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

[jbltecnicspro]

aye, I was agreeing with you

Aye, and I'll drink a pint to that.

 

[XoR]

Not sure what you mean by "better colors". I can say without any doubt that the picture quality on an FW900 is far superior to an IBM P275 (I own both), or any other G520 (I've worked with quite a few).

please provide measurements to back your claim

 

[jbltecnicspro]

please provide measurements to back your claim

I would say the same to you. You were the first one to mention better colors due to coating. What are you basing this on?

 

[spacediver]

please provide measurements to back your claim

I could take images of the phosphor coating to show the differences in dot pitch, or you could just look it up in the specs.

 

[Enhanced Interrogator]

The HD Fury guys are taking feature requests for their next DAC, the HD Fury 5. The creator has said he would like to support higher pixel clocks in this model. Hopefully the HDFury 5 will be able to fully replace all the features of RAMDAC's in video cards that are currently being phased out.

Leave your ideas here:

http://dme.ghost2.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26629

 

[SH1]

Had a NOS Diamondtron based FP2141SB-BK for a bit. It was nice. If another cache of them shows up on eBay or such, go for it.

Better than a top GDM Sony -- No.

F520 versus FW900...I've found it a bit jarring to go from the former to the latter, because of the F520's better uniformity. However, I'd probably give it to the FW900. The picture is still awfully sweet and it's somehow really strikingly bigger. The impact more than the actual difference in dimensions maybe...

(Though I do wish...at least aesthetically...that Sony had kept using a darker coating.)

 

[LAGRUNAUER]

There were a few, actually. The last Samsung monitors had it, and there was a Viewsonic monitor that also had a .20mm dot pitch shadow mask. That's all I can come up with off the top of my head.

Thank your for sharing that info... I wasn't aware of it before. Let me see if I can grab one of these units in the trade and fully test it and evaluate in the lab.

Thanks again!

UV!

 

[LAGRUNAUER]

There were a few, actually. The last Samsung monitors had it, and there was a Viewsonic monitor that also had a .20mm dot pitch shadow mask. That's all I can come up with off the top of my head.

I knew of a 19.8" Sony prototype tube that had a .19 aperture grille that was never put into production. In fact, once I saw a demo of this tube. If you liked the .22 AG, this one blew it out of the water in terns of sharpness, brightness, contrast and color depth.

UV!

 

[rsfield]

Congrats on the FW900s. I'd run 1920x1200 at 96 or 2048x1280 at 90 for quality. 2560x1600@72 for high-res, 1152x720@160 for high-FPS.

On another note, I found someone to repair my Gateway VX1120 (Mits 2060U rebrand). Blown flyback and HOT. Replacement parts are ordered.

Can you get 1152x720@160 with the nvidia custom resolution, or does it require CRU? Seems like a interesting resolution to try out.

 

[XoR]

I would say the same to you. You were the first one to mention better colors due to coating. What are you basing this on?

do you ask because you do not know or do you ask me knowing it and want to see if I know?

spacediver wanted me to do tests and insulted me by saying my opinion about image quality is worthless without measurements so he should provide measurements himself. He is in much better situation than I was. I would need to destroy my coating to do test, buy equipement. He have to monitors, can just put them next to each other and measure all he want. Without such measurements his opinion on FW900 being better is worthless, right?

ps. when saying "color" I do not mean gamut. I say this just in case you are confused about it.

 

[XoR]

I could take images of the phosphor coating to show the differences in dot pitch, or you could just look it up in the specs.

so sharpness for is only parameter that matters for you in a monitor?

I wrote about colors (by which I mean general image presentation and not gamut, though gamut is included in 'colors') and not that P275 have better doth pitch or sharpness. I never said P275 is sharper just that it have better colors due better darker coating.

 

[jbltecnicspro]

do you ask because you do not know or do you ask me knowing it and want to see if I know?

spacediver wanted me to do tests and insulted me by saying my opinion about image quality is worthless without measurements so he should provide measurements himself. He is in much better situation than I was. I would need to destroy my coating to do test, buy equipement. He have to monitors, can just put them next to each other and measure all he want. Without such measurements his opinion on FW900 being better is worthless, right?

ps. when saying "color" I do not mean gamut. I say this just in case you are confused about it.

I'm asking because I do not know.

My intricate knowledge about these things is next to nil. All I know how to do is calibrate these things in WinDAS and to calibrate other monitors and televisions. Think of me as a technician and not an engineer.

 

[spacediver]

so sharpness for is only parameter that matters for you in a monitor?

I wrote about colors (by which I mean general image presentation and not gamut, though gamut is included in 'colors') and not that P275 have better doth pitch or sharpness. I never said P275 is sharper just that it have better colors due better darker coating.

and I asked you what exactly you meant by colors. The gamut is virtually identical between the GDM and the CPD. In a light controlled environment, coating will not affect the colors.

 

[jbltecnicspro]

Thank your for sharing that info... I wasn't aware of it before. Let me see if I can grab one of these units in the trade and fully test it and evaluate in the lab.

Thanks again!

UV!

Good luck finding the Viewsonic. The folks at Displaymate rate it as the best shadow mask monitors they've ever tested. The model is the G225f. The best monitor for Aperture Grille that they've rated is the Artisan. Their reference monitor is the GDM-F520.

The Samsungs should be easier to find.

I knew of a 19.8" Sony prototype tube that had a .19 aperture grille that was never put into production. In fact, once I saw a demo of this tube. If you liked the .22 AG, this one blew it out of the water in terns of sharpness, brightness, contrast and color depth.

UV!

That's a shame. Too bad they never made it to production. Do you sell any GDM-F500R's?

 

[spacediver]

spacediver wanted me to do tests and insulted me by saying my opinion about image quality is worthless without measurements

actually, this is what I said.

Not sure what you mean by "better colors". I can say without any doubt that the picture quality on an FW900 is far superior to an IBM P275 (I own both), or any other G520 (I've worked with quite a few).

I don't see any insults there, or anything about measurements.

 

[rabidz7]

Can you get 1152x720@160 with the nvidia custom resolution, or does it require CRU? Seems like a interesting resolution to try out.

I'm not sure. I don't own a FW900, but based on my calculations, 1152x720 should work. I would expect it to work in the driver custom resolutions pane, but you might need CRU.

 

[XoR]

1280x720@160Hz is exactly 121KHz 160Hz, barely within specs
from monitor side 1152x720@160Hz is the same

at this low resolution I would suggest 1280x720 because going 1152x720 will have much more visible pixels

it is best to use CRU and set first resolution to somethins small such as 800x600 to prevent GPU scaling. At least on Radeons

 

[rsfield]

With the default NVIDIA GTF settings 1152x720@154 is the highest that works for me. But I'm sure CRU would work fine.

 

[XoR]

@jbltecnicspro
50% transmittance AG will make white and all colors including black level half as bright.
At the same time it will make any external light influence on black level to be reduced by 75% which include ambient lights and light emitted by monitor and reflected back off walls, me, etc.

Having ambient lights help LCD with making blacks to appear inky black. In simplest terms FW900 with polarizer have black enough screen to show the same benefit. Rising black level due to displaying stuff on screen is offseted by it looking black in spite of ambient light level rising in room.

Without AG I saw color of phosphor all the time. When having other monitors enabled it was really really bad. Now with polarizer it is actually opposite, contrast ratio seem even better with some ambient light and have this inky black quality that I liked so much in eg. LG Flatron 915FT+
From russian review of LG http://www.3dnews.ru/165015/page-12.html

I would like to note the quality of the black color, which here was better than the other monitors tested.

Why was it so good compared to bunch of Trinitrons and even Diamondtrons? Because it had darker AG coating than rest of these monitors. There is nothing else about this monitor that contribute to it. When doing meausrement my then AG-less FW900 measured better under calibration probe but failed miserably to compete in actually having better contrast ratio. It took polarizer to bring competition on the same contrast ratio level.

 

[Mokkat]

The HD Fury guys are taking feature requests for their next DAC, the HD Fury 5. The creator has said he would like to support higher pixel clocks in this model. Hopefully the HDFury 5 will be able to fully replace all the features of RAMDAC's in video cards that are currently being phased out.

Leave your ideas here:

http://dme.ghost2.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26629

Good news

 

[LAGRUNAUER]

Good luck finding the Viewsonic. The folks at Displaymate rate it as the best shadow mask monitors they've ever tested. The model is the G225f. The best monitor for Aperture Grille that they've rated is the Artisan. Their reference monitor is the GDM-F520.

The Samsungs should be easier to find.



That's a shame. Too bad they never made it to production. Do you sell any GDM-F500R's?

I have one GDM-F500R... It is the the predecessor of the GDM-F520... It can be viewed as an small version of the GDM-FW900.... Similar chassis but in small scale...

UV!

 

[LAGRUNAUER]

actually, this is what I said.



I don't see any insults there, or anything about measurements.

I second spacediver's contention about the FW900..... Excerpt from his quote... "I can say without any doubt that the picture quality on an FW900 is far superior to an IBM P275 (I own both), or any other G520 (I've worked with quite a few)."....

And... I did not read any insults in any postings from spacediver.... Could you please point us to where the alleged insults are located at?

UV!

 

[LAGRUNAUER]

First off, the dot pitch of a shadow mask is not measured the same way as it is in an aperture grille, as I explained earlier.

Second, it's a shadow mask, so image quality is not going to be as good as an aperture grille.

In terms of image quality, the GDM F520 and Artisan are probably the best, but they are smaller than the FW900.

Diamondtrons are neat, but they do not have the same dot pitch as the high end GDMs.



Not sure what you mean by "better colors". I can say without any doubt that the picture quality on an FW900 is far superior to an IBM P275 (I own both), or any other G520 (I've worked with quite a few).

Spacediver is correct! The dot pitch of a shadow mask is not measured the same way as it is in an aperture grille...

The ViewSonic G225F/FB/FSB has a measured diagonal dot pitch of .25mm.

For all you CRT gurus... Now comparing apples to apples... you draw your own conclusions...

UV!

 

[spacediver]

Vito, can you take a photo of your 24 inch Artisan? Would love to see it!

 

[Enhanced Interrogator]

24" Artisan? Is it 4:3 or 16:10?

 

[LAGRUNAUER]

Vito, can you take a photo of your 24 inch Artisan? Would love to see it!

It is in storage... When I am not that busy, I'll bring it down.... It may be awhile...

 

[LAGRUNAUER]

24" Artisan? Is it 4:3 or 16:10?

16:10

 

[XoR]

@spacediver
After I did the polarizer mod you said that my findings and opinions about it are worthless because they are based on what I see and not what I measure, and then you warned people that because of that my opinions should not be trusted.

And now you say words such as "far superior" without any measurements or even mention what characteristics exactly are better and in what way. It is far more emptier talk than what I did. Especially that me doing measurements would require me to destroy coating that I put on monitor and you have two monitors as you claim, can measure them freely, put side by side, do photos, etc.

So what is the deal with you really?
Be consistent in what you do and what you want others to do.
You are not consistent so I take this as form of personal insult and not sign of you being measurement uber alles guy.

 

[rabidz7]

Any more into on the 190µm Sony 21" prototype?

 

[igsux3]

@jbltecnicspro
Having ambient lights help LCD with making blacks to appear inky black. In simplest terms FW900 with polarizer have black enough screen to show the same benefit. Rising black level due to displaying stuff on screen is offseted by it looking black in spite of ambient light level rising in room.

My test filters have just arrived from here:

http://allegro.pl/testery-polaryzacji-folia-polaryzacyjna-3-rodzaje-i5631077575.html

I can hardly see any difference in linear and circular foil, maybe left-handed circular polarizer being little more contrasty. I think about ordering big linear foil. How did you apply it? Is there any glue on big one? Or should I just tightly fit it under the bezel? Does it matter what side would I apply this foil?

I thought that biggest advantage would be its anti-glare function, but in fact it glares as much as pure glass on FW900. However it has great effect on internal phosphor-to-glass glare, which I found biggest disadvantage since I took of AG coating off.


-- edit--

few more test and I am quite sure that left handed circular polarizer not only has lowest reflectivity, but also looks most contrasty. I have no idea why would that happen, but this is the one I'm most likely to order.

 

[XoR]

hmmm so am I not alone in this left circular being best thing? I had similar conclusion but was not sure

big sheet with adhesive will be hell to put right, at least without some contraption, roller of sorts with something to remove protective layer just before polarizer is pushed to screen with roller.

Without AG you use special glue which you then harden using UV light. That way putting AG would be quite easy, any air bubbles easy to remove. Even without UV it would probably harden by itself over time and wouldn't fall off. Even water with sugar would do the trick to put adhesive-less sheet on.

BTW. if you order polarizer that is like 150cm x 50cm without adhesive would you be willing to sell about 1/3 of it?

BTW2. I still haven't removed that badly put AG. It have some flaws but I do not notice them in games, kinda like I do not see damping wires. In desktop it is another story though...

 

[Mokkat]

Installed the new AMD Crimson driver and I'm having a tough time getting the monitor to run at anything else than 2304x1440. CRU doesn't seem to work, the new custom resolution tool doesn't work.

Did anyone have better luck with this?

edit: got it working somehow. Gotta be more systematic with this, half of the time I'm not sure what I did when I get it running again

 

[spacediver]

warning, technical shit ahead.

Been doing quite a bit more work on my sharpness testing (see this post for previous update).

I've perfected the focusing adjustment code, so now I'm able to take perfectly focused shots of my screen. If anyone is interested, here is the code:

I've also developed a sophisticated distance calibration procedure. I take an image of a tilted ronchi ruling, then fit that image to an oriented square wave grating. The frequency of the best fitting grating allows me to calculate the distance, in pixel space, between the adjacent rulings of the pattern. Given that I know in real life that the rulings consist of 10 cycles per mm, this allows me to convert pixels to microns. This will be useful for being able to precisely measure dot pitch, and pixel dimensions.

Finally, I've developed code that subsamples a RAW image and extracts chromaticity and (relative) luminance values for each pixel of the subsampled image, using the calibration matrices derived in a previous project. Using this, I'll be able to take images of my display, and convert those chromaticity and luminance values into rec 709 RGB values. Basically this means I can take an image of my display, and convert it into an image that, when viewed on a properly calibrated display, will show the colors as they actually are.

Hopefully, nicely rendered images of phosphors, along with detailed dot pitch measurements, coming soon. Sharpness testing to be done soon after if I have time.

 

[zone74]

I look forward to seeing the results of this.

 

[flod]

Given that I know in real life that the rulings consist of 10 cycles per mm, this allows me to convert pixels to microns.

not sure how to explain this simply, but the thickness of the glass will screw things up a little bit. this method would work perfectly if the ronchi ruling were behind the same layer of glass that the phosphors are behind.

probably at the center of the images there's no distortion due to this, but as you go away from the center things could get a bit different. for instance if an image of the ronchi ruling appears perfectly evenly spaced like |...|...|...|...|...|, an image of the phosphors might be distorted like |.|..|...|..|.|. obviously that's exaggerating but you get the point .

 

[XoR]

I bought my first PS4 yesterday and got few hours of irritation. Having two HDMI-to-VGA converters one would think that at least one would work properly, especially that both have option to be externally powered. But no, both failed miserably. First one, the one which I successfully use with PS3 worked for like maybe 20s and image disappeared. After some fiddling I was able to get stable 720p with USB power connected but it disappeared anyway so it was more of an random miracle than stable operation. So I connected HDFireFury and like is written in HDFury PS4 FAQ it didn't work. There was image, even at 1080p but but with artifacts, random dancing pixels and such stuff. At 480p it was almost usable but resolution wasn't

So I planned to buy HDMI repeater but then remembered that my Samsung audio amplifier have HDMI inputs and can passthrough HDMI video extracting audio in the process, function I never really used because I preferred optical connection. HDMI passthrough worked and both hdmi2vga converters work with PS4 and full 1080p video and do not even need external power to be connected.

I wonder how others fixed this issue. Or maybe some converters work with PS4 without issues?
Apparently HDFury2 and later do work directly as long as external power is connected but those devices are ridiculously expensive...

 

[igsux3]

big sheet with adhesive will be hell to put right, at least without some contraption, roller of sorts with something to remove protective layer just before polarizer is pushed to screen with roller.

I found out that there's a workshop where they darken car windows, maybe they'll give some tips

Without AG you use special glue which you then harden using UV light. That way putting AG would be quite easy, any air bubbles easy to remove. Even without UV it would probably harden by itself over time and wouldn't fall off. Even water with sugar would do the trick to put adhesive-less sheet on.

BTW. if you order polarizer that is like 150cm x 50cm without adhesive would you be willing to sell about 1/3 of it?

I was told I can ask for any dimension with max width of 50cm. So for the first try I would rather order 50x40. If I fail, then I am going to order something like 50x150 and will surely be willing to sell what's left

BTW2. I still haven't removed that badly put AG. It have some flaws but I do not notice them in games, kinda like I do not see damping wires. In desktop it is another story though...

Okay another question, is there some way to correct landing of my FW900 in windas? I have some spots here and there and would like to correct it as much as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pVLizAHby4

Is degaussing coil what I am looking for or all I would get would be the same as pressing "degauss" in OSD?

 

[ilovemyfw900]

Apparently HDFury2 and later do work directly as long as external power is connected but those devices are ridiculously expensive...[/QUOTE]

The amount of time and money you've wasted with theses connectors and whatnot, jus NOT worth it!!!

Fury or bust buddy! They work flawlessly, go on ebay! This is one investment WORTH the $$$s!

 

[spacediver]

not sure how to explain this simply, but the thickness of the glass will screw things up a little bit. this method would work perfectly if the ronchi ruling were behind the same layer of glass that the phosphors are behind.

probably at the center of the images there's no distortion due to this, but as you go away from the center things could get a bit different. for instance if an image of the ronchi ruling appears perfectly evenly spaced like |...|...|...|...|...|, an image of the phosphors might be distorted like |.|..|...|..|.|. obviously that's exaggerating but you get the point .

Wait, I'm not following. What would cause the distortion?

Keep in mind that my measurements are being taken based on a cropped image dead center of the camera sensor - (sensor is 4290 x 2856, and the cropped image is 87x 253).

Also, because I'm achieving perfect focus with both ronchi imaging, and phosphor imaging, the distance between the target being imaged and the lens are identical.

 

[jbltecnicspro]

Okay another question, is there some way to correct landing of my FW900 in windas? I have some spots here and there and would like to correct it as much as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pVLizAHby4

Is degaussing coil what I am looking for or all I would get would be the same as pressing "degauss" in OSD?

WinDAS does have a landing adjustment in it. Do NOT use a degaussing coil with the GDM-FW900. It has a magnetic sensor in it that will become magnetized. You can degauss the monitor when it's OFF - but not while it's on. I happen to have a degausser coil and haven't seen much of an improvement with it (used it on a television here and there). So my opinion is to not waste your money.