Requesting Sony BVM-20F1U Manual / Advice

[aetherh4cker]

Greetings, board.

I just picked up a Sony BVM-20F1U and an RGB modded SNES.

First off, I was told this was a good place to ask for a user manual... so if anyone can help me with that, I'd appreciate it.

Secondly, not sure if it's my imagination, but the color seems to be warmer than I remember it twenty years ago. The guy that sold me the monitor was targeting the retro gaming crowd and made it sound like the monitor was good to go... but I'm not sure if there is some calibration I need to do. Maybe I just fail at Google, but I couldn't find any decent guides or advice for setting this thing up.

And third, the monitor emits a slight high pitch sound when it's on. Not sure if this is something that can be fixed, but I figured I'd mention it.

I have played about halfway through Donkey Kong Country so far. It is pretty fun to get these feelings of nostalgia. =)

I appreciate any help.

[Fudoh]

Manual: http://pms.hazard-city.de/Sony_BVM-20F1 ... Manual.pdf

Your average TV some 20 years ago certainly wasn't set for 6500°K, but for a much colder color temperature instead.

[Monstermug]

IIRC If you press the menu button then go to settings and then to extended menu (enter the code, default code should be 9999).

Then reset to factory defaults. This normally fixes any badly configured settings. Defaults are surprisingly good on my units. So if you have accidentally played around with the geometry controls and do not know how to straighten everything back up, restore deflection unit to factory defaults.

Then if you want to see if you need to fine tune factory defaults go to channel 091 - 098 iirc and adjust settings at will.

This should fix your color issues as well.

I was told at the editing studios that the white balance needs to be adjusted every month or so. They have this unit that plugs into the BVM that does it automatically. For retro gaming you can just use your eye to adjust white balance.

The high pitch sound at start up is absolutely normal. I get that on all my BVM 20F1Es. It's just the automatic degauss coil.

[bobrocks95]

I have read that the absolute WORST thing you could do is reset a BVM/PVM to factory default settings, since it gets rid of any calibration done at the factory to geometry, convergence, etc. Is this not accurate?

[Monstermug]

I have read that the absolute WORST thing you could do is reset a BVM/PVM to factory default settings, since it gets rid of any calibration done at the factory to geometry, convergence, etc. Is this not accurate?

This is partially true if your set has had a tube changed. Unless it was changed and re-calibrated at Sony. Factory settings on my BVM's are quite perfect

You can usually tell if you pop off the hood. There should be a sticker stating what hours it was changed at. Unless a cowboy did it. In which case it would certainly mess up the settings. Not at all detrimental, as anything on the 20F1U can be readjusted back using the OSD.

[bobrocks95]

Maybe just PVMs with fewer electrical adjustments? But then, you couldn't electrically reset a physical adjustment... This is conflicting to me lol.

[Ed Oscuro]

When you have a problem with your set, you should attempt to address that symptom specifically. A factory reset is meant to provide an emergency backup in the case that the current settings are bad or corrupt - but of course it's always possible for the stored factory settings to get corrupted or to simply be obsolete. Factory reset will not diagnose new problems, it will not respect any important tweaks done since the factory settings were stored way back when, and you might end up trying to fix a whole bunch of "new" problems introduced by reverting to old settings which are no longer helpful.

Factory reset is not meant to be a user's reset. If you are changing so many things in the factory settings that you lose track of what you've done, you need to slow down and take notes. BVMs and such aren't so complicated that you need to change a whole raft of settings just to switch from console to console; all those settings will be more user-facing, especially on the BVMs with physical geometry controls.

You should take some time to try to figure out what the problem is, and carefully test any relevant test mode / physical calibration settings to fix that specifically.

The high pitch sound at start up is absolutely normal. I get that on all my BVM 20F1Es. It's just the automatic degauss coil.

Not likely. Repair FAQ has the rundown as usual:
http://www.repairfaq.org/samnew/tvfaq/tvwhine.htm

It's probably the transformer at work. People with good hearing / younger people can often hear the ~15KHz tone generated by the deflection circuitry.

[Monstermug]

I've used the factory defaults a few times in the past when I received sets that had issues all over the place. Without knowing what each function does, it is next to impossible to resolve the issue (and there are many, many adjustments you can do with some not making any sense at all!). Even when you do know, it takes hours to fully fine tune the set.

BTW you can factory reset your other input cards as well. I bought a NTSC composite card for the BVM 20F1E and I somehow couldn't get it to work on my modified Atari 2600 no matter what settings I tried. Factory reset quickly solved this problem.

Yes I would certainly agree to use it very sparingly as who knows what corrupted files would do. (I would haphazardly guess that it would just not flash though but I ain't no Sony Technician) I've not yet heard of it occurring before but it's still a possibility. But when settings have been totally messed up beyond comprehension, it's a godsend quick fix to most problems that I have encountered. Especially for someone who doesn't have a clue on geometry etc and have difficulties in learning the fundamentals. It's pretty futile trying to guide someone who hasn't a clue on adjusting it all back tbh. I've tried. Factory reset or send the BVM to me is what it usually boils down too. 100% of the time it's a Factory reset.

The noise I hear is only at start up. Maybe the OP's problem is not degauss related after all if it's constantly on.

[Ed Oscuro]

@ aetherh4cker: Sorry for getting sidetracked. We like arguments around here. Fudoh gave excellent advice, but in case you wanted more details:

The high pitched sound seems normal. The repair FAQ link I posted earlier explains this briefly. You can always try comparing the sound to YouTube videos of different tones, though they're not guaranteed to be accurate. If it's bearable, you probably can ignore it.

Color balance is always a problem with monitors. Any number of things can change your perception of colors:
- What does the BVM's color temperature setting say? You will need to go into a user menu to change this setting; page 29 of this manual explains it. These will probably be marked as D56 or D65 and D93. D65 is 6500 degrees; D93 will be 9300K. 6500K will be more reddish and 9300K is more blue, but the color of ambient lighting (i.e., room lights) changes your perception of this.
- Did you recently get bright blue LED or CFL lights in your house? This can make things that are calibrated to the old incandescent (6500 degrees K) standard seem too "warm" / reddish, because the ambient lighting changes your perception of other light sources. Ideally, the light types should match, and you should not have to have your mental perception adjust from one to the other.
- With some connections you can also mess with the color balance directly (i.e., the "chroma" knob, though this won't work with RGB).

In short, pick either the 6500K or 9300K option, whichever is to your liking.

Finally, there are different color profiles in the NESRGB, and I don't think any of them are 100% like the original. Try different profiles to see if one looks better to you. Note this also can change from game to game.

As for other calibration stuff, there's been a lot of discussion of that. A good place to start is here. Another easy place to start is with a calibration DVD and a regular DVD player (hooking up with YPbPr shouldn't make any difference). There are some wrinkles to calibration - namely, different retro systems all will give you slightly different optimal settings, but this is mainly down to how big the picture is on the screen.

The noise I hear is only at start up.

I was answering the OP. I think the repair FAQ link I posted earlier gives good detail of this issue. Either you're just not hearing it, or your set doesn't have whine to the same degree that the OP has it. No big deal.

Looking over the OP again, this "factory reset" talk is most definitely not necessary. Warmer colors than expected aren't any reason to do a factory reset. "Issues all over the place" isn't very specific - it might easily include situations where a factory reset is necessary - but from what I've seen it's to be used as a last resort. If you are diligent with testing and tweaking, you can often fix normal problems. If you don't know how to do something yourself, there's lots of people with experience who can help, or, at the very least, give relevant advice instead of telling people to do a shotgun reset that can cause problems and might not fix anything.