Another superb owl coming up...
 

What's an Owl?

Well, they way the NFL makes everyone say "The Big Game"... and not "Superbowl" :D

I still don't get it. Sorry.

superb owl
v
super bowl

I admit, it got me at first. But pics of the game cleared that up :3

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/b...son-owl-02.jpg

^Mr Owl:"OMG you don't know what an owl is?!?":jawdrop:

Mr Owl:"I'm disappointed with you...I thought you were my friend":sigh:
^
https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6005/5...060423e7_z.jpg

Don't disappoint Mr. Owl (he'll eat your tootsie pop if you do :D); Know your avian friends! A message form the VK ornithological smartass society(aka my sense of humor) :D :D :D

OK! Duh! Very funny Tom.

Bob Casey's been having fun with that one quite a while now.
As long as the Packers won't be playing, I'll just pay a little attention to it for the commercials. A lot of big money being spent there.

Today I set up the Insignia converter and an amplified Radio Shack indoor antenna on top of the CTC-5 Super set, did the auto scan, and behold! Reception on all the OTAs here. I wasn't expecting it, because the set is in the living room on the far side of the house from the transmitters, with stucco construction, which I believe means metal lath in the walls. One of the channels did require some fiddling with the UHF loop position to get error-free reception.

Anyway, the sound output is very low with the Insignia on the CTC-5 super chassis, so tomorrow I will be trying some other converters to see what happens. Anyway, I will be looking at the superb owl on this cranky old beast, at least a little, for grins and giggles.

Watching the superb owl gave me a chance to see any remaining problems with the CTC-5, and I see two:

1) The color oscillator setup has drifted, and loses lock when the tint is set extreme counterclockwise (worse when cold). Will have to redo the oscillator alignment, which is a multi-step pain in the butt on this chassis, not just a simple "tune for zero beat."

2) The burst gate is too wide, and bites into video, causing varying tint streaks depending on what's on the left side of the picture. This will probably require checking all R and C values in the gate circuit and looking at the gate pulse with a scope.

Otherwise, it was interesting to note a couple of things about the show's production:

Broadcasters are no longer afraid to put important info (like the current score) outside the 4x3 window.
Commercial producers sometimes deliberately use super-short letter box that is inside the HD picture height (black bars top and bottom even on the zoomed/cropped 4x3 picture).

Will post some pix when I get them off the camera.

Did somebody say superb owl? Here is a superb example of an owl:

http://www.electronixandmore.com/ada...owlvstruck.jpg

Image from this news story. Caption from me. :D

I always found the Magnavox's to have weak audio on certain sets.
IIRC, Tom Carlson commented on the reason. Most of the other makes don't seem to have that problem.

I found a volume control setting on the Insignia that I forgot was there. It was turned down to about 70%, not enough to restore full volume at 100%.

Today, I decided to mess with the chroma oscillator without going through the whole procedure, since the worst I could do is require going through it anyway. By alternately jockying the oscillator and burst amp coils, I managed to get full tint control range without losing lock. However, it took a rather large adjustment of the oscillator, and the tint setting is now different for the DVD player and the OTA converter, I guess due to chroma frequency being somewhat different. Eventually I will have to bite the bullet.

Back on topic, here are some shots.

The digital camera and Adobe Lightroomreport that the picture is very blue, over 10,000 k. For these pictures, the white balance was set to Daylight in Lightroom. They appear somewhat bluish, as they do in person.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/744/32...f839a59b_b.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/693/32...2079e724_b.jpg

On this one, you can see the tint pulling on the players' arms:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/405/32...e483cb6c_b.jpg

Here are three more

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/739/32...ac941b4d_b.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/758/32...e4ae95cc_b.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/413/32...ff5be323_b.jpg

This one shows the tint pulling across the eyes and nose, due to a colorful area at the left side.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/319/32...7ff02c2e_b.jpg

Show Off!

Seriously, nice, actually very nice picture...

What, nothing about my superb owl?! ;) :screwy: :stupid:

On a more serious/related(?) note, this was the first Big Game™ which I did not watch on a CRT television. :sigh: Our 27" Sony Wega Trinitron set, which has served as our living room TV since we bought it new in 2006, seems to be on its last legs. The picture has gone fuzzy, and the color is way off, requiring me to dial the tint control all the way to one end. In addition, the screen goes blank from time to time, with the power LED blinking some sort of code and/or lighting steadily when it does. It's still sitting on its stand, but similar to how folks used to put a new TV on top of the old console set it replaced, we now have a 29" Element flatscreen set sitting on the stand in front of the Sony. A sad end to a once-great tube set. :tears:
-Adam

More on the tint pulling. I have noticed for some time that the set wanted 120vac to make full width. I finally paid attention, and watched it come on today, and saw that the right side was a bit compressed and gradually filled out in a few seconds as things warmed up.

I have a couple of replacement horizontal output tubes I bought a while ago just in case. Substituting one restored full width with line voltage down to 110v. I also think it may have fixed the burst gate pulse, as I don't see the tint pulling (but have to look a while longer in case I'm just not watching the right material to see it).

When I pulled off the plate connector, the plate cap came with it. Had to pry it out of the connector with pliers. Now it has been sprayed with De-Oxit, so hopefully this won't happen again.