Mitsubishi 2060u CRT picture improvement

[WWDWD]

I have made what I think is a big improvement to the picture quality of this 2060u CRT and I am curious of anyone's thoughts or recommendations if there is any which is welcome.

Ever since I had this CRT monitor (for a few years now)I had an issue where the picture was so dark it was difficult and even impossible to make out what some things are on the screen. The picture isn't dim as strange as this sounds as it can get quite bright, but only in the case with brighter objects on the screen where darker objects are dimmer then what they should be or not visible.

I tried raising the brightness but I had issues where the blacks would turn to gray by the time the picture wasn't so dark anymore . I tried using the NVIDIA gamma control which fixed this issue but I had to turn it up around 1.7 sometimes 2 at most (1 is default) however this also had issues with washed out colors and even some nasty color banding effects when watching movies during dark scenes.

Finally long story short, I was digging around in the service menu and discovered that if I raise the red green and blue bias levels just right (I think this is also called cut off from what I hear or drive?) I seemed to have made a very dark murky picture now much much more viewable and even the NVIDIA gamma set to 1! And wow the colors like never before!

I adjusted the red green and blue bias (cut off?) up quite a bit from where they were by eye, I wouldn't recommend anyone do this as I found it very time consuming and frustrating, and the picture always appeared off later . I didn't have a color meter so I used a color counter app on my phone which conveniently graphs the Red Green Blue including their values down to the nearest digit, this obviously worked better than my eyes did.

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions? Tube wearing out?

 

[WWDWD]

After red green blue bias adjustment, as you can see the display is not overly dark except for characteristics of the photo, picture was taken from a cellphone with resolution down sampled and compressed. NVIDIA gamma control is set to default, monitor brightness set to 50 and monitor contrast set to 80. If you would like to see other displayed content I can see what I can do.

 

[WWDWD]

Here we have the 2060u CRT being compared to a SyncMaster 204B LCD, the LCD takes the edge on sharpness but the CRT isn't that far behind being a little softer. For colors I think the CRT is clearly better but the LCD is a TN panel probably would be better with IPS panel. Notice how the LCD does better on reflections compared to the CRT however the CRT does better with light glare. The LCD is brighter.

 

[WWDWD]

Here is a much better look at the 2060u CRT and the 204B LCD in action, both at 1600x1200 at 60 Hz. Notice how the picture is formed differently on the CRT versus the LCD. Although LCD's are great at sharpness CRT's can be very good as well. I had difficulties getting a good shot of the CRT as you can see from the different shades of brightness, my camera went haywire a few times until I finally got something decent.

2060u CRT top or first, 204B LCD bottom or second

 

[WWDWD]

The 2060u picture revised, taken from an actual camera this time and not a cellphone.

 

[jbltecnicspro]

Did you figure out your issue? The thing I would check for is what your gamma is. But this requires a light meter - a colorimeter.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...t=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=Tekrefurbs&_osacat=0

This is what I have. Basically, you want to look at if you're getting 2.2 - 2.4 gamma and if you're bright enough.

Could it be that you're simply expecting too much and you've gotten used to LCD? Most CRT monitors only top out at 100 nits at full white. That's on the very low end for most modern LCD's now. Put it this way, my Samsung LCD, to get 105 nits at full white, requires me taking my backlight brightness down to 10 percent. I shit you not. My old Sony monitors, fully calibrated, topped out at 105 nits at 100% contrast! Because from your pictures taken, I say your CRT monitor looks fabulous.

To answer your questions though. No - raising the bias will essentially just raise the bottom-end on each of your guns. It's akin to raising the brightness, which raises all three guns equally. So you'd end up in a situation again where you'll make your blacks more grey. But with a color cast because you're probably not raising it equally.

Hope this helps. My suggestion is, get a colorimeter and calibrate. Or - if you don't want to do that, just use your monitor in a light-controlled environment. Like I said, your image quality looks fine in the pictures. You may be simply expecting more brightness than it's capable of putting out.

 

[WWDWD]

Thanks for the response

I would agree that I got used to the brightness as well as the gamma characteristics of a LCD, every thing is so bright and so visible but unfortunately at the expense of black levels. Over time I found when watching certain movies or TV shows, especially at night, it didn't appear as immersive as I would like it to be on a LCD. I looked at OLED but found them expensive and their tendency for burn in until I thought about the CRT which has black levels similar to OLED but without as much as the burn in issue.

I have tested the brightness of the CRT and it seems quite strong (bright), especially when raising the red green and blue gain to about 60% while briefly raising the contrast to 100%. However it is my understanding the more you raise the red green blue gain and the higher the contrast is set the more the tube is consumed (could be wrong comments are welcome) so under normal used I back it of to about 50-60% on contrast but when watching movies about 80%.

The red green and blue bias helped my muddy black levels to a point, and you were right when I continued to raise the bias the black levels suffered. I did manage to eliminate the color cast where dark greys and black look neutral from what I can tell but a color meter is definitely something I will be considering to get it right.

I still have muddy black levels so my work around is setting the Nvidia gama control to 1.3, before I had to used as high as 1.8. I am afraid this problem is still unresolved. I wish there was a low level boost in the service menu where I can pull up my shadow levels perfectly while leaving the Nivida gamma control to default of 1.

Update
I agree as well that the picture is fantastic, it's a privilege to have such a monitor like this given how rare and expensive they are these days.

 

[jbltecnicspro]

Thanks for the response

I would agree that I got used to the brightness as well as the gamma characteristics of a LCD, every thing is so bright and so visible but unfortunately at the expense of black levels. Over time I found when watching certain movies or TV shows, especially at night, it didn't appear as immersive as I would like it to be on a LCD. I looked at OLED but found them expensive and their tendency for burn in until I thought about the CRT which has black levels similar to OLED but without as much as the burn in issue.

I have tested the brightness of the CRT and it seems quite strong (bright), especially when raising the red green and blue gain to about 60% while briefly raising the contrast to 100%. However it is my understanding the more you raise the red green blue gain and the higher the contrast is set the more the tube is consumed (could be wrong comments are welcome) so under normal used I back it of to about 50-60% on contrast but when watching movies about 80%.

The red green and blue bias helped my muddy black levels to a point, and you were right when I continued to raise the bias the black levels suffered. I did manage to eliminate the color cast where dark greys and black look neutral from what I can tell but a color meter is definitely something I will be considering to get it right.

I still have muddy black levels so my work around is setting the Nvidia gama control to 1.3, before I had to used as high as 1.8. I am afraid this problem is still unresolved. I wish there was a low level boost in the service menu where I can pull up my shadow levels perfectly while leaving the Nivida gamma control to default of 1.

Update
I agree as well that the picture is fantastic, it's a privilege to have such a monitor like this given how rare and expensive they are these days.

Get a meter so that you can calibrate properly. There are open source tools that work with the DTP-94. My lowish-end Viewsonic looks fantastic. 2.3 gamma and 3500:1 contrast. White level could be a little higher but in a light controlled setting it’s fine.

I too have an Nvidia card and don’t need to touch any of the driver’s controls for my picture quality.