Last weekend I attended a private retro gaming gathering that is hosted by a friend twice or so yearly. He has a big house out in the middle of nowhere and has a pretty sick large collection of systems an accompanying screens. I didn't do a count, buy I reckon he had at least 20 CRTs, and maybe 5-10 flatpanels, all with systems hooked up, running at the same time for people to walks around and amuse themselves with. Systems ran the gamut of consoles, 8bit all the way up to current generation systems and some commodore stuff as well. He even had the Nuon and several handhelds, rare ones too like Neo Geo Pocket and Swan, plus, a Virtual Boy! The focus was of course on the retro stuff and this was what got the most attention, it is basically retro gamer heaven whenever he chooses to do one of these, bless the man.
Everything was setup with flascarts, hdd solutions and what have you, so you basically have access to the entire library of games for any given system. This is the third year I am attending this event, and while his CRTs spans everything from large Bang & Olufsen TVs (the lions share of screens actually) to SONY PVMs and Toshiba consumer sets, there is one particular set that keeps drawing my attention.
Disclosure: The images look like hot garbage compared to seeing this beauty in person. I wasn't even trying to take pictures of the image quality, I took photos of a game I completed, as is my way.
And I am not alone, I have caught many of the other guys attending the event over the years remark how good the picture on this tiny set looks. It is simply phenomenal, I have everything from BVM's, 90's/2000's PVM's B&O TVs and Retrotink 4K at home, but this little fella, this one somehow takes the cake.
I cannot quite put my finger on why though, when you look closely at the picture there aren't even any visible gaps between the scanlines, the image looks solid but for the subpixel structure, up close it looks more like na LCD than a CRT, but when you move back the image is just so bright, vibrant, sharp and overall pleasing to the eye.
Maybe it is the small size, I am not sure how big it is actually, you can see the top of a famicom cartridge at the bottom of the photo for reference.
It bears no model number on the front, and I forgot to have a look at the back to see, a few google searches didn't help either. I reckon it must be somewhere from 9-14" inches in size, a European model with RGB SCART on the back. Prolly at some time between late 90's to mid 2000's?
Anywaste, in conclusion, if you ever get the chance to acquire this little gem, don't let the small screen and its consumer nature deter you, it just happens to host the most pleasing CRT image these eyes have ever been witness to. I haven't really seen any other small SONY trinitron sets to compare it with, so I do not if this is par for the course or not, but I have a feeling that this little unit has some special SONY magic that might be a bit unique. Because I have seen larger SONY consumer sets and they do not hold a candle.