Vintage plasma TV?
 

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A 4:3 Plasma, very cool and sure to be a future collectible!
Does it have an NTSC tuner built in or is it a monitor only?

Wow that is really cool. I've never seen a 4x3 Plasma set. Bad caps seems very typical though. Thanks for sharing the pics.

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I remember working on a Philco plasma set in the mid 90s ('93 or '94 model?)... Had a base unit with tuner & power supply, and a cable went up to the wall mount plasma display. It was about a 30", if I recall. It was Phillips-built. I wouldn't mind getting hold of one of those, as they're super-rare I guess. I remember the owner saying he paid over $20,000 for it.

Charles

Good lord! Is thatr the sustains and the buffers and logic and address modules all in one board?? Thats crazy! I have had my fair share of repairing plasmas and I have seen some odd designs but that one takes the cake!

Wow, a 4:3 Plasma monitor from 1998-now that's really awesome. Mow if they would make 4:3 HDTVs to watch my vintage 4:3 shows on:-) A future collectable indeed from 1998:-)

Sitting in my shop at my ballpark is our 1999 Sony 50" plasma from the lobby of the old park. Model number next week when I dig it out...all $12,000 worth. I think it may be 720p capable. Stay tuned. And if I can find a few good men to move this 200+ pound beast, I will unbox it and see if it still works. It's been in the box since late 2003. I remember it in our lobby at the old park but do not remember how we fed it. I hope the remote is in the box.

And in my new ballpark in a public hallway is a 2003 Zenith (LG) 4x3 40" or so plasma. It runs 24/7 fed in analog by a $59 DVD in an eternal loop with some trivia questions for the passers-by. It used to be fed by a Firefly hard drive player which would quit on a yearly basis. I subbed the DVD 4 years ago and it runs 24/7 also. I can get a pix of that also next week. It shows no diminishing of the pix after 7 years. And we have a new marketing deal with Sharp to change out 750 flat screens which means that this Zenith will come down and I will be there to catch it.

Oh dear moderators, could we be on the edge of a new Vintage Plasma category? Then again, Vintage Plasma is an oxymoron.

And who remembers the early Japanese late-80"s attempts at HD in analog? Something above 1080,

Dave A

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They actually did some broadcasting in that format, Hi-Vision (production) and MUSE (encoding for broadcast). It has 1125 horizontal lines overall but the active video area is 1080 lines or less, similar to the current 1080i digital HDTV standards.

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Hi Gentlemen,

1) Andy, i also have a vintage plasma, a Fujitsu PDS-4203 42" unit purchased in may 1999 at half price because it was being phased out. Back then it was a real novelty, sort of a year 2000 CT-100.

I went with Fujitsu after seeing them yearly at the NAB displaying Japanese MITI funded research for about 10 years. I figured that since they had been chosen by the government to do all the development groundwork, if anyone knew how to build a plasma, Fujitsu would know.

Well my choice was good, this PDP has been chugging along for 11 years now and has never failed once. It's dim compared to modern units, is VGA resolution, knows nothing about HD or HDMI, but i just don't have the heart to replace it especially when i see the reliability record (3 years?) of today's units.

Pix 1 is an actual unretouched photo, the plasma is surrounded by a bunch of US Trinitrons & other tiny screen TVs.

2) Sony HDVS 1125/60 HD TV
Around 1986, we had an American production/postproduction facility in Paris known as SEE/Captain Video run by a certain David Niles. The guy managed to convince Somy management to loan him 3 HD cameras, 2x 1" HD VTRs, a switcher and a bunch of 300lb HD monitors.

The picture quality straight out of the cameras was stupendous, much better than today's HD. Try seeing the very faint fuzz on a woman's upper lip framed news achor style (not zoomed on the face itself). It was that good!

It was also highly experimental, the cameras "ate" red tubes (1" Saticons) after just a few hundred hours, so all 3 tubes had to changed and imagine the fun of doing registration on something so razor-sharp.

Coming back to today, some of the behemoth HD trinitrons show up from time, it would be nice to decode HDMI to RGB to watch HD content.

C) Andy, is this the HD VCR you were telling about?
I had better pictures but VK won't let me repost and the link to the old post shows no photos - probably deleted as "too old".

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

PS: David Niles went back to the US in the 90s and opened a facility in NYC named Studio 1125, maybe it still exists...

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I'm not sure about the year, but it was when I was working for TV World in Chatsworth, CA. I worked there from 1991-95 full time, and as a sub fill-in until 2000.

It could have been as late as '97, but that would have made the set virtually new. It might have been some sort of a limited-run (not mass-produced) set. ITT-Gilfillan produced a live plasma display as early as 1983, but that was a monochrome display.

Wiki is OK, but I've found many errors there. I'm not calling them wrong in this case, but 1997 sounds a little off to me. They gather their information mainly from users, as far as I understand.

Charles

The Hantarex/Sambers company of Italy was one of the very first plasma display manufacturer, they claim to have started making them in 1996.

I have a 2001 Model Pioneer pdp-50CMX. It lacks the contrast of todays plasma's of course, but I have tweaked it to produce the best possible picture. This of course after a power supply fail and logic board ribbon cable issues. I have found a big -5 on the fun-o-meter when it comes to diagnosing those plasma power supplys.

Definitely not an accurate claim, but not surprised. After all, Sarnoff "invented" TV and radio, and Gore invented the internet...

ITT-Gilfillan had a working plasma display a decade earlier. I was on a tour of their plant in Van Nuys, CA in the mid 80s, and saw the demonstration. That one was for military purposes, and as I mentioned, was monochrome.

Charles

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I have a 50" Pioneer PDP-V501X 50" Plasma. Them manufacture date on it is 1998 (I don't remember the month). The original price was supposedly $22,000. I paid $150 for it. It was a commercial display, so the bezel is a little beat up, but it has no burn-in. I use my pc on it all the time, and it never retains an image. The picture is not as good as a more modern set, obviously, but I dig it.

Pioneer plasmas seem to not have image retention issues that say samsung buil phillis have. Wierd.

that agrees with my experiance.iirc it was the thompson arc that had a big 4:3 plasma they claimed was a prototype.showed it at the indy hamfest.1995.bought a ton of rca/thompson surplus parts from them over the years.

Sure?

IBM PS/2 portable were MCA bus and used plasma, 386 in two speeds (16, 20MHz) and other 486 version. The ones that was luggable is 8088 with mono CRT. I do not know if there was a 286 portable made by IBM.

PS: Generic lunchbox boxens are terrible. I had LCD version the LCD controller card will not work with faster mainboards. I also tried Plasma version (same chassis as first) and were fuzzy for a plasma. :( Both is gone.

Cheers, Wizard

If I recall correcty Compaq was the pioneer in monochrome plasma displays. I have worked on many from 80286 – 80386. Most were well burned by the time they were two years old. Most applications of the time had dedicated menu bars at the bottom of the screen. Really bad investment. However; if you wish to pursue these as an investment. You can see the burn when the screen is off. You see a burn don’t buy it. Doogie

Funny I read this thread again, I just aquires a Philips branded Fujitsu plasma from 1998. Ancient and I dont have the "E-BOX" that it connects to. Useless to me. Anyone want it. lol

What's the model number? It seems like I had a few of those external boxes laying around at my shop (I know I saw a Sharp one, but I know at one time we had some Philips ones).

The model of the TV is a philips 42PW9962/17
The e-box i need is FTR9964 or a 65 will work. I also need that whacky cable too. it has 7 or so very large pins and some small ones. The cable looks like a DB25 printer cable but has extremely large pins too on the top row.

I do have a FTR9964 on my shelf with the remote, no cables though. For looks, it's about a 7/10, a little scratched up. I can't really test it other than it powers up and responds to the remote.

It has a monitor out connection, I connected a monitor to it, but it won't sync to the signal (must be proprietary). Every time I hit the channel button my monitor trys to sync, so it is doing something.

If you want it, shoot me an offer. If it was mine, I'd just sell it outright cheap, but since it belongs to my employer, I'd have to run it by the boss. No hard feelings if you don't want it.

Sounds cool nut I'm still missing a cable and possibly a power supply for this thing that seems unobtanable. Not too sure if it's worth it. It looks as if it's missing still a crucial part. I yanked it apart and sure enough the power supply is external.

Wow, an external power supply too? That, along with the screen, and this box would sure make for a clunky mess :)

This box has been sitting on the shelf for over a year, so it's probably not going anywhere. Get ahold of me if you want it someday.

Ok will do.. Thanks

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A few random things...

I've got a couple of the Compaq Portables (lunchboxes) with the orange plasma screens. Even have the backpack expansion chassis. (!)

In the world of plasma TV's, I'm sorta looking for a Sharp unit that has the "DVHS" input -- EEE1394 firewire -- as an input. Some other sets, like Hitachi, had 1394 controllers for special hard drives for recording. I've only seen one of those drives, made by someone else. I think it's a concept that DRM killed.

A production house I work with recently bought a large 4x3 LCD panel -- video monitor, not computer monitor -- for teleprompter use. They're still common in the video surveillance world.

Chip