Buying used CRT in Canada and bringing back to U.S.

[Taiyaki]

When you say color balance do you mean the color intensity? (ie not having a single color overwhelm the others in brightness intensity?)


No of course there's nothing wrong in using a colorimeter, if you have the know how and the gear it sounds like fun. It's just that it's absolutely not necessary imo. I have a friend who is a tv technician and does these things for a living, he calibrates lcd's and plasma tv's daily and his advice with high end crt's is to not bother with picture calibration by gear because the entire calibration takes around 3h of work and is generally something (although he didn't use the word he implied it->) of a placebo effect improvement for users who insist on feeling they've maxed their set, as on most crt's this almost always involves compromises somewhere and those compromises are best done on your own preferences for your intended use (and in my case, as probably is for yours, this is gaming). What he does is put up some color bars and other test patterns and tweaks them with the service menu (although he told me never gets crt customers anymore). Generally his work on crt's mostly used to involve improving focus, geometry and convergence (he claims convergence is generally the n1 priority for most people). As a result I never asked him to show me how to do color calibration by tools so I have almost no experience with it and wouldn't be of much help to you there. If you want advice and help on doing by eye calibration though I have many tips I could give you.


When I look at my games running on my FV sets and compare them to professionally calibrated LCD's running the same game, I do not see any difference noticeable enough to bother me. The colors also pop and the picture is incredible with near perfect focus, geometry and convergence on my FV300's, what more could I ask for? I believe the FV310 should be capable of no less a feat. I would really not focus on the readings of a colorimeter to ruin your experience or enjoyment is all I'm saying. If the reds are problematic to you, I would put a focus on tweaking those but I wouldn't do it with a colorimeter. If you're anything like me then it might drive you nuts seeing other parts go off charts. You might actually end up finding yourself with a more balanced picture working without one too.


grayscale is not constant you have to go back and forth with test patterns to check that they remain fairly correct too.

[Brad251]

When you say color balance do you mean the color intensity? (ie not having a single color overwhelm the others in brightness intensity?)


No of course there's nothing wrong in using a colorimeter, if you have the know how and the gear it sounds like fun. It's just that it's absolutely not necessary imo. I have a friend who is a tv technician and does these things for a living, he calibrates lcd's and plasma tv's daily and his advice with high end crt's is to not bother with picture calibration by gear because the entire calibration takes around 3h of work and is generally something (although he didn't use the word he implied it->) of a placebo effect improvement for users who insist on feeling they've maxed their set, as on most crt's this almost always involves compromises somewhere and those compromises are best done on your own preferences for your intended use (and in my case, as probably is for yours, this is gaming). What he does is put up some color bars and other test patterns and tweaks them with the service menu (although he told me never gets crt customers anymore). Generally his work on crt's mostly used to involve improving focus, geometry and convergence (he claims convergence is generally the n1 priority for most people). As a result I never asked him to show me how to do color calibration by tools so I have almost no experience with it and wouldn't be of much help to you there. If you want advice and help on doing by eye calibration though I have many tips I could give you.


When I look at my games running on my FV sets and compare them to professionally calibrated LCD's running the same game, I do not see any difference noticeable enough to bother me. The colors also pop and the picture is incredible with near perfect focus, geometry and convergence on my FV300's, what more could I ask for? I believe the FV310 should be capable of no less a feat. I would really not focus on the readings of a colorimeter to ruin your experience or enjoyment is all I'm saying. If the reds are problematic to you, I would put a focus on tweaking those but I wouldn't do it with a colorimeter. If you're anything like me then it might drive you nuts seeing other parts go off charts. You might actually end up finding yourself with a more balanced picture working without one too.


grayscale is not constant you have to go back and forth with test patterns to check that they remain fairly correct too.

Yes, with color balance I am looking to make sure no one color overpowers another. It would be interesting to know how the TV technician calibrates CRTs. I'm sure the reason it takes him 3 hours is because he has to open up the CRT to make focus and convergence adjustments. Any time you make a physical adjustment, it will likely affect something else inside the CRT and you have to go back and forth making physical adjustments. Still, it is odd that the technician doesn't use any equipment because even if you make compromises, that equipment is still going to help you; even if you make post calibration adjustments.

With the colorimeter I use, it only takes about 10 minutes to adjust the grayscale to whichever color temperature I choose. I use the colorimeter in conjunction with a free software called ColorHCFR which helps to streamline the calibration process and make it a lot easier. When I calibrate the grayscale with this software, you can see the red, green and blue levels of the TV in realtime. There is a red, a green and a blue bar on the screen and you just adjust the drive and cut controls on the TV until the bars are level at 100% while displaying a test pattern of white windows of varying intensity. This is the only thing I use the colorimeter for on the FV310. Normally, you would also use the colorimeter to adjust the individual color levels but those controls don't exist on the FV310 (they don't on most CRTs if any), so I only need to worry about adjusting the grayscale.

After doing this, it does make the picture on the FV310 seem a lot more balanced compared to the default settings. The only compromises I have had to make have been in relation to the AXNT setting. If I turn this setting off, I increase the red drive and cut controls to make up for the fact that reds are dull on my set with the AXNT setting off. If I turn the AXNT setting on then I decrease the red drive and cut controls because reds look more intense with the AXNT setting on. I have experimented adjusting the green and blue levels after calibration but that did not seem to improve anything. When I make these adjustments where I am compromising, I am not looking at the colorimeter readings. I have actually done a lot of tweaking of the drive and cut controls post calibration without looking at the colorimeter readings but just haven't been able to get a picture I am satisfied with. Generally, though, if CRT doesn't have a setting like AXNT that makes one particular color more intense, there shouldn't be many compromises that would need to be made, as long as you adjust user brightness, contrast and color before and after calibration.

If you are just trying to get the red, green and blue levels of a CRT to be equal to calibrate the grayscale then using a colorimeter is an effective way to do this. As long as your colorimeter is working, then RGB readings don't lie. If your RGB levels are balanced according to the readings then they are. At the very least, using a colorimeter gives you a good starting point to get in the general ballpark of having a balanced grayscale and then you can tweak whatever drive and cut controls you need from there to get a picture that looks balanced to your eyes.

[FinalBaton]

One thing I'm considering with my FV300, is to tweak the values of the component input.

I'm starting to think that it's not that well tuned stock.

[Taiyaki]

Yeah actually he does use the gear for his work which is 99% LCD's. Most high end LCD's can reach an optimal image with little to no compromises these days. When he deals with CRT's it's a different matter. When dealing with high end sets like XBR or the likes he warns customers that the cost outweighs the gain and that he could eyeball improve their sets in less time for close to the same results. I know that doesn't normally sound professional but I know this person and he's really sharp on dealing with focus and convergence so I would trust his judgement on other aspects of crt calibration as well (he also taught me how to properly work with permalloy strips on the tube to make minor fixes to both geometry and convergence together).


That sounds very interesting. You're lucky to have that equipment. Reading your message makes me think that the FV310 might be having an undesired side effect from the board more than the tube. My revisions on all three of my FV300's have a different red push service menu option that yours with multiple steps instead of just on and off. I wonder if there's a way around this though to still get properly balanced red outputs. I really can't imagine you can't find a proper compromise. You check on gaming forums and blogs and everyone raves about the FV310, it's generally regarded as the holy grail of consumer crt's. From my experience also the other sets I've had don't get close to this the FV3xx line. I was so happy with it that I decided to sell my BVM's at the time.


FinalBaton> Good point! I mostly play on S-video but I do have the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox hooked up via component. I wonder if the reds are any different on those (they might be!).

[Brad251]

You check on gaming forums and blogs and everyone raves about the FV310, it's generally regarded as the holy grail of consumer crt's. From my experience also the other sets I've had don't get close to this the FV3xx line. I was so happy with it that I decided to sell my BVM's at the time.

Fair enough. I will see what else I can do. Can you recommend some other forums where people could give me tips on calibrating the FV310?

[Taiyaki]

You check on gaming forums and blogs and everyone raves about the FV310, it's generally regarded as the holy grail of consumer crt's. From my experience also the other sets I've had don't get close to this the FV3xx line. I was so happy with it that I decided to sell my BVM's at the time.

Fair enough. I will see what else I can do. Can you recommend some other forums where people could give me tips on calibrating the FV310?

There were threads on CRT's at Atari Age, Neogaf, NintedoAge and some others places and always you end up hearing about the legendary FV3xx sets and read about owners raving about them, but I think right here is the best gaming related board in terms of user expertise imo. On other threads elsewhere you'll see people giving tutorials on how to access the service menu and how to tweak geometry there as advanced measures to improve picture quality. Certainly nothing as serious as you'll find here.

[FinalBaton]

You might try my thread on the FV300 calibration on here if you want, Brad. Might be worth a shot.

I went with a very low "brightness"(dark level) and a mid level "picture"(bright level) in the regular menu. The brighter colors actually had a nice glow even though they weren't set too high (because the dark colors were set super low, the bright ones were contrasting more than enough at mid-level).

I actually had a very pleasing picture. I posted some pics in that thread, as well as my settings.

[Taiyaki]

Right that's a good idea. Also Brightness is actually Contrast on crt's and Picture (or often Contrast) is brightness. Both the FV300 and FV310 have a well document issue where the sets have the factory settings of brightness noticeably low. It's easily fixed by increasing it in the service menu under subbrightness (default should be 32). I pushed up a dozen points or so. If you don't you will notice black crush in darker games, most noticeable in horror games on Dreamcast, PS2 or Gamecube (and most 3D games in general). For 2D games though low contrast can be nice, so I alternate between higher and lower by increasing it by 6~10 points or so when playing newer consoles.

[Einzelherz]

One thing I'm considering with my FV300, is to tweak the values of the component input.

I'm starting to think that it's not that well tuned stock.

Or it's 10+ years old

[FinalBaton]

One thing I'm considering with my FV300, is to tweak the values of the component input.

I'm starting to think that it's not that well tuned stock.

Or it's 10+ years old

Yeah, as I mentionned previously, maybe my set have worn out tubes