Sony BVM New monitor, already a problem

[retrogamingjohnny]

Today the Sony BVM 20F1U that I recently bought arrived. The image will slowly become thinner on the sides then powers off at about 5 minutes every time. The over load light lights up. At first I thought it is the power cord that I am using, but it probably isn't. It is a 10A 125v cord (typical PC cord), the same listed on the manual. I just want to make sure the monitor is faulty before I request a refund from the seller. Can someone confirm whether the monitor is faulty or there's something I am missing something.

[Some1]

This might be a silly suggeston, but try doing a factory reset of the monitor and the power supply itself. (it's in EXTEND (you need a code, if you don't have it try 0000, 1111 or 9999)).

But, if this turns out to be a problem with the actual hardware... Sorry, I wouldn't know how to help.

[retrogamingjohnny]

I found out the problem. The monitor works, but partially. It cannot display at full screen, most the time. Certain games and movies oddly display a larger image so that fills the screen, but most games have the sides cut off. The image has to be displayed smaller than the actual screen of the tv, sort of like when you watch a widescreen dvd on your standard tv, but with the black stripes on the left and right sides. When I try to maximize the image, it causes the monitor to overload and shut off. Upon contacting Sony, one of the technicians said that the CRT is too old being approximately 8 years of usage hours, thus can't handle the voltages. Basically the CRT has to be replaced if it were to be fixed. I contacted the seller, and he was nice enough to refund me the purchase and let me keep it. Since then I purchased a Sony BVM 20E1U, which works perfectly. Having two CRTs is perfect since vertical arcade games require the to flip the monitor and there's no other way to do this other than having certain arcade monitor. I just have to use with the smaller screen size.

[darcagn]

While 8 years of usage time might seem like a lot (8 years * 24 hours * 365 days = 70,080 hours), BVMs are known to last a lot longer than that. So that sounds like an excuse to me, but not an unexpected response given how old the product is and it's likely out of support (I dunno how long the support period is for these CRT BVMs).

However I don't know myself how to fix that and it could be something that can't be fixed...

[Ed Oscuro]

Everything mentioned in this thread is just "by the averages." Maybe the set worked fine but got dropped too many times in shipment (I'm becoming paranoid about this lately, especially after noticing all the small cracks to the plastic parts in my 20L5). Maybe some replaceable components need to be changed over. "The CRT is old" may well be true, but I have to wonder whether CRT rejuvenation might not help here. Without actually inspecting the interior you'll never know.

[retrogamingjohnny]

Everything mentioned in this thread is just "by the averages." Maybe the set worked fine but got dropped too many times in shipment (I'm becoming paranoid about this lately, especially after noticing all the small cracks to the plastic parts in my 20L5). Maybe some replaceable components need to be changed over. "The CRT is old" may well be true, but I have to wonder whether CRT rejuvenation might not help here. Without actually inspecting the interior you'll never know.

Now that you mention it, I forgot about this footage that my surveillance cam recorded. You can see in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvEwBUUJU9U that the deliverer dropped the monitor a step high on purpose. In the video description I said it's a 75lb monitor, although I'm sure the exact weight, but that's pretty close I guess. The monitor was very well packed with a lot of cushion inside. Whether that drop caused the damage, I don't know. And remember, that is only what my cam captured. Who knows how many times it was dropped from the time it was picked. Funny thing is, it didn't even occur to me to check the recordings to see if there was anything wrong with the delivery 'cause I was so caught up with the situation. I didn't publish the video at the time 'cause this guy delivered my packages a few times and I was worried he'd do something to my deliveries in the future.

[Zets13]

Does your monitor have overscan/underscan settings?

[retrogamingjohnny]

Does your monitor have overscan/underscan settings?

Yes. I tried that already. No matter what settings is used, if the screen is stretched to the max, the monitor will overload and automatically shuts off. The only way to avoid that is by setting the screen size smaller, thus having black borders. Horizontal size can't go much above 90. It's not too bad, just loosing about 1"-2" screen size depending on the game. I have a BVM 20E1U that does not have this problem. I am going to use this for vertical games.

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't know much about TV/monitor troubleshooting, but this does bring to mind voltage protection circuitry. It could just be that something is trying to drive voltages too high / low and that is causing the automatic shutoff. In fact, in consumer TVs this can sometimes just be the fault of bad pins on one of the ICs, and could be jumpered.

About the delivery guy, I would definitely call them up and voice my displeasure with the item being dropped. Though, in these "industrial environments" it probably doesn't mean squat if you protest. They will still end up handling things roughly just to get everything down the line.

[andy251203]

Have you tried reducing the contrast and brightness at all? CRT phosphors do age over time which can give you a darker picture. If you crank up the contrast and brightness to compensate for this, you could get overload protection kicking in. If the monitor constantly displayed bright images throughout its lifetime the CRT will have aged faster.

The culprit could also be old capacitors. I've spoken with a former Sony technician about BVMs in the past and he told me the #1 fault he saw in the field is faulty capacitors. Keep in mind that even the highest quality electrolytic capacitors are only rated to last about 10000 hours at maximum load and temperature, and best case scenario they are expected to last around 80000 hours on a normal load. These monitors are now beginning to approach 10 years of age and we typically see around 80000 hours of use on the clock. We can start to expect some capacitors to fail at this time.

I have a BVM-20F1U that is also having the overload issue. I plan to troubleshoot it soon. Perhaps swap deflection boards with a good BVM to see if the problem goes away.

[Ed Oscuro]

The culprit could also be old capacitors. I've spoken with a former Sony technician about BVMs in the past and he told me the #1 fault he saw in the field is faulty capacitors. Keep in mind that even the highest quality electrolytic capacitors are only rated to last about 10000 hours at maximum load and temperature, and best case scenario they are expected to last around 80000 hours on a normal load. These monitors are now beginning to approach 10 years of age and we typically see around 80000 hours of use on the clock. We can start to expect some capacitors to fail at this time.

Additionally, capacitors age somewhat even when not in use, and capacitors that have been used can lose their conditioning if they're left in an unused device for a long time, making them fail quickly when they are suddenly pumped back up to their full current (on tube televisions using a varistor helps avoid this, but it's not so easy to supply low voltage to an undercurrent protected device like the BVMs seem to be).

[retrogamingjohnny]

Have you tried reducing the contrast and brightness at all?

Yes tried already. Didn't do anything.

The culprit could also be old capacitors. I've spoken with a former Sony technician about BVMs in the past and he told me the #1 fault he saw in the field is faulty capacitors. Keep in mind that even the highest quality electrolytic capacitors are only rated to last about 10000 hours at maximum load and temperature, and best case scenario they are expected to last around 80000 hours on a normal load. These monitors are now beginning to approach 10 years of age and we typically see around 80000 hours of use on the clock. We can start to expect some capacitors to fail at this time.

I think I'll check the caps some time in the future.