Please help me decide picking up a CRT ! HANTAREX MGG28 ?

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St4rwalker
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Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2016 7:33 am

Please help me decide picking up a CRT ! HANTAREX MGG28 ?

Post by St4rwalker »

The Hantarex MGG28, could anyone tell me, is this a arcade monitor?
I need a new CRT for tate. Have been using a B&O MX4200, not bad so far, little small, colours doesnt pop well
because of the coating from those models.

I can get this one for a reasonable price, how does it compare to a SONY PVM 2950 for example?

Thanks!
"That’s because any rare Japanese shmup transaction that doesn’t find you waking up short a kidney in a bathtub of ice, is a bargain."
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buttersoft
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Re: Please help me decide picking up a CRT ! HANTAREX MGG28

Post by buttersoft »

Not an arcade monitor but a low-end video wall monitor. Used for in-store displays or by art galleries. Basically use consumer-grade tubes, and convergence on these tends to slip out of alignment pretty easily. It comes with a case that makes it easy to tate, but it's not nearly as nice as a PVM-2950, and will probably only take composite and RGB via a DB9 plug. the DB9 RGB can be interesting - there's a guy who goes by Roxbury on the AussieArcade forums who got RGB working on one of these recently, i think. The pinout in the manuals you find is not right or something.

Also, to make them look neater and stack easier without bezels, the tubes come without the strapping and mounting brackets on the outside. I'm not sure how they mount, but it's not the same way as any regular CRT tube, if that matters to you.

If it's really cheap and nearby, I'd certainly still take a look.
St4rwalker
Posts: 154
Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2016 7:33 am

Re: Please help me decide picking up a CRT ! HANTAREX MGG28

Post by St4rwalker »

Thanks for your opinion! But, according to this

https://www.theblock.art/equipment/cust ... rex-bl-28/

The mgg28 easily takes rgb via scart(!) , also it has s v-video and 625 lines!! Thats 25 lines more than the 2950! Not so bad i think, asking 200 eur plus ship.
"That’s because any rare Japanese shmup transaction that doesn’t find you waking up short a kidney in a bathtub of ice, is a bargain."
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buttersoft
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Re: Please help me decide picking up a CRT ! HANTAREX MGG28

Post by buttersoft »

Wow, so they claim to've totally Frankenstein monstered those! Including the description, lol. So it's not a Hantarex MGG28 we're dealing with anymore, if at all. They don't say what parts are used, there's a reference to the PVM-2730 but i can't actually recognise any elements.

"Pixel width to 0.22 mm" is kinda vague. At 0.22mm real pitch on a 28" tube that thing would have nearly 1500 TVL. No one else has ever claimed specs like those, and these guys aren't even an OEM. I would guess "625 lines" refers to the capability to display 576@50i pal format + blanking interval of 49 lines = 625. It does say it can display NTSC though, so i wouldn't sweat that part. But where does the tube come from? It's not aperture grille/Sony. And the fact that image is showing definite moire patterns would seem to indicate it has the stripe pitch of a consumer tube like the original Hantarex would have. That's more like 0.9mm, which gives you 300-350TVL at 28". If you blow up the image up you can see that it does, or has a variable pitch that's finer at the centre, but i've never heard of that on a 4:3 tube.

Overall it looks a more interesting than a regular MGG28, assuming you're sure you're dealing with a The Block MGG 28" and not an original Hantarex one. It's not going to be easy to say what the monitor is like. Take a good look at the stripe pitch of some consumer CRT TV's first, get right up close when one is powered-down and look at how closely the R/G/B lines are spaced. Then go and look at this one if you like. If the stripes are noticeably closer together then it's probably worth powering it up and seeing how it looks.

It's a guess at this distance, but IMO probably: original Hantarex < Frankenstein < Barco.

EDIT: I should probably add that there are consumer tubes and arcade tubes of that same pitch that look great. Nanao monitors with Toshiba tubes look amazing. Loewe Calidas and their Philips trueblack tubes, i think they are, are great too. And many others. But these Hantarex sets and the like were manufactured on a comparatively small scale to sell to art galleries and for video walls and the like. It would have cost too much for high quality parts and proper engineering control. A lot of them have now drifted out of spec, the convergence is off, the focus blurry, stuff like that. This one has been refurbed or rejigged, but how long with that last? I've never had the chance to get inside one and find out if it's all a simple fix or if they're as cheaply made as they seem. It might well be the former. But for all we know they re-used the tube from a Hantarex MGG28, got a universal chassis from Aliexpress and added a SCART socket, though that would seem a little measly.
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