Hey! That’s my blog/monitor!
It was a fairly easy mod - and the majority of it is on a perfboard anyway. As long as you’re careful with the points on the main jungle board of the crt, you’ll be fine
I’d definitely recommend it, it’s the best CRT I’ve ever owned.
Hey awesome! Cool blog by the way, since I found that post I’ve been working my way through the other stuff. That particular post just jumped out it me because of the insane prices on the RGB cards for these monitors. I’m pretty invested in component and S-video in my setup, but this could make for a great enough set to justify a couple of RGB cables.
You could always convert RGB to component. It’s a very easy and clean conversion.
I have an adapter that takes my component signal and puts it to my scart switch. I just have to change the sync on my pvm but it’s nice to have everything through one feed. How do you do the opposite? Converting rgb to component?
I’ve considered going to RGB several times, but I’ve stuck to component and S-video mostly because of the price of cables and switches. I use a couple nice component switches to connect all my consoles, and replacing them with a gscart then grabbing quality cables for everything would be a chunk of change.
Also, I picked up an immaculate Sony KV-27fs320 about two months ago (the same model @Radarscope1 was looking at in November) and it ended up replacing the 20" PVM! Using component allowed me to drop that right into my setup alongside my 13" monitors.
I don’t know what I’d do if I got a NES or more importantly a PC-Engine, which I’m considering. I assume there are S-video options for the PCE?
Would love to see pics of that Trinitron.
You can mod NES for component an s-vid. Not as commonly seen but it can be done.
I’ll have to look into that, modding for component may be overkill but man it’d be nice.
A more technical question, would going component or S-video avoid the issues with RGB NES palettes since these are NTSC video?
…And I’m always ready to share some CRT pics! Scaling these ruined the scanlines so these are full size. If that’s a no-go I can take them out and just link the album.
Here it is after I wrangled it into the setup, I had basically rearranged everything to make it work and so it’s a mess here, I had just kicked back for a break with some Godzilla.
And here are some snaps from some random games! All are component input.
I’ve heard mixed reviews on those, but if it works well that’s an awesome piece of kit for anyone doing RGB in NA.
I’d spend a few extra bucks and get a Shinybow SB-2840. I love mine!
I seriously considered the Shinybow when I was getting started and still deciding on RGB. At this point I am super excited for the HD Retrovision PS1/2 cables though. My current PS2 cable is a cheap multi-cable and I’d like to have something better.
I’ve never heard anyone complain about the Retrovision cables. They make great stuff! I only opted for a SCART to Component solution to ensure I could use consoles for which Retrovision cables aren’t produced (and to save a little money). In the end, I probably didn’t save much money because a good SCART cable costs at least $20, decent SCART switches start at $40, and the Shinybow was $80. Of course, now that I’ve made the initial investment, it shouldn’t cost much more than $20 per console to add additional systems with SCART connections.
Is there any way to decrease the sharpness of a PVM 20l5? I’m looking to condense my setup slightly by retiring my 20M2U. The only problem is that the 20l5 is to darn sharp for 240p content (in my humble opinion). The ability to soften the image would be nice if it exists.
All CRTs should have a focus pot somewhere near the inside back. I believe @BeerMonkey defocused one of his sharp JVC CRTs. Slightly off convergence will also decrease sharpness (I say slightly because you don’t wanna do too much and end up with severe red/blue/green color fringing).
I definitely don’t want to do mess with the convergence at all. Misaligned convergence would ruin the set in my opinion.
I also don’t want to use the focus pot because I love the sharpness of the picture at 480i and 480p and it defeats the purpose of an all-in-one solution if I have to open the set up every time I wanted to switch between 240p and 480p.
I’m really looking for menu setting or service menu setting if one exists. But if the answer is “no” then that is good to know too. I’ll probably just end up using the 20L5 and having the 20M2U in another location somewhere… or just learn to accept the overly sharp picture and thick black (non)scanlined rows of pixels of the 20L5.
Yeah, can’t think of anything that would only affect 240p and not other res modes. Most CRTs don’t even distinguish 240p as its own unique mode and often pop up “480i” on the OSD when you put on a retro console (I’ve seen 240p described as basically a hack of 480i). You really just need to keep multiple CRTs for different use cases.
Yea, I wouldn’t expect a CRT to distinguish between 240p and 480i. I just wanted the ability to turn down the sharpness manually at will without opening up the set.
I had and have desire to do this but never actually did it.
Oh man, I love my 20L5. My BVM20F1U didn’t look nearly as good as my PVM does. I love how sharp it is. Its funny how we all have our desired look for crts. I adopted LCDs early on so until I got back into retro I hadn’t watched a tube tv in over a decade. I think you get used to that sharp look from emulation and you don’t really want to go back to how it “should” have looked. I would just keep multiple monitors for different things.
I’m finding myself leaning towards 600 TVL PVMs as opposed to the 800+ ones I have. There’s this amazing balance between consumer CRT fuzziness of the overall picture mixed with the more defined scanlines that PVM’s produce over consumer CRT’s that I love. When I side by side my 2030 and F1U the F1U looks “harsh” compared to the 2030 now. I find myself focusing on the scanlines more than the actual picture because they are so defined.
If you have an OSSC turn your scanlines up to 100 for the BVM and the 30’s for the 2030 to see what I mean. It could also be that I’ve been using 800 TVL sets for 10+ years and like looking at something different.
