BazookaBen wrote:If you're within a couple hundred miles of central NC, then you definitely need to check out http://www.Tekyard.com
PVM's out the wazoo, and they'll let you test them at your leisure.
This place just sent me an email saying they are moving and having a big sale on inventory.
Joined because of this post.
They still have some monitors available, but not for $35 dollars. I'm 2 hours from them, but shipping would have been more than the price I paid for the monitor, so pick up is preferred.
Any details about where you found them from for other fellow Torontonians?
This has probably been suggested before but if you're looking for professional monitors then my advice is to just start cold calling businesses that are mostly likely to have them. Video production and post production companies being the most obvious. A production company that is out there filming will usually have monitors that been moved around a lot while a post company will have monitors that have been stationary but no doubt have a lot of hours. My brother is an editor at a post company, they had like 15 monitors in storage doing nothing until I brought up that I wanted one. After they let me take a couple for free they were shocked at the prices they got for the rest on ebay. A lot of these places just think they're worthless and taking up space so sometimes they're just happy for someone to come and take them away. After my brother found out there was demand for them he started calling around his friends in the industry and ended up finding a bunch more. He scored a BVM-D24E1 for free among others.
There's also pro audio companies as well. All the studios doing audio for film and tv will need monitors. Outside of that you could start trying Universities and maybe even private high schools that have AV departments. You lose nothing by cold calling and might find yourself getting a crazy score for very little money and effort. It beats the stupid prices people are paying on ebay.
Any details about where you found them from for other fellow Torontonians?
This has probably been suggested before but if you're looking for professional monitors then my advice is to just start cold calling businesses that are mostly likely to have them. Video production and post production companies being the most obvious. A production company that is out there filming will usually have monitors that been moved around a lot while a post company will have monitors that have been stationary but no doubt have a lot of hours. My brother is an editor at a post company, they had like 15 monitors in storage doing nothing until I brought up that I wanted one. After they let me take a couple for free they were shocked at the prices they got for the rest on ebay. A lot of these places just think they're worthless and taking up space so sometimes they're just happy for someone to come and take them away. After my brother found out there was demand for them he started calling around his friends in the industry and ended up finding a bunch more. He scored a BVM-D24E1 for free among others.
There's also pro audio companies as well. All the studios doing audio for film and tv will need monitors. Outside of that you could start trying Universities and maybe even private high schools that have AV departments. You lose nothing by cold calling and might find yourself getting a crazy score for very little money and effort. It beats the stupid prices people are paying on ebay.
I appreciate the advice! But I've actually done all of this without much success. Was just seeing if there was any Toronto-specific tips he might have had.
I actually gave up a while ago with finding something locally that was over 14" and ended up ordering 2 20" displays from medical surplus vendors in the US. Was almost a year ago now that I ended up doing that. More expensive all at once... yes, definitely. But when you factor in all the time that I now didn't have to spend hunting (which I don't enjoy), I probably came out even, assuming you're properly assigning value to your time (time which I e.g. was not spending doing contract jobs, etc).
That's the math I've been doing in my head lately as well - buy a 20" multiformat on eBay for ~$500 or just wait to *maybe* score one locally for less. Since the chances of them appearing locally are so low (I live in a smaller area) I've been self rationalizing the price :-\
The other factor that I think people (especially people on this forum) consider is whether or not they enjoy the hunt and scoring great deals on these things. Some people clearly do, and so spending all this time searching around, calling places, etc is not such a waste of time for them.
For me it was absolutely a waste. I loathe hunting for PVM's, or other types of "highly-demand-from-retro-gamers" CRT displays. I stuck with it for longer then I should before finally coming to the conclusion that I would effectively waste far less money by just biting the bullet and taking a gamble on shipping. However, that math is obviously very specific to my own personal situation and won't be the same for everyone (I'm a software engineer with over a decade of experience and am able to charge a nice hourly rate... if I'm working and not hunting for PVMs).
EDIT: The one major downside to this approach is not having the ability to personally inspect and test the display before buying it. Definitely a con worth mentioning and emphasizing.
DoomsDave wrote:My brother is an editor at a post company, they had like 15 monitors in storage doing nothing until I brought up that I wanted one. After they let me take a couple for free they were shocked at the prices they got for the rest on ebay.
I saw. BVM-20G1A - AU$836, PVM-20M4A - AU$560. That's big money they sold for.
DoomsDave wrote:My brother is an editor at a post company, they had like 15 monitors in storage doing nothing until I brought up that I wanted one. After they let me take a couple for free they were shocked at the prices they got for the rest on ebay.
I saw. BVM-20G1A - AU$836, PVM-20M4A - AU$560. That's big money they sold for.
Yeah that was them. I got the same model BVM and a 20L5, was hoping to grab the 20M4A as well but after the BVM went for so much I didn't want to push my luck after.
DoomsDave wrote:My brother is an editor at a post company, they had like 15 monitors in storage doing nothing until I brought up that I wanted one. After they let me take a couple for free they were shocked at the prices they got for the rest on ebay.
I saw. BVM-20G1A - AU$836, PVM-20M4A - AU$560. That's big money they sold for.
I got my 20G1E (same model as 20G1A) for £150. I consider myself extremely lucky
Another suggestion for you guys is to look for non sony models. JVC and Ikegami are both fine alternatives to sony monitors. Expanding your search for older pc multisync monitors is good too but those tend to be harder to find.
DoomsDave wrote:My brother is an editor at a post company, they had like 15 monitors in storage doing nothing until I brought up that I wanted one. After they let me take a couple for free they were shocked at the prices they got for the rest on ebay.
I saw. BVM-20G1A - AU$836, PVM-20M4A - AU$560. That's big money they sold for.
I got my 20G1E (same model as 20G1A) for £150. I consider myself extremely lucky
I thought that the G1E would be same as the G1U, the G1A's going to have different rotation settings, right?
Any details about where you found them from for other fellow Torontonians?
This has probably been suggested before but if you're looking for professional monitors then my advice is to just start cold calling businesses that are mostly likely to have them. Video production and post production companies being the most obvious. A production company that is out there filming will usually have monitors that been moved around a lot while a post company will have monitors that have been stationary but no doubt have a lot of hours. My brother is an editor at a post company, they had like 15 monitors in storage doing nothing until I brought up that I wanted one. After they let me take a couple for free they were shocked at the prices they got for the rest on ebay. A lot of these places just think they're worthless and taking up space so sometimes they're just happy for someone to come and take them away. After my brother found out there was demand for them he started calling around his friends in the industry and ended up finding a bunch more. He scored a BVM-D24E1 for free among others.
There's also pro audio companies as well. All the studios doing audio for film and tv will need monitors. Outside of that you could start trying Universities and maybe even private high schools that have AV departments. You lose nothing by cold calling and might find yourself getting a crazy score for very little money and effort. It beats the stupid prices people are paying on ebay.
Pretty much what I did, and having automatic searches on classifieds. Even with that it took almost two years. Mind you some did pop up over that time period, but they were either lacking RGB, too small (8"), poor condition, or gone within 5 minutes.
In hindsight it would have probably been more worth my time to just buy a good one for $400-600 and leave it at that. I spent way too much time looking and it would have saved a lot of frustration and lost time, and I would have had it 1-2 years sooner.
Ed Oscuro wrote:
I thought that the G1E would be same as the G1U, the G1A's going to have different rotation settings, right?
no idea. I though the letter at the end (U, E, A) was just an indication of the region its from
Ed is just refereeing to the fact that it's "made" for the southern hemisphere. All of the G1s are essentially the same, he's just being very specific.
tacoguy64 wrote:Another suggestion for you guys is to look for non sony models. JVC and Ikegami are both fine alternatives to sony monitors. Expanding your search for older pc multisync monitors is good too but those tend to be harder to find.
The trouble with the JVCs is that they more often don't have the RGB input card included. That said, s-video is still pretty nice on the good ones. The other thing is that while they flew under the radar for a a time (with the huge emphasis on Sony), people seem to be wising up now. Using my own back yard as a reference point again - a TM-H150CG with RGB card fitted went for AU$220 on ebay not long ago. That's a lot for a 15" from a lesser known brand.
I been out of the hunt for less than a year now but I still check craigslist from time to time just to give people a heads up. I will admit that I have pretty much lucked out for all my monitors that I got except for the JVC which was found locally. Unfortunately it is missing the rgb card and its almost impossible to find at a reasonable cost. Even the s-video card hasnt shown up often.
BazookaBen wrote:If you're within a couple hundred miles of central NC, then you definitely need to check out http://www.Tekyard.com
PVM's out the wazoo, and they'll let you test them at your leisure.
This place just sent me an email saying they are moving and having a big sale on inventory.
Joined because of this post.
They still have some monitors available, but not for $35 dollars. I'm 2 hours from them, but shipping would have been more than the price I paid for the monitor, so pick up is preferred.
Cool, which model did you buy? I want to go back there if they ever get any 25" or larger monitors.
mvsfan wrote:Jvc isnt a lesser known brand. theyve built a ton of good electronics over the years. they are one of the more well known brands.
The context was Sony pro monitors. In that respect they are absolutely a lesser known brand.
They have some brilliant displays though. I have a TM-H150CG with RGB card, and it is stunning. 750 TVL on a 15" - it's razor sharp, and vibrant. I have 3 x PVM-20M4A, and they all look great, but quite soft in comparison. Even s-video on the 17" JVC I also have is extremely sharp compared to the Sonys.
Last edited by Sid on Sun Jun 26, 2016 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Is it me or are the eBay prices inflating steadily? I recall last year that place in Virginia selling a dozen or so BVMs in the 300-600 range and now I'm seeing them in the 600-900 range for the same models.
And regarding the JVCs, I'd personally love to get one simply because they're shadow masks which would make me more comfortable for a TATE setup.
mvsfan wrote:Jvc isnt a lesser known brand. theyve built a ton of good electronics over the years. they are one of the more well known brands.
The context was Sony pro monitors. In that respect they are absolutely a lesser known brand.
They have some brilliant displays though. I have a TM-H150CG with RGB card, and it is stunning. 750 TVL on a 15" - it's razor sharp, and vibrant. I have 3 x PVM-20M4A, and they all look great, but quite soft in comparison. Even s-video on the 17" JVC I also have is extremely sharp compared to the Sonys.
Yeah that's what i meant.And it's true. Most rgb articles or youtube videos you see will be sony related.
Lol and I wish I know what you were talking about but I can't check on my JVC because im missing an input card
There are 750 TVL JVCs with built in RGB/component- for example the BM-H1300S (13") and BM-H1300S (19"). Panasonic also has a rebadge/clone of these as well, which I believe are the BT-H1390Ys I have.
For those of you who want more of an "arcade look" you'd probably prefer the the JVC/Panasonic tri-dots over a PVM or BVM. Arguably, some games do not look as good with Sony monitors simply because they are too sharp, or lose the impact of certain effects like dithering. That being said, PVMs are probably still the all-round best choice for most consoles.
Last edited by kardus on Mon Jun 27, 2016 12:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Even though I'm pretty much set monitor-wise: I still want to find a nice native, non-multisync shadowmask monitor/tv with a good picture and not too high of a TVL count. I just love that look for 8-bit games
I ordered a JVC today. I paid more than I wanted to, but it has the RGB/component card so I'm ok with the high price. It appears that the JVC flat screen monitors are actually Aperture Grilles though.
I've also noticed that on eBay there are 5 PVM-20L4s in the Netherlands up currently for our friends in Europe.
mvsfan wrote:JVC is what you want then. they are shadow mask.
some of their TVS have a higher line count though still not multisync and still SD.
I love my AV-36S33. 800 TVL.
most of their tvs are regular line count though like your looking for.
I will say though, on larger crts a higher line count isnt nessecarily a bad thing.
yeah I don't think I'll go big with that one, I already have two huge monitors (speaking of that, I'll be getting rid of my Sony KV-36FV300 this summer, and since I probably won't find a taker... it will have to go to the dump. this absolutely friggin' breaks my heart ). Like 20" max. I'm looking for computer monitor/arcade monitor quality, so I guess that if I go the consumer TV route I'll have to get one of the best to get the quality I'm looking for (15kHz computer RGB monitors are pretty damn rare so I'm not even considering that option... unless I find a Commodore 1084 or something. And old arcade monitors can't be had either and even if I find one, I'd need to put it in a chassis of sort and that's too much work for me)
Of course I'll check out JVC RGB monitors too
vinnyguy wrote:So I got the megaview. It's a xc3717c, manufactured January 1997. The guy in charge of the auction tells me they have 4 more there and he'll let me have them outside of auction for $5 a piece, winning bid on the one I have now. I might be picking them up Tuesday. If that happens there'll be 4 of these beasts waiting for pickup in milwaukee, WI. Ill be able to let them go for $5 + w/e I'd spend in renting a trailer, gas, listening to my kids yell at me from the back of the minivan. I bet if I don't take them they'll go to auction again on public surplus so look out for that too maybe.
Holy crap dude. Are these still available? I'm in Milwaukee and am able to pick up locally.
FinalBaton wrote: I'll be getting rid of my Sony KV-36FV300 this summer, and since I probably won't find a taker... it will have to go to the dump. this absolutely friggin' breaks my heart
At least put it up for free-$15 on craigslist or something. Put "retro gaming" in the ad. I'm sure someone will take it.
). Like 20" max. I'm looking for computer monitor/arcade monitor quality, so I guess that if I go the consumer TV route I'll have to get one of the best to get the quality I'm looking for (15kHz computer RGB monitors are pretty damn rare so I'm not even considering that option... unless I find a Commodore 1084 or something. And old arcade monitors can't be had either and even if I find one, I'd need to put it in a chassis of sort and that's too much work for me)