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I'm asking because I"m looking for another consumer CRT and want to try to get one with durable parts inside of it. I am referring mainly to the cheapening of components used in consumer CRTs such as capacitors, etc. I'm guessing it was around 2000 when consumer CRTs started being made with a silver chassis but was it earlier or is there an exact year? Would I be better off looking for a consumer CRT made in maybe '97-'99 because the internal components might be better and less likely to fail. Are there specific SD CRT models from the early - mid 2000s that are made with better components. I ask this because I have been through a number of Sony and JVC tvs from the early - mid 2000s and they all had issues with either being too dim or too bright and I suspect poor quality capacitors and other parts had something to do with it.

A lot of early 2000s consumer Sony Trinitrons were made in Mexico.

Recently I've seen a handful comments stating that random brand CRTs sold when CRT really started losing market share to LCD (around 2006-2008 I suppose) were actually some of the best consumer CRTs ever made, with very precise digital geometry controls with cheaper more advanced boards available at the time.

I had one that would fit that description, bought at a best buy in 08, and still didn't look as good to me as a trinitron I got off craigslist some time later. Back then I didn't have the same level of quality discernment though.

Fernan, what are some of the brands of those random brand CRTs?

Sorry, I have no idea about the brand names.

CRT's by reputable brands never really declined in my opinion. On the whole they were better and better made as time went by. The only complain some people have with silver cases were that they felt cheap, but the insides were generally always cutting edge using most recent components available.

The reason the cutoff point for many of us is around 2005 is mostly because this is when they started moving into widescreen or hd formats for consumer crt's, which is generally not desirable for standard def gaming.

If you live in the US some of the finest consumer crt's would be any of the FS or FV Sony Wega's, the Toshiba AF line or the very last Panasonic tv's, all of these were aperture grille standard def with amazing picture quality and generally the most recent components you can hope for. I've gone over many tv's before I ended up settling on the FV300, which is generally a 2003-2004 tv. The FV310 is the same but with a high voltage regulator, which personally I wasn't a fan of because it gives a hybrid pro monitor feel to the tv without blooming. Still can't go wrong with either of those, they are the last two non hd/fine pitch crt's Sony made.

If you go for Toshiba keep in mind one of the last models (please check it's either the AF42 or AF44 iirc) had a forced edge sharpening feature that can't be disabled in the menus which is a bummer for gaming).

The description sounds like some of the last XBR Sony models, problem with those is they were widescreen and high definition. In terms of onboard controls I believe they had the most of any consumer tube, and from what I read they even had convergence settings in the menus like a bvm.

Best 19"/48cm tubes i have are Mitsubishi ones from like 1982 that were made to pair with Nanao chassis, or cheapo Samsung ones from like 2004 and up.


Yup. Not as detailed as a projector goes, but still very, very nice controls. Sony's super fine pitch consumer stuff was awesome.

What makes the cheaper Samsung TVs from 2004 and up good?

I agree that as far as the technology in the TVs, they did get better with time. I am really talking more about things like capacitors, the power supply, etc. Having researched this stuff for the past few years, it seems like people experience more issues with the more modern, silver chassis CRTs vs CRTs manufactured prior to that. Having gone through 5-6 silver chassis CRTs myself, including a 24" FV300 that I own, they have all had issues. Several have had black crush and that can be the result of failing capacitors. The others had a picture that was too bright and that can be a problem with the transformer in the TV. I owned two CRTs that my parents bought in the early 90s. One was a Hitachi and the other was a Toshiba. I owned them both for 14 years and neither of them had any issues at all. Growing up in the 90s, CRT issues didn't seem that common. The more recent CRTs I have owned were maybe 10-12 years old.

Another thing is that the quality of electronics in general has gone down over the last 20 years because everything is being manufactured in China and Mexico. Various technicians on a few electronics repair forums that I visit have claimed that manufacturers started using cheaper capacitors made in Mexico and China in the 2000s to save money. They said they noticed this based on their own experience repairing their customers' electronics.

I agree too. CRT tech got better over time, not worse. The absolute pinacle of CRT displays was the Sony G90 (projector) - the last one they made.

There were cheap and poor quality CRT's made and sold throughout the life of the tech. Just like with modern flatscreens, you can buy a top of the line $20,000 OLED or spend $200 for a TV from Walmart.

If you are based in America then you will probably want a later model as they had component video.

If you are based in Europe, any Sony Trinitron with a scart port is worth picking up, as are higher end models from Toshiba, Panasonic and Sharp.

I prefer the cylindrical Sony screens but tbh the later flat ones are great too. Just a different look (the later one have more TVL and less blooming in general)

I'm all over the mid '80s to late '90s Trinitron. that's my jam

If you're referring to their shallow, short tubes, nothing does. They have convergence and landing problems too complex for magnets or their drive electronics. Test patterns in a single channel of red, green, or blue will show how badly they handle a beam spot.

I wouldn't over think on the components part. I've often seen people recommend to me that I should check the capacitors for issue x, and I have yet to find a case where that resolved it. When something is wrong with a cap you will know it. Odd behaviors like abnormal flickering, lines appearing on screen, edges curling, contrast (aka brightness) being dead off (and I'm not talking about slight black crush, which is generally adjustable in service menu range increments) and more might indicate a capacitor issue I believe (and again I hope others with more experience with such issues will add to this).

You have to keep in mind most crt tv's have their own quirks. For example you mention black crush, just so you know every single late Sony (and I believe Toshiba had the same thing) launched with below standard brightness levels (what we would now call contrast but in reverse, so requiring a push upwards). I have come accross multiple brand new in box FD Trinitrons (including FV300) and they exhibited the exact same behavior at the exact same degree too (basically more or less optimal at full brightness, or increasing sub brightness to a certain degree so that one can have some flexibility).

As for how they age, it might also depend on room condition, usage etc. For example maybe the tv's you got from your parents were well cared for, maybe they were in a temperature controlled environment (properly but not overly heated in winter, nicely cooled in summer etc). Maybe some other tv you picked up had the previous owner use it in a kitchen, or maybe it was leaning next to a steam radiator. Maybe you used it 2~3h a day, maybe some you picked up were used by an entire family with the house lady leaving it in throughout the day and the children in the evening. These things matter of course.

As for where the tv is made I don't think it matters much. For the North American market they moved a lot of the manufacturing to Mexico but the parts themselves are generally still from Japan for a lot of the Japanese tubes in my experience. I think the only time I really noticed a downgrade on quality (not just in tv's but electronics in general) was around the 2010~2014 era. I think the recession did force a lot of manufacturers to compromise quality, but I find in recent years the trend is returning to quality parts, at least that's the impression I'm getting.

I'm not overthinking the components aspect. I understand that there are various aspects at play affecting the picture but even after adjusting regular menu setttings, service menu settings and the G2 knob on the back of the sets, in most cases, doing his did nothing to help a picture that was too dark or too bright. If it were simply a quirk with the TV, adjusting these things should have fixed it but it didn't so the obvious culprit is a bad component in the set. I have been researching this stuff for a long time and based on the countless CRT/CRT repair forums and threads and articles I have read through, bad capacitors and flyback transformers can and do sometimes cause issues like black crush and an overly bright picture. I have owned four late model Trinitrons (2003 kv-24fs120, 2006 kv-27fs120, 2003 kv-27fv310 and 2002 kv-24fv300) and the 27fs120 and 27fv310 did not have below standard brightness levels so not every late model Trinitron had sub standard brightness levels by default. The 24fs120 and 24fv300 did. Adjusting both the service menu and regular menu settings did improve the black crush on the fv300 but there is still some black crush left. Adjusting these same settings on the 24fs120 did nothing. At the very least, on the 24fs120, this indicates to me that there must have been some problem with an internal component of adjusting the regular and service menu settings did nothing. I even adjusted the screen (G2) knob on the back of these sets and it did nothing. I also owned a 2003 27" JVC D-Series CRT with the same black crush problems and I adjusted the same things on that set and it did nothing. Again, I suspect that faulty components were at play. Same thing with the two JVC I'Art sets I owned that were way too bright.

When you had checked the capacitors on your CRTs to see if they were causing an issue, did you actually replace the capacitors to see if that would fix the problem? We should also address that the "brightness" and "contrast" settings on CRTs were never reversed. They adjusted the same things on a CRT that they do on an LCD. More specifically, brightness has always controlled black level and contrast has always controlled white level. The brightness output of a TV still depends mostly on the contrast setting and the black level can still only be adjusted with the brightness control. I have measured this on both CRTs and LCDs numerous times using a colorimeter and on both, the contrast setting is what affects the light output measurement the most. The brightness setting also affects the light output from the screen on both but not nearly as much and is still mostly used for adjusting the black level. I don't understand why you ever thought that brightness and contrast were reversed.

I do understand that storage conditions affect how the TV ages but just based on personal experience with my own CRTs and those of friends and family, issues that are prevalent in silver chassis CRTs didn't seem as prevalent in older CRTs. My personal belief is that this is because older CRTs used better components. I'm not saying all silver chassis CRTs had bad components, just that many models probably did and if they cheapened capacitor quality and power supply quality then that would absolutely cause more problems in a shorter period of time compared to older sets. A good comparison would be audio gear. In general, receivers and amplifiers produced before 2000 were of much higher quality and that is because they had better internal components. I will also note that with the two CRTs I owned for 14 years, they were not in perfect storage conditions. In the first half of their life they were in very good storage conditions but in the last half they were both in various dorms I lived in that were often way too warm.

FinalBaton, why do you prefer the older Trinitrons? Do you think the older Trinitrons were made with better components and less likely to fail?

Nostalgia. Curved tube. Appearance/feel of pixels...

Around 2000 approx there were issues with a number of component suppliers I think particularly Taiwanese capacitors which led to a general perception that all electronics of that era were sub par. Ironically, just when that was getting recognised and sorted around 2005/6 everyone struggled with the first gen or 2 of lead free solder products... Along with significant hardware power/heat hikes that's the prime culprit for numerous issues amongst laptops and the 360/ps3 launch designs around then...

As far as crts go... Flat to tubes were more style over performance... Costs were often generally cut on physical sturdiness... But basically if it's still operating ok now chances are it's components were just fine.

It's 15-30 years... It'd have cropped out by now if there was something bad about it. These days if you've found a screen you like just pick it. Or walk away.

Brad> Of course I checked all capacitors, there was no need to replace any as they all had perfect readings. I have seen bad capacitors before on older tv's but never on these silver case Trinitrons. When there's a problem you either get a bad reading or you can visually see it (talking about experience with older tv's). The kind of issues I've seen were more apparent and clearly not a setting issue, generally weird behaviors or picture fluctuations (stuff like brightness fluctuating or a geometrical fold that is normally impossible to achieve manually) that's how I knew there was a problem. I too have been through countless models and types on the silver case Trinitrons. I have seen all sorts of geometrical, convergence and focus issues on the tubes that had more wear but these were tube related or setting related (could be fixed up somewhat post calibration). Ironically i have had a capacitor problem on a BVM though, and those were using incredibly modern parts for the time, but to be fair they were probably running 24/7 in some tough environment so maybe it's not too surprising.

I understand where that notion (newer tv's weren't made as well as older ones) may come from but it's just not accurate. I have never thought that components on crt's were ever bad to be honest. I have seen many 80's tv's still running fine, but I have also never seen any issues with silver chassis Sony tv either (not saying your tv's don't have issues perhaps, just that it's not going to help you any better to go with older tubes imo). What happens now a days is many gamers swarm back to crt's with experience and expectations they have developed with modern digital technologies and then find imperfections they never noticed (and it doesn't help in our minds when we think that we're dealing with decades old used tv's), but this is how these analog tv's worked, they were never perfect to begin with, just that we never noticed before and we never questioned or took issue with basic imperfections they had because it was all we had and all we knew.

I'm surprised about your 27 inch ones but generally there's documentation online to show these tv's launched with sub par brightness setting, if you go on online reviews for these tubes it was documented even back in 2003~2004 by users who had that as their main complaint for these tv's. For the two 27 inch you have maybe they were already refurbished or calibrated to adjust and compensate. Once adjusted you should be able to achieve ideal brightness and no longer have any black crush.

EDIT Here's one example (check the review date):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-revi ... B000066HOC

I detest touching the G2, it's the worst setting to work with in my experience, I have never made the picture on a Trinitron better adjusting the G2, I always made it worse and had to find the sweet spot again, generally you end up with retrace lines from a bad adjustment and I never improved blacks with it so I think it's one of those things I prefer leaving alone unless I feel there's an issue.

Brightness and contrast on crt's were reversed actually compared to what most manufactures uses these terms for now a days, but I see your point. You can read more about it here if you are interested:
https://poynton.ca/notes/brightness_and ... index.html
The brightness on Trinitron tubes for example do not increase overall light output, picture does this on Sony tv's. On a modern tv often times brightness does what picture did on those crt's.

Since I can't see your tubes in person I can't say for sure you don't have a technical problem, but I wouldn't necessarily blame the capacitors is all. Flyback transformer failure is possible. I haven't had any problems myself but that is something I have heard of happening before. If you ae not able to get contrast to reach proper levels then maybe there is a problem. The only games I found black crush on were PS2 titles and Gamecube (most noticeably on horror titles which are darker), I found increasing the brightness 3 to 5 points up solved it, but it needed to be decreased for all other systems or the picture was not as even. I think sometimes it depends on the source too so there's no perfect setting for all sources imo.

Not sure what happened with the tube you had where the image was too bright. I had that on a Toshiba once were the black crush was so deadly I had to increase the global brightness or picture to a really high setting to see things properly and then it looked dull. That tv felt too far gone (had other issues) so I didn't bother working on it further.

All this to say, crt's have different personalities in a way. They will almost all have quirks that will need addressing, and in the end you only get the picture as close as possible to perfect. I wouldn't use the kind of equipment you are using such as colorimeter or you are bound to never be happy with a consumer tv in my opinion. Just settle on the tv that gives you the nicest picture, and it might be a tv different from others as this is a subjective matter ultimately. In the end it's all about compromises and personal preferences.

Do you remember which model Toshiba it was? I have the opportunity to pick up a Toshiba 24AF45 tomorrow and it apparently was only used for 5 years in a bedroom. I figure based on what I was told about how they used the set, it has maybe 3,000 - 5,000 hours of use if it was used almost every day for about 2-3 hours a day for 5 years. If may have been used even less; I'm guessing somewhat. I noticed in the service manual for this set that it uses lead free solder in it and that concerns about about the TVs longevity and potential for running into problems. I know that Joe from Game Sack uses the Toshiba AF45 TV and it looks like Coury from My Life in Gaming does as well and I haven't heard them complain about it. I want to try something different than a Trinitron because I want a shadow mask set and other than Toshiba and maybe the JVC D-series, I'm not sure what to go with. I know the Toshibas have that scan velocity modulation that you can't turn off but apparently there is a velocity modulation board inside the Toshiba CRTs that you can disconnect as one person on Kijiji told me they did this on their Toshiba that they are selling on there and it fixed the sharpness problem.

I've never had an AF45, I think I've had AF42/ AF43, the one with the poor picture was a AF42 maybe?

I forgot that those have invar tubes and not aperture grille. It's one of those cases where they blurred the lines. I'm not a huge fan because it sort of felt like it had the flaws of both technologies. Geometry would require a lot of tweaking for the corners like aperture grilles but the picture intensity and colors were not as vivid and colorful and resembled more so that of a shadow mask, the good thing is they are flat. Again just my preference anyway.

Even if it had more than that, if you can find a tube under 10k~20k hours you're in really good shape.

By the way if you like try finding the oldest messages I posted when joining shmups and you'll see I kind of went through the same thing you did. At the time I was entering the pro monitor scene for the first time having had no experience with them. I moved to LCD's in 2006 and I had left crt's completely by 2008. I came back to crt's in early 2014, started with BVM's and PVM's before going to consumer tubes. If you read some of the stuff it should be quite funny in retrospect. At the BVM stage I was expecting perfection and I was greeted with a rolling geometrical anomaly that occurred on the left side iirc (when scrolling left/right it would look like the picture was moving over an object underneath). When I asked for help I got the same thing you got, on multiple forums I was advised it was likely a capacitor or flyback problem and that I should recap / fix.

I ended up hiring multiple professionals to examine the tube (this was almost 5 years ago so it was still possible, probably harder now). None could find any issue with any of the components, they checked all components including all chips on all boards. One person said it could be a video anomaly so I stuck hard to that belief and bought a second bvm. Turned out it had the exact same issue in the exact same location. After taking videos and showing people other BVM owners admitted to having that issue, while pvm owners admitted noticing this on the vertical scrolling up and down. Surely enough all pvm's I've seen also had these geometrical imperfections. In my experience since then, as a general rule of thumb, if two tv's of the same model have the exact same behavior there's an extremely high chance that it is normal.

I was also unsure because I was now used to the look of lcd/plasma's and so this oddities would never have occurred to me before because I had never seen a truly perfect image free of convergence issues or geometrical imperfections. At this point when something looks or feels off when you're unsure it's easy to blame the hardware and assume something is wrong, and you tend to "look" for something wrong. The other mistake I did was using measuring tape on the test patterns for geometry, that stuff can drive one crazy as it is factually impossible to get perfect geometry inside the picture. The best one can hope for is near perfect geometry on the outer edges and corners since those are the imperfections that stand out most (but again probably best to not use a ruler on them, for sanity's sake). On pro monitors this is fairly easy to achieve, while on consumer tv's you very likely will have to work on the inside (more so for aperture grille tubes), either learning the work on the rings or using permalloy strips (my preferred method). Both are high risk and it's best to have assistance while doing it (preferably with someone who has done it before).

All consumer tubes I went through had oddities. For example I found a fantastic Panasonic tube but it couldn't reproduce reds properly, they had a bit of a pinkish hue. I found Toshiba tubes had a lack of impact although there was nothing inherently wrong with them, they could have worked but I liked the look on the Sony FS tubes more. Also that Toshiba had a similar geometrical rolling thing on the very right side which to me was the worst place of all since in any left to right scrolling game you look ahead so to the right and that imperfection was constantly in sight (from my experience with pro monitors I now knew this wasn't going to be fixable no matter what).

Basically you have to adjust expectations with crt's otherwise you're on a wild goose chase after something that doesn't exist and never did. Just find a tube you are happy with that has the least noticeable imperfections, also learn not to focus on them but instead appreciate the technology and what was achieved at a time where this was the best we had.

Youtubers may show their crt's and make things worse on people's expectations, but I can guarantee you if I could examine their tubes in person I would spot the imperfections too lol.

Also for your own sake I would drop the colorimeter, I'm pretty sure it would drive me insane if I used one of those. I can guarantee you will have to compromise along the way, and if you begin by getting one adjustment right you're probably pushing all the others too far off. I calibrate by eye and have always found a sweet spot where everything looks and feels close enough to perfect and provides a great picture. Some tubes have biases, even the Sony tubes have a bit of a red push. I think it was more pronounced on the FV310 and apparently on larger FV300's but I am not bothered by it and still love the picture. I like the idea of shadow mask tubes, feels nostalgic, but the brightness is always much weaker, colors are less vibrant and the image is generally less sharp (except for texts which tend to be sharper). In the end it's all subjective.

Taiyaki you described very well why I have such a love-hate relationship with CRTs. Until (if ever) the right tech comes along that offers all of the pros and none of the cons, it will have to be one of those can't live with them can't live without them kind of thing. But once that happens I'd have no nostalgic remorse to see them all dumped into compactors, except for the best models preserved in tech museums.

Older models usually had a pitch that was more appropriate for 240p gaming. The later models, particularly with brands like Sony, got into the "super fine pitch" advertising. It can make old games look blocky and less authentic.

If the primary goal is to make games look exactly like they did in the arcades, it's best to buy an old curved screen arcade monitor.

I would look for a higher end model with the features you want. Most people didn't put great tv's in their bedroom.

The FS and FV models were the only late Sony consumer tv’s that were not hi scan or fine pitch which is why you never hear about the HS models, XBR and so forth from gamers.

To be honest over the years these imperfections have grown on me. On an LCD some of those crt shaders are pretty well done even emulating blooming, but I feel the dead give away that this is not a crt is the lack of geometrical warping when scrolling. lol

And the lack of unsightly black bars at the side of the screen as very few decent size 4:3 LCD panels were ever made.

Black bars on the top and bottom are more distracting than black bars on the sides.

I find them more habitual on the top and bottom since as far back as I can remember this was often put to use by game developers in cutscenes, even going back to the 8 bit era. However you'd never see black bars on the sides in most situations other than it being due to the 4x3 ratio of the previous format being in use.

I checked out the Toshiba 24AF45 CRT that I was thinking of getting but didn't take it home. This Toshiba set does have a very sharp picture and the colors are more subdued than an aperture grille set but still decent. The 24AF45 does have very high red push; higher than on the 2000s Trinitrons. Black levels were good but like many flat screen CRTs from the 2000s that I have dealt with, this one was way to bright and changing the regular menu and service menu settings didn't do that much. The image being output from this TV just hurt my eyes. If it wasn't for the overly bright image, I would have taken it. The geometry of the set was at least decent. I tested the set using 240p suite over component and played a bunch of 240p games over retroarch on my Wii. The family that was selling the TV actually connected their original NES to it with Duck Hunt for me to test it and that actually worked out really well because they didn't know how to get the zapper to work, so I showed them, and their two kids got to play Duck Hunt for the first time. That may have even been the first time those kids used a CRT. It was a cool experience and I think that was an experience those kids will remember.

Taiyaki, I do understand what you are saying about lowering expectations with CRTs. I can tolerate slightly imperfect geometry and slightly inaccurate colors but I can't tolerate a CRT that is so bright that it hurts my eyes and it is hard to tolerate black crush because it just kills detail in games with darker palettes. We are used to perfect images with LCDs but I wouldn't say that explains every issue I've had with a CRT. An overly bright picture to the point where it hurt my eyes was not something I often experienced on a CRT growing up and if I did, it was because someone set the contrast too high on a set. I notice black crush because it kills the detail in games that I had always seen on CRTs growing up. As far as the overly bright problem, my opinion is that it probably does have something to do with a faulty component in the TV and it could be the flyback transformer. Gray117 made an important point that many electronics in the 2000s used lead free solder and the 24AF45 was made with lead free solder as Toshiba says so in the service manual. Lead free solder is not as reliable as lead solder and is more likely to cause problems with any electronics it is used on. This could explain some or many of the issues I have experienced with 2000s flat screen CRTs and why 90s CRTs, in my experience, didn't seem to have as many issues.

I'll keep my FV300 for now but I am getting burned out in the CRT hunt. I also don't like the space a CRT takes up. I will probably wind up getting rid of my FV300 in the near future and just having a large LCD to game on. This isn't really a bad thing. I like gaming on big screens and when I get my 4K TV this year, maybe I will be happy enough with emulation shaders. Sometimes keeping things simple is better and my time is limited anyway.

Well you could try and resolder everything, clean up the existing soldering points and apply lead solder (or hire any technician to do this). I really don't think there will be any difference but you never know.

Was the brightness too bright even when you reduce the picture levels? On the Sony Trinitrons I bought out of box the brightness also seemed too bright (at the middle range) and I reduced them somewhere between 25% and 45% for an optimal picture. In the case of these tubes you found it could just mean they haven't had much wear perhaps?

Aperture grille tubes are generally brighter so if you're sensitive to that and the settings don't allow to lower it sufficiently maybe shadow masks will work better for you after all (that Toshiba is an invar so it gets the increased brightness levels of aperture grille tubes possibly).

It sounds like you've really been having a rough time around crt's. What was the problem with the FV310 again? You're the first person I ever hear of that has had both the FV300 and FV310 and not found happiness with at least one of them.