24" Widescreen CRT (FW900) From Ebay arrived,Comments.

As some of you may know, I have a Sun GDM-FW9010 from Korea. If anyone has played Alien Isolation, it is a very dark game. When there is something bright white like a light on a true black background and I look around in a spiral for instance, I can turn off the monitor and still see the spiral glowing and it takes forever to go away. The light 'tracers' make the game unplayable because it's very distracting. Hopefully that makes sense. Any ideas what is going on? Is the phosphor not aging well? Is there a way to tell how many hours or the age of the tube?

As Ashratt said, it's phosphor persistence, which you can't really control. I would recommend doing a white point balance, which involves calibrating peak luminance. Perhaps your peak luminance is too high, which may exacerbate the problem.
 
As Ashratt said, it's phosphor persistence, which you can't really control. I would recommend doing a white point balance, which involves calibrating peak luminance. Perhaps your peak luminance is too high, which may exacerbate the problem.
Yes, I have a color eyes x-rite dtp94 used from ebay and followed the WPB tutorial a few days ago. When I adjust values until certain chromaticity and luminance targets are met, there is a issue. In the HFCR program, none of the values, Delta E, R, G or B do not change no matter how I move the RGB cutoff sliders in windas, step number 46. I've followed every step up to this point with no problem until now. I have the PC displaying the white pattern from the zip file. When moving the colorimeter away from where it suppose to be on a colorful image, the delta E, R, G and B values indeed change. I've never done a WPB before but im pretty good at following directions. Am I doing something wrong?
 
Forget WinDAS for a sec. Just load up HCFR and take some real time measurements, and tell me if the readings change when you change from the 30 IRE pattern to 100 IRE pattern.
 
Ok so your colorimeter is fine, and you're using HCFR properly. When you moved the sliders in step 46, did you notice the screen changing color at all? Also keep in mind that it takes a couple seconds for the colorimeter to integrate light and produce a reading. So it won't register right away when you adjust the slider.
 
The sliders in windas, step 46, did not make any notable changes that I could see as in no color shifting regardless if all sliders were all at minimum. Note, on step 39 to adjust G2 brigtness worked like a charm. Adjusting the blanking level of the green gun for the central brightness value, in assuming step 40 as it was right after the G2 adjustment, did not make any notable changes that I could see either.
 
Did you try wildly different slider values? Like slide it up to halfway and back? That should definitely produce a noticeable difference!
 
After two failed attempts of the sliders not doing squat the other day, all of a sudden its working! I'm on step 52 right now and the screen is green. Earlier RGB were at 100% dead on and delta E was at .5! I'll let yhou know the results when i'm finished!
 
As some of you may know, I have a Sun GDM-FW9010 from Korea. If anyone has played Alien Isolation, it is a very dark game. When there is something bright white like a light on a true black background and I look around in a spiral for instance, I can turn off the monitor and still see the spiral glowing and it takes forever to go away. The light 'tracers' make the game unplayable because it's very distracting. Hopefully that makes sense. Any ideas what is going on? Is the phosphor not aging well? Is there a way to tell how many hours or the age of the tube?

I played it too on this monitor. Like the others said, its normal behavior. I got used to it over the years so its no problem for me anymore.
 
my oscilloscope will be arriving next tuesday, and with my photodiode setup ill be able to measure the phosphors' decay rates :D
 
that is exciting news. What's the sensitivity of the photodiode btw (do you have access to spectral sensitivity info?) I suppose you can maximize the information about decay by presenting full field patterns. That way it might be able to pick up light that is at subthreshold luminance.

btw I did manage to find someone at the conference to ask about CRTs and circuit wear with higher scanning frequencies (a very prominent scientist who worked at bell labs in the 50's).

He said that older CRTs used a particular type of circuit (I think QI?), and I think the idea is that they'd naturally oscillate at a particular frequency. If you fed it a faster signal, it would be unable to even try and run at a higher frequency. With newer CRTs that are more flexible, I think he implied that if the CRT could handle the frequency it would not harm it.
 
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that is exciting news. What's the sensitivity of the photodiode btw (do you have access to spectral sensitivity info?) I suppose you can maximize the information about decay by presenting full field patterns. That way it might be able to pick up light that is at subthreshold luminance.

no a full field pattern would blur out since crts are scanning. i'll probably just use a row of 10pixels or so which corresponds to a ~0.1us pulse in the video signal. should be detectable with amplification

here's the datasheet
http://www.osram-os.com/Graphics/XPic6/00101662_0.pdf

spectral sensitivity doesn't really matter assuming each type of phosphor's emission spectrum doesn't change as it decays
 
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Yea i was just wondering how close it was to the spectral luminosity function and whether you could directly measure luminance that way. But on second thought, given that there are no focusing optics, you'd be measuring something more like illuminance.

Would also be cool to test the phosphor functions individually with red, green, and blue lines.

and roger on the scanning - forgot about that.
 
As you all know, I have a Sony 32-inch CRT for some old school game console gaming. One thing I can't get over though, is why are flat TV's geometry so bad? It seems that all flat TV's have some geometry error that needs to be corrected in the service menu. Even then, some of them have convergence issues that cannot be rectified even in dynamic convergence. Said Sony, for example, cannot do dynamic convergence at the vertical level - only the horizontal level.

Don't get me wrong. My flat Sony monitors are not perfect in geometry. But holy crap, I'll take the little errors that these monitors have over the television's any day of the week.
 
Hello, everyone. I'm about to change the G2 and max_overdrive values for my Dell P1130. What can I do to avoid locking the OSD on my P1130? Also, I watched a video describing how finalize your WinDAS setting when using a Dell P1130. After changing the values and loading the file that you want, you go to Adjustment-Procedure-Final Setting-OK-OK. Can anyone comfirm this?
 
Would also be cool to test the phosphor functions individually with red, green, and blue lines.

yup and from what i remember from high-speed camera shots the phosphor trail always had an red tint so probably red is the slowest phosphor
 
As you all know, I have a Sony 32-inch CRT for some old school game console gaming. One thing I can't get over though, is why are flat TV's geometry so bad? It seems that all flat TV's have some geometry error that needs to be corrected in the service menu. Even then, some of them have convergence issues that cannot be rectified even in dynamic convergence. Said Sony, for example, cannot do dynamic convergence at the vertical level - only the horizontal level.

Don't get me wrong. My flat Sony monitors are not perfect in geometry. But holy crap, I'll take the little errors that these monitors have over the television's any day of the week.

Let me know if you figure out how to fix the vertical convergence/geometry issues. I just finished adjusting my friend's 34XS955. It's pretty old, has a lot of use, and the corners were slightly warped and the convergence wasn't great. On top of that, the extreme right and left edges were pretty blurry when running test patterns.

As far as the corners go, the service manual said to affix "permalloy" magnets to specific places near the yoke. Anybody have experience with that? I got the picture dialed in as much as a could, but I never attempted that. The corners and sides are still far from perfect.

That said, when it was back in action, the picture was still beautiful.
 
Let me know if you figure out how to fix the vertical convergence/geometry issues. I just finished adjusting my friend's 34XS955. It's pretty old, has a lot of use, and the corners were slightly warped and the convergence wasn't great. On top of that, the extreme right and left edges were pretty blurry when running test patterns.

As far as the corners go, the service manual said to affix "permalloy" magnets to specific places near the yoke. Anybody have experience with that? I got the picture dialed in as much as a could, but I never attempted that. The corners and sides are still far from perfect.

That said, when it was back in action, the picture was still beautiful.

In your case, I would look up AVS forums, which has a huge thread about the Sony service codes and what they do. Unlike the GDM monitors, you can manually adjust the dynamic focus control. Well, the CR1 monitors allow you to set the dynamic focus of the monitor, but it's done automatically. In the focus menu, you're asked to adjust the size of the picture in Prime Mode (I think it was prime, at least) and then I assume the monitor figures out the dynamic focus delay according to the picture size. WinDAS isn't exactly clear as to how it works.

GDM-FW900 doesn't have anything that sets the dynamic focus, at least not that I could see. There was a user here a while ago, who captured the TTL signals to the monitor and noticed that in the high frequency adjustment, the monitor set the Dynamic Focus after the procedures were done. It could be that WinDAS sets the dynamic focus but doesn't tell you that it's done so. Which would make sense, because with the CR1 monitors (the Artisan and F520 ilk), you're asked to simply adjust the size of prime mode so that it matches spec and then I presume the program does the rest.

I have fixed permalloy strips on the back of the yoke before. Nothing much to it. Simply take the strip and position it in between the deflection yoke and the tube and move it around to see the effect. It's usually used for correcting hard-to-correct convergence errors. I've also heard of them being used for geometry adjustments too (the last mile, so to speak). But I believe that geometry adjustments require more strips. I don't think they're actually magnets.

EDIT: I have the KV32HS420. It's a hi-scan tube, but not a Super Fine Pitch. I would love to have one of those babies... :)
 
The sliders in windas, step 46, did not make any notable changes that I could see as in no color shifting regardless if all sliders were all at minimum. Note, on step 39 to adjust G2 brigtness worked like a charm. Adjusting the blanking level of the green gun for the central brightness value, in assuming step 40 as it was right after the G2 adjustment, did not make any notable changes that I could see either.

I have run into this issue once before. Try this:

Before you run WinDAS, press and hold the reset button for a few seconds. The monitor should blink and the picture will be returned to its factory preset (if you're using a preset mode). Now try it.

For whatever reason, I have the smoothest experience calibrating my screen when I reset all modes first.
 
In your case, I would look up AVS forums, which has a huge thread about the Sony service codes and what they do.

Yeah, that was my guide. The convergence/geometry adjustments were almost always for the y-axis. In the corners, horizontal lines are bent up or down slightly, and red and blue lines diverge from white a little. Couldn't find any service settings that helped with that stuff. Ended up trying moving the magnetic discs on the yoke and while they made the corners better, they threw off the center. So that's why I'm thinking I need to use the permalloy.

The focus adjustments mentioned in that AVS thread did help quite a bit, but I still couldn't get the edges to look anywhere near as sharp as the center. I think that's another side effect of the age of the tube. Maybe replacing certain capacitors could help?
 
Yeah, that was my guide. The convergence/geometry adjustments were almost always for the y-axis. In the corners, horizontal lines are bent up or down slightly, and red and blue lines diverge from white a little. Couldn't find any service settings that helped with that stuff. Ended up trying moving the magnetic discs on the yoke and while they made the corners better, they threw off the center. So that's why I'm thinking I need to use the permalloy.

The focus adjustments mentioned in that AVS thread did help quite a bit, but I still couldn't get the edges to look anywhere near as sharp as the center. I think that's another side effect of the age of the tube. Maybe replacing certain capacitors could help?

Yeah, I was a little in disbelief with the dynamic convergence adjustments that are only available on the H-AMP and not the V-AMP. Never thought I'd see that...
 
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Yea i was just wondering how close it was to the spectral luminosity function and whether you could directly measure luminance that way. But on second thought, given that there are no focusing optics, you'd be measuring something more like illuminance.

Would also be cool to test the phosphor functions individually with red, green, and blue lines.

and roger on the scanning - forgot about that.

wow the phosphors are way faster than i had thought

this is a single white line
pwEPIyH.png

wavy floors from 60hz noise from ground loops apparently

but anyway most (>90%) of the energy is dissipated in 0.5ms or so.
 
that's a snazzy interface. Yes, phosphors typically decay very fast, but that last 10% makes a difference (the afterglow).

I'll try to dig up some papers on this, as I looked into it a while back.
 
This is the latest Rigol DS1054Z right? I own the previous model, the DS1052E with 2 channels. A great unit that I got recently. Sadly I missed this newer model, or I would have bought it instead.

Anyway, this is an interesting experiment!
 
Hey guys can you clear something up for me? Just for fun I've been playing around with human benchmark (clicking reaction test) I notice I get similar results with my 144hz 1080p monitor and the FW900 @ 1920x1200 85hz. However, when I switch to 800x600 @ 160hz I get much better results. I don't understand why that is. I didn't think refresh rate would matter since crts have 0 input lag anyways, am I wrong?
 
that is exactly why many players who play multiplayer first person shooters on a CRT at 800x600@160hz HAVE AN EDGE in that game.

Better reaction time=EDGE

As to why it is? dunno :p

My best guess: LCD change each pixel in colour when displaying a moving scene at 144hz.

CRT actually flicker on and off 160 times at 160hertz.

I think the human eye and brain can react faster to images that flicker really fast (like crt at 160 a second) compared to an LCD that can polymorph its image 144 times a second.

But I'm just guessing here :p
 
Hmm interesting. Unreal Tournament and Quake are absolutely fantastic at that resolution. I have to say I'm in love with this monitor again. I've been using 1440x900 @120hz for normal desktop usage and have zero complaints.
 
I wonder if there's also some vsync code that causes a delay between the "official" timestamp that the color change occurs, and the moment it is actually sent to the CRT. If so, higher refresh rates would result in lower average input lag.
 
yea framerate (not refresh rate) is more of an input lag limiter in decent games (my comment was about human benchmark test)
 
I just found a Dell P1110 on craigslist that looks to be in good condition. I was wondering if it would be a worthwhile pickup for $15 or so. Anything noticeably off or concerning you guys can pick out from these pics?

HkgMtws.jpg


b63dxdF.jpg
 
^^
To answer your question above - no. Looks like you got a good deal. Is that first picture when you JUST powered it up?
 
^^
To answer your question above - no. Looks like you got a good deal. Is that first picture when you JUST powered it up?

That's a picture the seller sent me. I haven't gone to look at it in person, I was just wondering if there's anything noticeably wrong with it from what you can tell. It seems to be in decent shape.
 
That's a picture the seller sent me. I haven't gone to look at it in person, I was just wondering if there's anything noticeably wrong with it from what you can tell. It seems to be in decent shape.

No, it looks okay. It looks like he just powered it up. If that's the case, I say go for it. The fact that the resolution is a little low is a minor flag (trying to hide poor focus?) - BUT - if the drivers aren't properly set up on the thing, then maybe that would account for it. I don't know for $15 I say go for it.
 
I just found a Dell P1110 on craigslist that looks to be in good condition. I was wondering if it would be a worthwhile pickup for $15 or so. Anything noticeably off or concerning you guys can pick out from these pics?

I'm noticing the greenish border around the desktop image which could indicate it needs the infamous G2 adjustment via WinDAS, or it might just be cold still (sometimes symptoms go away after warmup).

Either way it's fixable and would be hard to turn down at $15
 
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