A few days ago on the way back from work I found a portable Matsui TV/VCR combo left outside on the street in the rain. I really don’t need any more CRT (especially budget consumer grade) but because it is small and light I decided to pick up to have a play with it.
After letting it dry out it just works (though needed a focus adjustment):
The VCR however would only display garbled video/audio but after clean in the heads its seems fine.
Peaking inside we have an ORION tube
It needs a little bit more work but is fine as it for the moment.
However, the tubes glass has a few scratches on it and then I remember I had another portable Matsui CRT (not a combo unit) in the shed outside that I had not yet tested that I was told it makes weird sounds and doesn’t show a picture.
Maybe I could do a tube swap?
May as well test it for myself and well it hissed violently, so I immediately turned it off and took off the back to see what is going on inside (worst case scenario’s flyback aching or tubes vacuum broke):
Man this is filthy inside… So turned it back on to see if I could see anything and the hiss softened after a few moments, then stopped but nothing bad was noticeably happening.
The screen then came to life:
Video is wobbling so I suspect the hissing is a cap gone seriously bad and venting.
Though with all the junk inside I can not see which.
The tube inside this is a Phillips and sadly has no convergence rings on it 
A tube swap is probably fine though as seems to use the same chassis and connector on the tube itself.
Not sure what I will do with these now. Maybe recap them both and give them a good clean out?
Go ahead and do a tube swap and try to move the convergence rings over to this tube?
Or just polish the scratches out?
Undecided… I kind of like the VCR/TV combo and been using to play an NTSC SNES the last few nights.
