off
Digital mode: DRC50 (usually)
Colour Tone: Normal (Warm is supposedly closer to NTSC 6500K).
Sub-colour: 4
Sub-contrast: 7
Sub-brightness: 31
MPEG-NR: On (sharpness needs to be reduced to prevent ringing if this is off)

PS. Watch out for screen burn if you have those convergence grids up for a long time. Reducing contrast would be advisable. I thought I had damaged my set, but it turned out it was my eyes that were suffering from screen burn!

 

[scooby do]

Hah Hah eye screen burn I was the same coming up on the train could see funny grids in my eyes. Yup was in NTSC mode as was using AVIA overscan pattern and forgot to switch back to PAL. I remember the first time I went into deflection in DRC50 mode and thought I had screwed it. I also have played around with writing the new convergence settings into memory of the auto convergence button and it seems to remember the setting previously and does a resonable job, wont post however as cant be certain that it is working properly as havent done some indepth testing. Will have a go at your settings and see what I reckon on mine. I do find that I have to keep contrast done well below half as otherwise it is headache material. The TV really does have a good power supply as it never seems to loose control of electron steering no mater what contrast is set. I have been contemplating trying a Toshiba WH36 but have not been able to view one set up correctly (convergence ok etc). But I am so happy with the picture on this and what it looks like that would find it hard to part with. Also when I bought the set I contacted Domestic & General via the leaflet with the TV and got a year insurance for £199 which is another bargain!!!

 

[scooby do]

Bobones

Thanks for the Sub adjustments tip works great. I thought I was going to end up with a picture with too much constrast as before you had mentioned you was around half for contrast but it seems your settings are very close to mine. Just re-read your post and see that you are already aware of the save convergence settings.Still having a problem with red at the very top of the screen last grid cannot get it not to fringe to the left of the picture but all in all I would sy have got a 20% increase in PQ so well happy.

 

[bobones]

Is it noticeable outside of the PJE? Here's a pic of my wide grid. Is yours much worse/better? (Looks a little pink here, but ok in real life).

I wonder if your "rough" PJE settings are a bit out. I can post mine if you like.

SVM fix has made all the difference to my viewing pleasure. Can't believe how smooth and detailed everything is now.

 

[scooby do]

Right definately a difference, mine has a strange double line at the top and about 7/8 towards he bottom but dont know if that is in smart mode as opposed to your wide grid. Yeah would like appreciate your rough settings as mine got tampered with by Sony service agent when he was trying to converge using the values of the text that is displayed when in rough adjustment mode he didnt even have a grid up! Yes your geometry does look very good indeed. Will post a picture of my grid to demonstrate the double lines. it is like the grid has an extra line inserted between the normal line.

 

[bobones]

Yeah I know the lines you mean. You can see them when you do a PJE initial (5 + 0). Try it with only green gun on. As long as you don't save the settings no harm is done - change aspect ratio and you're back.

Give me some time mate and I'll post all my 0 - 77 PJE settings, my rough and all 81 points of my green grid in wide and smart. The least I can do for your svm and cleaning tips!

 

[bobones]

Here's my rough for starters. Same in all modes. Just do DRC50 wide PAL to begin with. If all goes well a 2 + 0 will fix the rest. Corners are well curvy after a PJE initial then using these rough settings so fine tweaks are a must. Order is (green, red, blue).

CENT (-15/ 59, -20/151, -135/142)
SKEW (17/-25, 15/-20, 22/-57)
SIZE (0/-200, -48/-202, -23/-191)
LIN (0/0, 236/0, -235/-12)
KEY (X/0, X/95, X/-77)
PIN (-5/240, -12/244, -10/242)
MLIN (0/X, -143/X, 100/X)
MSIZ (0/X, 69/X, 70/X)

My deflection settings are: vsize 35, vpos 28, vcomp 0, vlinear 7, hsize 45, hposition 51. Others are at defaults.

 

[scooby do]

dont know if I have described them correctly say you can see the grid, I have a normal grid across all the screen except for one row where there is and extra line across from left to right between the next row. Unfortunately at work so cannot see if it is smart only.Can you send me a Pm with a telephone number to call you on.

 

[bobones]

I get the double line in smart mode too but pressing 6 again gets rid of it. Good idea about the phone. I can read out the settings while you right them down. Should be much quicker

PM on its way in a minute or two.

 

[scooby do]

Had a play with your settings and are not suitable for my set. However while I only had the green gun on and tried your deflection settings I ended up with a blue whisp at the top left of the screen where I have problems with the blue tinge. How can the green gun create a blue whisp? Anyway had a play tonight and attached is my grid, dosent look as good as yours but sky sports news looks straight and square so not too fussed. Also tried removing 1 speaker and I cannot believe how much it pulls the convergence out when it is in place.

 

[bobones]

No idea about the blue tinge - very strange, but your grid is looking pretty good to me.

In what way the settings not suitable? What are your rough settings like? Those rough settings on their own would look terrible: they're basically only a starting point from a PJE init. I tried to converge my set starting from scratch and got pretty good results. Here's what I did:

o Set to DRC 50 wide PAL
o Switch off red and blue leaving green.
o PJE init - clears all fine settings to 0,0 and sets rough to some default. Green grid is now massively concave.
o Enter rough settings for green, red and blue. This pulls green grid into some semblance of correct shape, but corner areas need a fair bit of work.
o Use fine adjustments to get green grid looking square.
o Switch on red gun and converge to green. Best to start in the middle and work outward in a circle using "1" to move. Go around again this time using the dot pattern.
o Converge blue to red (or blue to green) in the same way
o Switch on all guns and fine tune.

To finish off:
Do the same (without the init) for PAL50 smart, and any other PAL 50 mode you care about.
Copy PAL 50 settings to PAL 100 and NTSC using 2 + 0. Job done.

 

[bobones]

Scooby, I had my screen off again to do a little more mucking around and when I replaced it - guess what - two little red and green blobs at the bottom of the screen that weren't there before! After panicing for a few seconds, I whipped the screen back off and quickly realised that a little piece of black tape around the sensor wires was somehow obscuring the light path - dead easy to fix. It may be your blue tinge is something similar so it's worth checking to see if there's anything loose dangling in the area of your whisp.

 

[scooby do]

Tell you what I reckon you may be onto something there as when I reuduce overscan to silly levels less than 4% it is plainly obvious and I suppose that when set to normal levels the blue whisp is only just really projecting onto the frame of the TV and perhaps bleeding slightly onto my screen. Its quite funny to look into the back of the set whilst it is switched on with the rear of the set off as you can see all your "missing picture on the bezel of the screen. Before adjusting overscan I had loads of picture on there as it was set to around 10%.

 

[scooby do]

Bobones been out the picture a bit as had a nightmare weekend with phone system upgrade that went slightly wrong at work. Anyway here's my base line settings

(green, red, blue).

CENT (-39/-002, -217/75, -76/-14)
SKEW (38/-085 or -055 cant read my writing!, 39/-51, 41/-50)
SIZE (0/-200, -50/-200, 000/-150)
LIN (015/0, 260/-003, -236/000)
KEY (X/0, X/100, X/-100)
PIN (0/237, 00/230, 0/230)
MLIN (0/X, -100/X, 100/X)
MSIZ (0/X, 100/X, 100/X)

My deflection settings are: vsize 44, vpos 36, vcomp 0, vlinear 7, hsize 39, hposition 39. compare to yours below

(green, red, blue).

CENT (-15/ 59, -20/151, -135/142)
SKEW (17/-25, 15/-20, 22/-57)
SIZE (0/-200, -48/-202, -23/-191)
LIN (0/0, 236/0, -235/-12)
KEY (X/0, X/95, X/-77)
PIN (-5/240, -12/244, -10/242)
MLIN (0/X, -143/X, 100/X)
MSIZ (0/X, 69/X, 70/X)

My deflection settings are: vsize 35, vpos 28, vcomp 0, vlinear 7, hsize 45, hposition 51. Others are at defaults.

Obviously quite a difference. Havent been brave enough to do a PJE intial and try yours just over wrote your settings onto mine and could not see much difference (if any) biggest difference was the deflection settings ended up with the blue whisp as said before and curvy edge of screen. Still getting red convergence drift, is out every day. Just tried the Auto convergence store and now get an error 11 so will have to have a play with that now. Still while the set is converged it is nothing short of awesome.

 

[bobones]

Quite a difference in our settings right enough. I got error 11 on trying to store ntsc drc50, but pal drc100 worked ok. My rough settings were completely different for ntsc so maybe copying pal to ntsc screwed it somehow. I've still got the ntsc settings written down so I could revert them, but I never use auto converge so I'm not all that bothered. My set doesn't drift much if at all - just wish I'd cleaned it and disabled svm months ago.

 

[scooby do]

I am thinking it is something to do with the change in overscan, when I try to auto converge the left and right flashing light thing is landing about an inch into the screen rather than at the edges so presume the sensor is not getting hit by the projected image. Have messed around with 69 HLE but cannot see what that does have tried a few wild guesses but to no avail. Do you know what is meant by PAL SPCB signal? Also agree that the copy settings is a God send, previously hadn't bothered with zoom mode and this was way off TV has recently been autoswitching to zoom on some CH4 material and convergence is now ok in this mode as well as DRC100 after copying out data. Well impressed with that function.

 

[bobones]

I'm guessing that PAL SPBC is some kind of signal processor they use when setting up these tvs. I don't think it's all that significant: just inputting a PAL dvd signal should suffice.

I just tried re-registerring PJE offsets for PAL and NTSC and they both worked. I didn't change anything. Before PAL 100 always worked, but NTSC50 didn't. I noticed that the pattern was hitting the edges for all sensors for both PAL and NTSC.

Your hsize and hpos are quite different to mine. I've got about 4-5% overscan on the avia pattern horizontally. Don't know if that's significant at all.

Agreed the copy function is great. I was never all that happy with zoom or 14:9 or my ntsc convergence, but they're all great now.

I am well chuffed with this tv. The colour balance seems to be excellent. I've just watched the Seabiscuit dvd (good film) and the image detail and colours were stunning. Even sitting as close as 6ft the images appeared flawless. Avia seems to suggest that no colours are pushed at all and the greyscales look pretty neutral.

My only complaint would be that the analogue pictures are dark and over saturated compared to scart inputs, but I hardly ever use analogue so I'm not particularly fussed. S-video is also awesome on this set. I've done loads of comparisons with RGB and i'll be damned if I can spot any differences. Looking at the circuit diagrams, you can see that everything is done in component internally so it's not as though this set is downconverting RGB to svideo.

I see you're thinking of going for a Tosh. I had a gander in Curry's where they had the DX44, some Tosh's and Pioneer and Panny plasmas.

The RPTVs were being fed analogue and the lighting was terrible so it was hard to make any real comparions. I did notice that the Tosh screen was much less reflective than the Sony but I thought the scanlines on the Tosh were all too apparent. There's something about the Sony screen that makes the images lush and filmic so I'm not sure I'd prefer the tosh anyway. The DX44 has so little to play with in the menus compared to the PS2 - they've definitely saved on cost by cutting down on fancy electronics.

The plasmas were being fed from dvd by component, but even so I thought they both produced artificial looking images no matter what I did with the controls. I left thinking that I'd take my PS2 over anything they had on display - no question.