Sony Windas
n00b
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2007
- Messages
- 20
I have mine that I just took off today....you can have it..and I would love to know where I can buy a new one if you happen to know that.
The closest I've come to finding a new Sony anti glare coating was a reference in AVS forums about a coating being sold on Sony Parts for a CRT TV. Unfortunately, I don't have a Sony Service account, so I couldn't verify. Anyone who does have such an account could give us an update on what parts are still in stock.
However, 3M , and likely others, have anti glare coatings with even less reflection. There seem to be two popular grades, 95% glare reduction, and 99%. I've seen an evaluation by the military of the FW900, stating 5% or so reflectance, so I"m guessing its of the 95% grade, but I'm not sure about what these numbers really mean.I picked this up by reading marketing literature though. In reality, it differs according to the wavelength of the incident light. This is why faint reflections off the coating take on a purple/red appearance.
The transmittance of these anti glare coatings is 93%! Of course, ambient light goes right through and back from off the phosphors, ruining black level. At least, in a dark room, it'd keep your face from reflecting as glare.
I guess you didn't read my post then!
4000 posts, took me hours to read through it once about a year ago (3000 some then).
Sorry about the AR coating. I just took mine off last week and tossed it in the ca. It appeared to be a tint to the plastic and a sprayed on coating. I tried removing the sprayed on portion with isopropyl alcohol but was too much work to get it all off. It was kinda black like graphite. This left over a heavily tinted piece of plastic sheet. I could turn my brightness way down after taking if off. It is highly receptable to reflections now. I may add a 3m film again in the future without the tint in it. I did this on my NAV system screen in my car and it works great. However, if I don't have to I won't. The screen is even more magnificent with the coating off. Razer sharp and BRIGHT!! Colors more vivid, etc.
I've actually heard isopropyl alcohol is supposed to be safe on the hard coat films.At least I hope so, as I've recently been using it. It doesn't bead up the way water does, it dries quickly, but it leaves streaks if it's not dried quickly with a cloth. I wildly guessed the hard coat is polycarbonate, on Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate) isopropyl is listed as safe, along with other substances that sound really dangerous. Ammonia was listed as bad, so it fits the common knowledge of Windex making faint streaks in anti glare coatings.
On a monitor with a few deep chunks of anti glare coating scrapped out of it in the corner, I tried a 'super glue' ( cyanoacrylate) repair. It dried remarkably clear, indistinguishable from the original plastic by eye. Unfortunately, it didn't dry just flat, so I went at it with plastic polish. I observed the same as you. It is a 'sprayed on' coating, incredibly thin, almost like a fog. From what I've found about anti reflective coatings, they are sputter coated in a vacuum environment, in layers only molecules thick.
For the record, I don't recommend using super glue, as it dries almost instantly, not flat, and it 'dissolves' away more than the original damage.
Graphite black sounds neutral, hopefully it is. If it's tinted in any way, adjustments could be made to compensate.
Well, I'm also now using my FW 900 with the anti glare coating removed and it still looks great...and no more annoying scratch..
On another note, I hooked up my BNC cable and I cant get a picture...do I need to change anything to make it work?
Besides switching to Input 2, I don't think so... well, you do need to manually set your video timings, as there's no DDC line which your OS probably uses to detect your monitor and choose a timing. You should at least get something.
Speaking of BNC cables, has anyone hoard of the MP-1 mod? This guy named Mike Parker has modified his video card to have 75 Ohm characteristic impedance through out. 5 BNC coax connectors right from your card. He sells a kit for $100. I'm skeptical about what this really gains, besides being able to use really thick, low attenuation RG-11 cable. Supposedly, having different impedance can cause reflections? I don't understand it really, but I have noticed that a weakly connected cable causes ghosting, and I've heard that connector impedance matters in some situations.
You are very right, this thread contains a lot of good info but with it scattered over so many pages of posts it's pretty much useless, organization is definitely needed. I think an owners club sounds like a great idea. I could probably contribute a good amount to it since I own a total of 4 Trinitron CRT's and have experience with several others as well. (Diamondtrons etc..). I've also logged a lot of time with Windas and know it inside out.
I'm glad you agree.Hopefully we won't be alone and can get something going soon.
I have 5 Trinitron CRT's myself, I'm still searching for some Diamondtrons ( can't wait to try out SpectraView). The difference between to a low to mid end shadow mask CRT, and an aperture grill CRT is astounding. Pixel shades become clearly defined, revealing detail I didn't even know was there.
Even more advantageous than aperture grill, would be no mask at all. Does anyone here use mono chrome displays? The NeXT stuff used to come with them back in the early 90s. With fast extinction phosphors it should make for a very high contrast, focus, resolution and frame rate experience. Inherently 3x the resolution of the equivalent color display, not sure about the contrast enhancement from having none of the beam blocked by a grille.
Yes please do send him the coating for analysis, I'd be very interested to find out if it could be suitably replaced. I noticed a couple more scratches on the screen of my newly acquired FW900, they don't bother me that much but it would still be great to have a perfect screen.
I'd remove the coating now but when I did that with my G520 I was not too pleased with the result. The extra glare wasn't an issue but I found even a small amount of light on in the room made the picture look washed out. It only looked good to me with all lights off. Maybe the FW900 is different somehow but I'm not sure I wanna risk it.
Anyone got better connections with a school or work lab? I don't actually have my own spectrophotometer, and I still need to inquire about access to one at my school.The best I can do on my own is measure with a 4 filter colorimeter the light from a P22 monitor without any coating, and measure it again through the coating sample.
I could at least tell if it's tinted a color.
How could I tell if it just blocked most of the non peak phosphor emissions? I'd imagine that wouldn't change the color reading a lot, it'd just seem dimmer. Yet, a neutral density filter, equally absorbing all frequencies, would also not change color and seem dimmer.
Once the absorption by frequency is known, the pigments or dyes in the coating could probably be guessed, or substitutes could be found. There are some patents detailing how to mix and apply these various color contrast coatings.
If the screen coating does use such dyes, removing the coating will still increase contrast. However, the range of color that can be produced will be reduced. There are a few extra processes in the production of high end tubes to increase the color gamut. There is a color filter mask inside the tube with dyes that shapes the spectral emissions from the phosphors. Cheap CRTs compromise with dyes mixed in the phosphors, or no dyes at all. Unfortunately, all CRTs made today are the cheap kind.
Has anyone with a colorimeter taken, or is thinking about taking off, the anti-glare coating? They'd be in a position to do a before and after measure of the gamut, not that it'd help much other than to explain whether there is a difference or not.
Actually, one of the more irritating things with these monitors is halation. In a pitch black room, you can see reflections of bright areas of the screen on the dark areas. Reflections of the internal glass surface. You'd think Sony would try to avoid that. (They probably did.. but, obviously didn't do good enough. There are a few patents describing ways to avoid this.)
I typed a lot again ... oh well. I won't use annoying colors like I did last time, even though it helps people skimming when this is post is 300 or more posts down.