Trash find:Sony Wega 20"
 

For the first time in a long time, I saw a CRT set at the curb, without even looking. Driving home I saw this with a 'works' sign taped to it. flat-face Wega model number KV20FS12 , from May 2001.
Normally would never take this, but I had to. (Felt sorry for it)
I had a 27" Wega from 2004 that had a shorted blue gun within a few years. Horrible build quality on these..But..
I took this 1 down to my boiler room, where I hoard old TVs, and fired up channel 10, which is my amateur ntsc station. It was currently playing Caddyshack 1980 and here is what I got before any adjustment.: (My camera isn't the best)

This one will need the usual service menu parameter alterations, before it can really be taken seriously. At least the Scan Velocity Modulation is defeatable via customer menu on this model.
I have to pop the back open and see if it has a made in Japan tube or Singapore.

I suppose SVM was a gimmick that became feasible once overall build quality had fallen far enough. Couldn't have cost much to implement to begin with.

Well Jon, I do agree that it is a gimmick. However, from what I've read on the subject, there was a fair amount of R&D involved with SVM. It couldn't have been cheap to implement at first. By the 2000s, of course, it was more commonplace both in direct-view and in rear-projection TVs. Many sets I've seen with it, contain a 'staggered daughterboard' right behind the video output board on the tube. On some Toshibas from the early 00s, I would cut the feedback wire from this board, as it wasn't even defeatable via service mode. I am not sure which sets were the first to use a scanning velocity controller. If I had to guess, I bet Sony was the first. Anyone know for sure?

Hm, I wonder i my mom's aught 6 20" Toshiba has it? Seems to have a great picture, and that was a 2-dollar TV that I got to upgrade her from the same set with a 14" screen.

I guess it's all in the luck of the draw!
I bought a 27" Trinitron Vega, six years ago, in May. I bought it exactly five years to the day, that it was first bought.
I use it two to six hours a day, almost every day, since I bought it. Absolutely flawless performance.
I have a few Sony Wega models and they all seem to work very well.
I don't know when the build quality started to suffer, but you can't prove it by me. :scratch2:

Yep, Toshiba was notorious for putting SVM into everything just because it made the set "pop" on the sales floor. Thankfully the place where I worked had other tech savvy guys like me, and we actually put a bit of effort into adjusting the display sets when they were put up. We kept a copy of DVE in the changer just so we could flip it on _all_ the sets when a customer had shopped elsewhere and thought they wanted a specific set because it looked good there and we'd price-match them. Usual outcome of this was the customer agrees that the "sale" set is normally way overpriced and what they actually wanted in a TV was only $20 more normally. Most of us would "split the difference" and knock $10 off it, this one a-hole we had on the floor never would because "ZOMG I GET $5 LESS COMMISSION!"

When you compare some of the later silver front flat screen sets to earlier sets the cost cutting is evident. They still perform well and produce a great picture when they have a good CRT. They just seem to have more than their fair share of (premature) CRT failures.

I have a 14" that I trash picked that has never needed anything. Up until I recently cut off the cable it was bedroom set that I often left on all night.

Back when I was still selling used CRT sets I found so many of the 21" and 27" versions with bad CRTs that I stopped picking them up.

Perhaps I should grab the next one I see dumped (now that it was probably dumped for reasons other than failure) and see if it's any good.

How can I get a Toshiba into service mode anyway?

...

What I should gave typed, is that the CRTs were poor, as others have noted. Like I said, my '04-ish 27" Wega had the classic shutting-down issue which turned out to be a hard short in the CRT. I really have no gripes about the build quality except for the cheapish cabinet with no handles, just like many modern TVs.

This one has a low/medium/high setting available for the SVM. I put up a crpsshatch pattern from my Leader LCG-396 ntsc unit and the SVM affects that pattern the most, out of all the patterns I tried. Text is also blatanly affected.

I got out one of my Sony remotes and did the ol' DISPLAY - 5 - Volume Up - Power for the service mode, and changed a handful of parameters, until my black level and contrast gave a nice usable range via customer controls, and the red push was toned down enough for my liking.

Will post more pics of it later if anyone cares

I was at a seminar when it was introed but dont remember who !
I think it was Sylvania ?

73 Zeno:smoke:

We sold Sony & you are right. The pix was excelent but jugs were
going soft more than before. FBT's were going left & right &
every time a T-storm rolled through they came in with bad converter
transistors. Bad PC cons on the rise too.
Overall build quality was falling just like everyone else. Also we
started seeing 2 yr old sets with parts especially IC's coming back NLA !
The handwriting was on the wall, the end of TV repair as we knew it:tears:

73 Zeno:smoke:

You are right about this....You are MUCH more likely to pick up a vintage set from the 60's to 70's--even late 50's color sets--are more likely to have a good, at least useable tube--than a 2000's Sony set. And FORGET about the 26" sony sets from 1978--maybe 1985. The tubes are NEVER good--they were dying by the late 1980's !! And Trinitron tubes do NOT rejuvinate at ALL. Once they are gone...LEAVE THEN ALONE.

Does anyone know the real reason why these later Trinitron tubes (in the "FD" Trinitron era) are notorious for short lifespan? Was it more of a cost-cutting thing (lack of Q.C. and/or less depositon of cathode material/surface area) or was this a deliberate scheme to usher in the flat-panel era? Planned obsolescence from Tokyo? :) We had a 1987 27" Trinitron KV2729R which was thrown away still working like new, with a TON of hours on it and no repairs. and my '78 12" trinitron KV1205 is bright as the day is long, as are my PVM1390s from 1988 and 89

I think the QC just went WAY down near the end of the tube era. You may recall about 10-12 years ago--Sony projo sets had tubes that failed after a few thousand hours of use. The story was that the cathodes were contaminated from the START--and the tubes would short--often taking out the driver chip and perhaps some other parts. They did not lose emission...they just shorted and killed other things. For awhile--Sony was replacing these tubes under warranty. By that time---Sony was beginning to feel the backlash from the failed LCD projo light engines coming back under warranty LEFT AND RIGHT. Finally...Sony gave up and only cared about flat panel sets.

Their DV tubes from this time period seemed to have been built with the same QC as the projo tubes. Failng Sony pix tubes were VERY common --say 10-15 years ago...and would first begin looking bad--then the set did the "flash, flash flash" thing. And for a long time--Sony trinitron tubes have been built-it seems--with a built-in "timer", for lifespan. Unlike other tubes, Particularly roundie color tubes..Trinitrons do not rejuvinate at all.

I recall trying to hit one--a 26" tube....It DID come up, and looked nice...for about an hour..THEN...it faded and looked WORSE than before. I tried a filament boost---and it got worse...and finally looked so bad as to be totally unwatchable. All of this was in a period of less than 3 hours.

A similar thing happened on a 90's 27" trinitron set. I let the shop owner know the set had a bad tube. He said to boost it, so I did the "self boost" thing (shorting the filament dropping resistor). It DID look a lot better...for a couple of days.Then..it looked a LOT worse than it did in the first place. The owner of the shop was in a fix, since he had told the set owner we had REPLACED the tube--and had charged quite a bit of money for the repair. Now--he was in a mess--as the set was pretty much unwatchable. He blamed ME for the whole thing...even though I told him the tube would NOT last that way. I was able to "bail hm out" by finding a set with a good tube--and we installed it--and the set looked nice again. Did I get a thanks? No...this was the guy who along with his wife...cheated me out of about 10K in back money...and unemployment about 5 years ago.....

Ya, I wasn't impressed with the Wega series, after my "incident".
About 2004, I bought one NEW... in the box.... ( the 24")
The picture was good, unless you tried to watch a DVD. Picture was super dark even with the brightness turned all the way up. Then I read the reviews and saw may FBT issues, so I made the store exchange it for a 24" Toshiba, that I had NO issues with. I still have the Toshiba, but don't use it at the moment.

I read a post here a while back from someone who described a method for rejuvenating Trinitrons and other "unboostable" CRTs. He described the circuit he used, he wasn't using a CRT tester. I recall it described as a more gentle approach.

If I can find the the post again (and some time time) I'll give it a go. I've got a couple of sets here that are completely useless as-is, so it's not like they can get any worse. I'll grab the next Wega I find and try it as well.

So I suppose I'm not the only one who would have picked up this 20" Wega..
It takes about 6 seconds for the picture to come up, so the tube has a decent amount of life left in it.

Seems that Sony spent most of their life making junk, in regards to TVs anyway.

I always thought Sony was overrated. They did have some very unique sets though, so props to them for that. They were like the Japanese Zenith.

I forgot to add..that the Sony I spoke about was under an EXTENDED WARRANTY...and still Ray had LIED to the customer and the warranty co...about replacing the tube.. He wanted ALL of the money for the job , WITHOUT replacing the tube. .Had I not found him that junk set with the good tube..he would have been in a WORLD of hurt. Of course...that happened anyway, a couple of years later, but this was in early 2007 or so, a couple of years before it all "went South" for me at that place...

As far as quality goes...Sony was...and IS ... all hype. The trinitron tube saved the company--and gave them something to brag about for nearly 40 years. The story goes that they had lost so much money trying to perfect the chromatron..they were near bankruptcy. Had the trinitron failed....Sony would be a distant memory, instead of a "world class" conglomerate. And it DID have an excellent picture. They just do NOT last all that long.

Growing up, we had a 1982 21" Trinitron from 1988 through to 1999, when replaced with another Sony, as the main family TV. It was second hand from a family member, who used it more or less non stop from 1982 - 1988 before we got it, and every day after that. That TV was fantastic, the only issue it ever had was somehow the V-Hold pot got dirty, and became really touchy. I fixed it by spraying it with contact cleaner, and the TV kept on working. The main limitation it had versus its replacement was only a 36 Channel CATV tuner, and the screen size. I can say without any question that TV was brighter, sharper, has better geometry, and better sound than other TV sets in the family from other brands. Because of that TV, through to the end of the CRT era I always regarded Sony as a superior product.

Small world. Today I was going shopping & on a lawn was
a 20" Wega with a free sign on it. Bet it works fine.
I sped up..................

73 Zeno:smoke: