Sony GDM-FW900 - NIB

Furious Nerd said:
Would like to see the FW900 in person though to see what the hype is all about!
Crazy to think such a relatively "old" monitor is so much "better" than anything we have today, still.
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now that i see many people intrigued about the fw900 with its rather overhype being generated. for those interested, me being a current active owner of a fw900 want to say a couple of observations and personal opinion about it maybe some of you find interesting and usefull;

one of the strong points of the fw900, the lifelike motion quality it produces is not exclusive to it, any crt monitor i have seen produces as good motion quality as fw900 does, i also currently own an ordinary compaq 7550 17 inch 4:3 crt monitor ("max" 1600x1200@65hz from the manual) and to my eyes, both have the same beautifull motion quality. as a matter of fact, the only diference overall i perceibe between both is fw900 being bigger and widescreen, (fw900 takes longer to warmup after being turned off for hours though)

however i can also use widescreen combos on the compaq like up to 1920 x 1080 @75hz 1440x900 @ 90hz via custom resolution and they look good since crts have no physical fixed pixel native resolution as modern display have and can display any resolution-refresh rate combos that are inside their horizontal and vertical refresh rate limits very good, just have to reduce the vertical area of the screen area to avoid image looking verical stretched since is a 16:9 ratio being displayed on a 4:3 ratio screen.
however i have never hardware (colorimeter) calibrate the crt monitors so i dont know how further it would allow me to improve the fw900 from the compaq, maybe i would be able to get even better things like deeper blacks than the compaq this way, not certain about this though

even when the fw900 or any other crt i have seen can produce superior black levels than any lcd based modern display i have seen (which is specially notable on dark rooms), when being close to oled blacks, crt black are still not as deep as oled in all circumstances, i mean, i tested on a dark room, with an oled based smarthphone with those crts and this is specially notable when many objects are displayed accross the screen, you still can see even with black level set to 0 on the crts, a bit of bright on the black areas of the screen, on the oled based screen those areas are so pure black you dont see absolutely anything. i think this is called the "ansi contrast"

however, if there are fewer and smaller objects on the crts screens, blacks on the crts looked as deep as on the oled based phone, i was not able to see anything on the black areas of the screen as well on the crt monitors in this situation.
again i have not hardware calibrated the crt monitors so i have my doubts that would change this test results since i tested with black level set to 0, the blackest posible.


as for retrogaming on fw900, since fw900 is made to display high resolution images (up to res like 2560x1440, comparing to modern ones) low resolution retro gaming looks ugly from a pixelated perspective on the fw900 as well as it does on a modern monitor as it is.
however, properly setup filters for those games (like those found on mame emulator), retro gaming on both crts becomes beautifull, thanks to their colorfull, brightfull 60hz motion clarity ability, but again it pretty much depends on the filters being used to avoid pixelated look.
on the compaq crt retro games looks a bit less pixelated since the bigger the screen, the more details (pixels) are notable
as for scanlines some retro fans like, i personally never liked them even on original retro game hardware, on my crt monitors they were only barely notable at 640x480, i use to play those type of games at 1280x960 60hz on the fw900 were there is no notable scanlikes for my eyes and is a good thing and an improvement over the original retrogame hardware to my likes since i dont like them.

-modern games on both look beautifull, just smaller on the compaq for obvious reasons and for the same reason distant objects on the compaq are a bit hard to see, but from a game graphics quality perspectve there is nothing to envy from a modern display to my eyes.



after all i have witnessed and compared with the fw900, i would say this monitor is not worth all those absurd prices baing asked, even when its still strong advantages agains modern monitors even in 2021.
yes. this is the only monitor i have seen that can deliver perfect viewing angles, excelent color quality, excelent latency, excelent lifelike motion quality, excelent luminance levels, soft flicker feeling compared to modern strobing flicker to deliver even enjoyable low refresh rates like 60 fps limited motion quality content, close to oled quality blacks, more modern physical widescreen shape, etc all those all in one package.

but this monitor alone as it is, as any other crt monitor, are completely useless on any modern hardware since they only support analog signals, this issue should make its value decreased, even when there are few worth digital to analog converters to use it properpy with modern hardware and those few converters dont come wthout issues.

also its overweight, power comsuption and size, (i personaly cannot lift fw900 alone), those other aspects should make its value descrease as well


also all other crt monitors are as good on all those aspects as the fw900, again the only difference i perceibe comparting the fw900 against an ordinary compaq 17 inch crt was the screen shape and size (both have beautifull motion clarity with 0 crosstalk at any refresh, nice brightness (luminance) levels, vivid colors, perfect viewing angles, same soft flicker perseption even at 60hz (so soft that is unotable while in gaming to my eyes) and both have rare barely notable phosphor trails while in motion and in just some high contrast situations, vanishing fast enough and are definitely not distracting at all to consider those as a "flaw", both crts delivering excelent latency, etc

so in my opinion the only worth thing of fw900 against other crt monitors is its physical widescreen area, but again, you can also achieve custom widescreen resolutions on other 4:3 crt monitors as well.
if an ordinary 17 inch crt monitor allowed me to reach up to 1440z900 @90hz 1920x1080@75hz, bet how far would get those other much cheaper and higher resolution -refresh 21 inch 4:3 crt monitors.


maybe those oled users would not see anything remarkable on the fw900 or any other crt monitor if they dont care about motion clarity.
but sadly motion quality features side flaws of today display tech actually do worse than better to overall image quality, even those oleds like the lg cx series, which from what i have read have a very limited strobing support to few high constant framerate requiring refresh rates, and dimming the display considerably (down to just 60 nits against crt monitors that ranges between 100-115 nits) for 60hz content at least and increases input lag while on their oled motion pro mode, making the motion mode practicaly wortless to use.


personaly i would not pay more than 500 for a brand new fw900, and my personal advice for those tempted to buy one due to the hype digital foundry - eurogamer created (to me is the real reason why fw900 princing become absurdly high) is to check for another much cheaper crt monitors that will do the job as good as fw900, if widescreen physical area is not critical. but again, it can also be posible to create custom widescreen resolutions on other 4:3 crt monitors, just with some top and bottom screen area reduced like a letterbox movie.
 
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I have a F520 in relatively good working order still and absolutely can appreciate it for what it is. However, I also have a CX48 and would never, ever spend more than I did on it for a CRT and try to rationalize that purchase on the basis of performance--it's just not competitive in 2021, period. This auction is for the purchase of a collectible, with a great deal of nostalgia value. And as anyone who has attended a premiere vintage auto show can attest to, there are few limits on price when nostalgia enters the picture.

Whether that collectible works, or is competitive with its modern descendants, is irrelevant.
 
It jumped from 10k to 35k in one bid. I doubt that person is going to pay.

In fact the bid history looks suspicious, after ~$4k it starts making huge jumps. I bet the seller will need to start offering bidders the chance to buy the item since no one at the top will pay. One of my biggest gripes of eBay auctions.
 
3dfan said:
now that i see many people intrigued about the fw900 with its rather overhype being generated. for those interested, me being a current active owner of a fw900 want to say a couple of observations and personal opinion about it maybe some of you find interesting and usefull;

one of the strong points of the fw900, the lifelike motion quality it produces is not exclusive to it, any crt monitor i have seen produces as good motion quality as fw900 does, i also currently own an ordinary compaq 7550 17 inch 4:3 crt monitor ("max" 1600x1200@65hz from the manual) and to my eyes, both have the same beautifull motion quality. as a matter of fact, the only diference overall i perceibe between both is fw900 being bigger and widescreen, (fw900 takes longer to warmup after being turned off for hours though)

however i can also use widescreen combos on the compaq like up to 1920 x 1080 @75hz 1440x900 @ 90hz via custom resolution and they look good since crts have no physical fixed pixel native resolution as modern display have and can display any resolution-refresh rate combos that are inside their horizontal and vertical refresh rate limits very good, just have to reduce the vertical area of the screen area to avoid image looking verical stretched since is a 16:9 ratio being displayed on a 4:3 ratio screen.
however i have never hardware (colorimeter) calibrate the crt monitors so i dont know how further it would allow me to improve the fw900 from the compaq, maybe i would be able to get even better things like deeper blacks than the compaq this way, not certain about this though

even when the fw900 or any other crt i have seen can produce superior black levels than any lcd based modern display i have seen (which is specially notable on dark rooms), when being close to oled blacks, crt black are still not as deep as oled in all circumstances, i mean, i tested on a dark room, with an oled based smarthphone with those crts and this is specially notable when many objects are displayed accross the screen, you still can see even with black level set to 0 on the crts, a bit of bright on the black areas of the screen, on the oled based screen those areas are so pure black you dont see absolutely anything. i think this is called the "ansi contrast"

however, if there are fewer and smaller objects on the crts screens, blacks on the crts looked as deep as on the oled based phone, i was not able to see anything on the black areas of the screen as well on the crt monitors in this situation.
again i have not hardware calibrated the crt monitors so i have my doubts that would change this test results since i tested with black level set to 0, the blackest posible.


as for retrogaming on fw900, since fw900 is made to display high resolution images (up to res like 2560x1440, comparing to modern ones) low resolution retro gaming looks ugly from a pixelated perspective on the fw900 as well as it does on a modern monitor as it is.
however, properly setup filters for those games (like those found on mame emulator), retro gaming on both crts becomes beautifull, thanks to their colorfull, brightfull 60hz motion clarity ability, but again it pretty much depends on the filters being used to avoid pixelated look.
on the compaq crt retro games looks a bit less pixelated since the bigger the screen, the more details (pixels) are notable
as for scanlines some retro fans like, i personally never liked them even on original retro game hardware, on my crt monitors they were only barely notable at 640x480, i use to play those type of games at 1280x960 60hz on the fw900 were there is no notable scanlikes for my eyes and is a good thing and an improvement over the original retrogame hardware to my likes since i dont like them.

-modern games on both look beautifull, just smaller on the compaq for obvious reasons and for the same reason distant objects on the compaq are a bit hard to see, but from a game graphics quality perspectve there is nothing to envy from a modern display to my eyes.



after all i have witnessed and compared with the fw900, i would say this monitor is not worth all those absurd prices baing asked, even when its still strong advantages agains modern monitors even in 2021.
yes. this is the only monitor i have seen that can deliver perfect viewing angles, excelent color quality, excelent latency, excelent lifelike motion quality, excelent luminance levels, soft flicker feeling compared to modern strobing flicker to deliver even enjoyable low refresh rates like 60 fps limited motion quality content, close to oled quality blacks, more modern physical widescreen shape, etc all those all in one package.

but this monitor alone as it is, as any other crt monitor, are completely useless on any modern hardware since they only support analog signals, this issue should make its value decreased, even when there are few worth digital to analog converters to use it properpy with modern hardware and those few converters dont come wthout issues.

also its overweight, power comsuption and size, (i personaly cannot lift fw900 alone), those other aspects should make its value descrease as well


also all other crt monitors are as good on all those aspects as the fw900, again the only difference i perceibe comparting the fw900 against an ordinary compaq 17 inch crt was the screen shape and size (both have beautifull motion clarity with 0 crosstalk at any refresh, nice brightness (luminance) levels, vivid colors, perfect viewing angles, same soft flicker perseption even at 60hz (so soft that is unotable while in gaming to my eyes) and both have rare barely notable phosphor trails while in motion and in just some high contrast situations, vanishing fast enough and are definitely not distracting at all to consider those as a "flaw", both crts delivering excelent latency, etc

so in my opinion the only worth thing of fw900 against other crt monitors is its physical widescreen area, but again, you can also achieve custom widescreen resolutions on other 4:3 crt monitors as well.
if an ordinary 17 inch crt monitor allowed me to reach up to 1440z900 @90hz 1920x1080@75hz, bet how far would get those other much cheaper and higher resolution -refresh 21 inch 4:3 crt monitors.


maybe those oled users would not see anything remarkable on the fw900 or any other crt monitor if they dont care about motion clarity.
but sadly motion quality features side flaws of today display tech actually do worse than better to overall image quality, even those oleds like the lg cx series, which from what i have read have a very limited strobing support to few high constant framerate requiring refresh rates, and dimming the display considerably (down to just 60 nits against crt monitors that ranges between 100-115 nits) for 60hz content at least and increases input lag while on their oled motion pro mode, making the motion mode practicaly wortless to use.


personaly i would not pay more than 500 for a brand new fw900, and my personal advice for those tempted to buy one due to the hype digital foundry - eurogamer created (to me is the real reason why fw900 princing become absurdly high) is to check for another much cheaper crt monitors that will do the job as good as fw900, if widescreen physical area is not critical. but again, it can also be posible to create custom widescreen resolutions on other 4:3 crt monitors, just with some top and bottom screen area reduced like a letterbox movie.
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Thank you for taking the time to write this. Do you have any experience with high end LCD gaming monitors? I wonder how CRT like the Sony FW900 compares to high end monitors like the Samsung Odyssey G7 or the Viewsonic XG270QG.
 
I think you guys are missing the point that it's a collectible now. Yes the average joe bloe shouldn't go out and buy an FW900 for over $500ish expecting it to be some kind of better value or holy grail compared to current tech (it's the bestALLaround but OLED better blacks etc, strobed 360hz LCDs better motion, plasma best for old movies + 3D).

A BNIB FW900 is completely collector territory. People competing to buy it are all 0.01%ers so the price is going to be high similar to certain vintage car markets.

7K+ doesn't surprise me at all. I'd probably pay $7k myself just to have it sit on a shelf for bragging rights, knowing the value is unlikely to decrease.
 
flegg said:
I think you guys are missing the point that it's a collectible now. Yes the average joe bloe shouldn't go out and buy an FW900 for over $500ish expecting it to be some kind of better value or holy grail compared to current tech (it's the bestALLaround but OLED better blacks etc, strobed 360hz LCDs better motion, plasma best for old movies + 3D).

A BNIB FW900 is completely collector territory. People competing to buy it are all 0.01%ers so the price is going to be high similar to certain vintage car markets.

7K+ doesn't surprise me at all. I'd probably pay $7k myself just to have it sit on a shelf for bragging rights, knowing the value is unlikely to decrease.
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I’m a diehard if diehards. And not even I can agree with this. Guaranteed whoever won the auction didn’t pay. People do that shit all the time on flea bay.
 
Is it unlikely to decrease though? How much longer before these stop working purely due to age induced breakdown of components? Maybe CRTs last an exceptionally long amount of time?
 
Honestly the FW900 (or any other modern CRT for that matter) doesn't look that great. It looks good, but from the hype job video that DF did (or didn't intend to do), people think it can make 720p look like 8K or something. It does not. Jaggies will still be jaggies at low resolution despite the lack of physical pixels. A bright, moving image is however virtually perfect down to the pixel even as it moves across the screen, and there is no lag whatsoever added by the display logic itself (it will still be limited to the refresh rate output from the video source).

If you have never see one you are not really missing anything. Get yourself an HDR OLED and never look back. Now if you have seen one there are obviously aspects that no one modern display has been able to reproduce in conjunction with all others. That's why it's good to have, but it won't change your life.
 
cybereality said:
$35K, no way. You could buy a nice car for that much.
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I'd argue you can buy an excellent car for half that price.

Stryker7314 said:
Yep, can easily buy like 3 scalped video cards with that.
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Pshh, where are you finding working cards that cheap?

Furious Nerd said:
Is it unlikely to decrease though? How much longer before these stop working purely due to age induced breakdown of components? Maybe CRTs last an exceptionally long amount of time?
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jbltecnicspro said:
The tubes do, the rest of the components don’t.
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In my experience old tech can be maintained if you got the time and willingness to do so. When I still had my collection of CRTs, there was one that was recapped, one recabled, all of them recalibrated a few times. On the other hand, LCD goes bad and you're mostly SOL unless you want to replace the board or the actual panel. That said, an FW900 is probably a lot more bespoke internally than your 15/17" no frills CRT...
 
SamuelL421 said:
I'd argue you can buy an excellent car for half that price.


Pshh, where are you finding working cards that cheap?



In my experience old tech can be maintained if you got the time and willingness to do so. When I still had my collection of CRTs, there was one that was recapped, one recabled, all of them recalibrated a few times. On the other hand, LCD goes bad and you're mostly SOL unless you want to replace the board or the actual panel. That said, an FW900 is probably a lot more bespoke internally than your 15/17" no frills CRT...
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Agree 100%! CRT’s are way more durable than LCD.

But... there are certain components - flyback, other transformers, IC’s, that aren’t readily available. Without reverse-engineering or making your own, if any of those go out then you need to find a donor and hope for the best.
 
XacTactX said:
Thank you for taking the time to write this. Do you have any experience with high end LCD gaming monitors? I wonder how CRT like the Sony FW900 compares to high end monitors like the Samsung Odyssey G7 or the Viewsonic XG270QG.
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my experience in real life with high end lcd gaming monitors is rather limited unfortunatelly, i would love to be able to test more and compare to crt as a hobby and to help clarify to the public some tergiversations i see on the internet from some individuals fooling users and using false advertising wth crt monitors in order to sell modern gaming monitors.

i have seen some modern gaming monitors when i go to buy computer parts and do my tour on some pc gaming shops i see, but always go away frustrated when watching their blured moving images.

someday i remember i saw one being showcased with blur reduction mode, i asked the seller to enable it, but it became so dimm obfuscating the motion improvement that even the seller said it was definitelly better with that blur setting disabled.
other day i saw a gaming laptop supporting 240hz and ran a motion test at 240hz and it looked really close to crt motion quality, however it needs constant 240fps which makes it non practical to my tastes in real gaming usage, also the laptop didnt support any blur reduction mode, so i was allowed to reduce its refresh rate to 120hz and test a 60fps game using a black frame insertion software (bfi) to test how much motion blur it would improve but the results didnt pleased me much, since via software bfi, a black frame is inserted to a permament lit backlight, its definitelly not the same as using a hardware based bfi, even when motion clarity was improved, color quality was notable degraded and notable brightness loss was also noted.

i have also compared an ips 24 inch gaming monitor supporting a maximum 75hz single strobe (not a high end one but helped to give real life test idea of how things like strobing flicker compares to crt flicker) and aside of bad permament notable motion artifacts, its 75hz strobing flicker really felt like the crts flicker at 60hz, so it make me conclude 60hz crt like single strobing on modern monitor should feel like someting like 45hz on crt, was able to test down to 47hz on crts and is really agressive flicker, so agressive that no wonder manufacturers are locking 60hz single strobing on most modern monitors.

i research a lot about modern gaming monitors to have a more realistic idea of they cons and pros, specialy about their motion quality which is a critical aspect to me, but its enought for me to conclude still far away to achieve usable crt motion quality on those.
sure there are coming 360hz modern monitors that can delievery crt like motion clarity without losing brigtness as badly nor increasing input lag and maybe with 0 crosstalk or orther strobing artifacts, but when taking into account that constant 360 fps would be requiered to achieve that, my hopes to get crts at least matched in that motion quality departament lower.

but however in my opinion, if motion clarity is not important, the fw900 and any other crt monitor are not relevant anymore.

Furious Nerd said:
How much longer before these stop working purely due to age induced breakdown of components? Maybe CRTs last an exceptionally long amount of time?
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thats a good question i have asked myself, however i believe definitelly crt tech was made to last longer than current tech, we have an about 30 years old crt tv with its image quality, luminance still very good, also have a much more modern than my 2003 fw900 and 17 inch compaq crt, aoc LE24H037 lcd led based monitor purchased new in 2014, and however when the lcd had 300 cd/m2 peak luminance when new, now days i definitely can note the fw900 and compaq being brighter than the lcd, (crt monitors that wont peak higher that around 115 cd/m2 luminance level) even if setting the lcd led brightness levels to max, so definitelly there is a notable wear on the lcd leds peak luminance.


aeliusg said:
If you have never see one you are not really missing anything. Get yourself an HDR OLED
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not as easy move if motion quality is important, hdr oled like lg cx 48 crt motion quality motion pro mode still come with flaws agains crts lke very dim display (just 60 nits) and this mode also increases input lag, at least at 60hz for 60hz gaming, this is what this cx48 user claimed from his own tests: https://forums.blurbusters.com/view...sid=8c79c931b461c49e0465a0d21e876f7c&start=40

it remains unclear to me how its motion pro mode behaves on other reported fecuencyes like 100 120 hz and if it would support something like 80hz (i have my doubts if that user was sincere when claiming the cx48 crt motion quality mode gets so dimn and with higher input lag just for the 60hz mode or is really overall for all other motion pro enabled fecuencies)



however i agree if motion quality is not important, there is not anything really important missed from going from a fw900 or any crt monitor to a hdr oled.
 
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I had a 240Hz TN panel for a bit, if I played older games on it (like HL2) I would say the motion was better than what I recall of CRT. You just need to play old games.
 
the new strobed 240+ LCDs that give CRT motion unfortunately have really terrible black levels (see oculus quest 2). CX came out with a ton of bugs. OLEDs with functional BFI at 240hz+ would be nice, can only hope it happens next few years.
 
How long can an OLED really last though? CRT only emissive display tech that can last 10+ years, my CRT gaming monitor going on 17 years now with regular use (repaired it myself twice), plasma or oled get burn in or un-repairable panel failure. I hope microLED will last a long time. I am ready to move on. At least LCD can last a long time for all its downsides.
 
3dfan said:
not as easy move if motion quality is important, hdr oled like lg cx 48 crt motion quality motion pro mode still come with flaws agains crts lke very dim display (just 60 nits) and this mode also increases input lag, at least at 60hz for 60hz gaming, this is what this cx48 user claimed from his own tests: https://forums.blurbusters.com/view...sid=8c79c931b461c49e0465a0d21e876f7c&start=40

it remains unclear to me how its motion pro mode behaves on other reported fecuencyes like 100 120 hz and if it would support something like 80hz (i have my doubts if that user was sincere when claiming the cx48 crt motion quality mode gets so dimn and with higher input lag just for the 60hz mode or is really overall for all other motion pro enabled fecuencies)



however i agree if motion quality is not important, there is not anything really important missed from going from a fw900 or any crt monitor to a hdr oled.
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Just my two cents. Size does matter (insert dick joke here, hur hur).

Yes, 60nits is dim. But it's a 48-inch display. Perceived brightness is a thing and the larger the display, the brighter it can seem. I have actually the inverse "problem" with my PVM-9L3's. With white level settings at spec (Contrast set to mid point), you're getting 170 nits of brightness. Very bright on paper right? But since it's on an 8-inch screen, it doesn't seem like it's all that bright. You have to put your meter on it to see that it is indeed that bright.

So yes, 60 nits isn't very bright at all. But since it's a large screen, which is likely taking up a sizeable portion of your viewing when on a desk, it probably won't seem like it's that dim. I don't have one, so I'm speculating. But I do have a projector setup and I have a small, bright CRT, so I can tell you that yes - size will affect perceived brightness.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Just my two cents. Size does matter (insert dick joke here, hur hur).

Yes, 60nits is dim. But it's a 48-inch display. Perceived brightness is a thing and the larger the display, the brighter it can seem. I have actually the inverse "problem" with my PVM-9L3's. With white level settings at spec (Contrast set to mid point), you're getting 170 nits of brightness. Very bright on paper right? But since it's on an 8-inch screen, it doesn't seem like it's all that bright. You have to put your meter on it to see that it is indeed that bright.

So yes, 60 nits isn't very bright at all. But since it's a large screen, which is likely taking up a sizeable portion of your viewing when on a desk, it probably won't seem like it's that dim. I don't have one, so I'm speculating. But I do have a projector setup and I have a small, bright CRT, so I can tell you that yes - size will affect perceived brightness.
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Yeah the total light output of a 48" OLED at 60 nits (cd/m^2) is approximately 2x higher than a 24" CRT (assuming the same aspect ratio) at 120 nits since the OLED has ~4x the area. At the same perceived viewing angle, however, the lux is the same (since the diagonal is only 2x larger). But the OLED is not as clear since it has around 4 ms persistence I believe.
 
Kalessian said:
How long can an OLED really last though? CRT only emissive display tech that can last 10+ years, my CRT gaming monitor going on 17 years now with regular use (repaired it myself twice), plasma or oled get burn in or un-repairable panel failure. I hope microLED will last a long time. I am ready to move on. At least LCD can last a long time for all its downsides.
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LCD's themselves can last quite a long time but the supporting electronic parts not so much! Motherboards T-Con boards CCFL inverters and the actual tubes themselves and the same with their LED counterparts the LED chips and the ballasts (oh my bad those now "identity" as a driver) don't last long.
I'm all for vintage for most stuff I love my fluorescent lighting and I have a few HID fixtures (Ceramic Metal Halide) those can be had cheap now I got the M90 Metal Halide Ballast and a few lamps when the apartment complex I live in "upgraded" to LED trash lighting. I also use vintage audio fan and a few appliances this is when stuff was made for quality not quantity.
the old CRTS like early 1980's and below can last a long time it's the supporting gear that almost always fails
 
I feel like I screwed up. About 2-3 years ago, I sold a Cine9 with a burnt, but easily replaceable power supply, with HDMI input card w/remote, complete ceiling mount hardware, all 3 bulbs at over 90% life, plus an extra brand new red, and green bulb, for so much less than this that I almost want to kick myself. Judging by this auction, I could buy a new motorcycle for what it would have sold for today. LOL. Oh, well, it's a long way between an Ebay auction and cash in hand.
 
Gorankar said:
I feel like I screwed up. About 2-3 years ago, I sold a Cine9 with a burnt, but easily replaceable power supply, with HDMI input card w/remote, complete ceiling mount hardware, all 3 bulbs at over 90% life, plus an extra brand new red, and green bulb, for so much less than this that I almost want to kick myself. Judging by this auction, I could buy a new motorcycle for what it would have sold for today. LOL. Oh, well, it's a long way between an Ebay auction and cash in hand.
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Bulb?! Blasphemy! :)

CRT projectors are still worthless so you can still go get one and hold on to it if you want. Honestly I don’t know why you’d ever want to use one. Even if they’re great at gaming they’re way more susceptible to burn in.
 
jbltecnicspro and aeliusg: then, instead of basing on "nits" units, by looking from some cx48 users testimonials about its bfi mode, its definitelly understandable that its highest "high" motion pro mode which as happens with many modern monitors offering different bfi modes but their highest being the only mode delivering crt quality lifelike motion qualty, is really dim at least for the 60hz mode, since even those cx48 users claim only finding it usable in a dark room, so cx48 at that mode definitely seems even considerable dimmer than a crt monitor.

i personally have never needed to use any crt monitor on a dark room to apreciaty their screen visibility due to a dim screen.
even on a moderated natural lighted room i can use them without visual difficulties and still note a bright enough illuminated screen on them under that conditions.

some quotes from some cx48 users themselves extracted from what seems the official cx48 thread in this forum:


"IMO BFI on high is too dim"

"60hz requires the "high" BFI setting to look decent which means brightness (even with OLED light 100) will only be adequate for a really a dark room"

"With 60hz the only usable setting is high and motion clarity is excellent but brightness only adequate for pitch black room"
 
Anyone remember front projection CRT TVs?
We had one!



Also if you're old enough to remember those you certainly remember Curtis Mathes! :)
 
3dfan said:
jbltecnicspro and aeliusg: then, instead of basing on "nits" units, by looking from some cx48 users testimonials about its bfi mode, its definitelly understandable that its highest "high" motion pro mode which as happens with many modern monitors offering different bfi modes but their highest being the only mode delivering crt quality lifelike motion qualty, is really dim at least for the 60hz mode, since even those cx48 users claim only finding it usable in a dark room, so cx48 at that mode definitely seems even considerable dimmer than a crt monitor.

i personally have never needed to use any crt monitor on a dark room to apreciaty their screen visibility due to a dim screen.
even on a moderated natural lighted room i can use them without visual difficulties and still note a bright enough illuminated screen on them under that conditions.

some quotes from some cx48 users themselves extracted from what seems the official cx48 thread in this forum:


"IMO BFI on high is too dim"

"60hz requires the "high" BFI setting to look decent which means brightness (even with OLED light 100) will only be adequate for a really a dark room"

"With 60hz the only usable setting is high and motion clarity is excellent but brightness only adequate for pitch black room"
Click to expand...
Yeah it's true. 60 nits SDR is an order of magnitude less than most people are used to coming from modern LCDs and the latest OLEDs. So it is dim. Also the instantaneous brightness of CRT is very high for each trace to to produce a coherent image. That's different from having a duty cycle that produces around 4 ms of persistence. At 1 ms persistence to match a CRT the OLED would have to be able to use max HDR brightness of 600-800 nits on each pixel to produce a 100 nit image.
 
cpufrost said:
Anyone remember front projection CRT TVs?
We had one!



Also if you're old enough to remember those you certainly remember Curtis Mathes! :)
Click to expand...

Never had one in the house myself but a neighbor of my father had one I think it was an RCA he also had a laserdisc player along with a Dolby Pro-logic surround sound system this had to be the early 1990's or so as I remember being young and watching Aladdin on the "giant TV" screen. PS If you dismantle one be careful the tubes are full of toxic coolant that also stains any object it touches (don't ask me how I know this!)
I do remember Curtis Mathes and the Magnificent Magnevox The Fisher (not to be confused with Fisher Studio Standard most of these are junk actually made by Sanyo) Zenith, Emerson, Etc
 
Format _C: said:
Never had one in the house myself but a neighbor of my father had one I think it was an RCA he also had a laserdisc player along with a Dolby Pro-logic surround sound system this had to be the early 1990's or so as I remember being young and watching Aladdin on the "giant TV" screen. PS If you dismantle one be careful the tubes are full of toxic coolant that also stains any object it touches (don't ask me how I know this!)
I do remember Curtis Mathes and the Magnificent Magnevox The Fisher (not to be confused with Fisher Studio Standard most of these are junk actually made by Sanyo) Zenith, Emerson, Etc
Click to expand...
Yes I remember Pro Logic and VHS HiFi. Also capacitance electronic disc movies! Did have a laserdisc (Pioneer) and SharpVision projector. My favorite SVHS deck was a Mitsubishi but I preferred BetaMAX to record and was using them for audio track recordings from my reel to reel decks. Got my first RDAT deck in 1990 and never looked back.

Crazy now as we have theaters in our pockets with QHD super AMOLED displays close to 7", 1500 peak nits, and decent audio via portable DACs that can power real cans.
Vintage will always have its place, particularly high end analog (Vinyl, Reel to Reel, and cassette tape via Nakamichi Dragon!)

EDIT:

Yes the coolant in those is a mix of ethylene glycol and glycerin, something you don't want around furry friends!
 
3dfan said:
jbltecnicspro and aeliusg: then, instead of basing on "nits" units, by looking from some cx48 users testimonials about its bfi mode, its definitelly understandable that its highest "high" motion pro mode which as happens with many modern monitors offering different bfi modes but their highest being the only mode delivering crt quality lifelike motion qualty, is really dim at least for the 60hz mode, since even those cx48 users claim only finding it usable in a dark room, so cx48 at that mode definitely seems even considerable dimmer than a crt monitor.

i personally have never needed to use any crt monitor on a dark room to apreciaty their screen visibility due to a dim screen.
even on a moderated natural lighted room i can use them without visual difficulties and still note a bright enough illuminated screen on them under that conditions.

some quotes from some cx48 users themselves extracted from what seems the official cx48 thread in this forum:


"IMO BFI on high is too dim"

"60hz requires the "high" BFI setting to look decent which means brightness (even with OLED light 100) will only be adequate for a really a dark room"

"With 60hz the only usable setting is high and motion clarity is excellent but brightness only adequate for pitch black room"
Click to expand...

Fair enough. For reference my CRT - a Viewsonic, is typically set to only 76 nits. It's just fine in my viewing environment. Yeah, it's a shame that these aren't brighter or that they don't have a longer persistence mode. IE - Sony's OLED BVM's are 7.5 ms persistence. Far cry from CRT but at least there's a middle ground.

Long live CRT! :)
 
legcramp said:
Damn nice monitor, sold mine in 08 when it was giving the ghost on craigslist.
Click to expand...
I threw away 2 of them..literally threw them away....Im guessing this was about 6 years ago... both in perfect working condition although the bezel was cracked on one of them... no one wanted them
 
cpufrost said:
Yes I remember Pro Logic and VHS HiFi. Also capacitance electronic disc movies! Did have a laserdisc (Pioneer) and SharpVision projector. My favorite SVHS deck was a Mitsubishi but I preferred BetaMAX to record and was using them for audio track recordings from my reel to reel decks. Got my first RDAT deck in 1990 and never looked back.

Crazy now as we have theaters in our pockets with QHD super AMOLED displays close to 7", 1500 peak nits, and decent audio via portable DACs that can power real cans.
Vintage will always have its place, particularly high end analog (Vinyl, Reel to Reel, and cassette tape via Nakamichi Dragon!)

EDIT:

Yes the coolant in those is a mix of ethylene glycol and glycerin, something you don't want around furry friends!
Click to expand...
Remember Laser Karaoke? My Father had a Pioneer machine I used to say that is was the CD's father (this was way before DVD was even a 'thing' yet)
Talking about S-VHS my friend has a Mitsubishi HS-U69 that he is trying to fix it uses one belt for the entire transport the belt is bad and needs to be replaced would you or anyone else know where to get a free service manual or just even know the size & type of the belt needed?
 
I was obsessed with LaserDisc but I was a kid at the time and no way I could afford any of that.

My parents did have a CD player in the late 80's, it was one of the early ones that was the size of a VCR. That was pretty cool, because it was before they were popular.
 
Format _C: said:
Remember Laser Karaoke? My Father had a Pioneer machine I used to say that is was the CD's father (this was way before DVD was even a 'thing' yet)
Talking about S-VHS my friend has a Mitsubishi HS-U69 that he is trying to fix it uses one belt for the entire transport the belt is bad and needs to be replaced would you or anyone else know where to get a free service manual or just even know the size & type of the belt needed?
Click to expand...
Sam Goldwasser had a great repair repository (began on usenet in the mid 90s or so), not sure if repairfaq.org is still archived somewhere, there's lots of info. If the old belt is still around it may be possible to get some measurements off it. I have a Denon DCD-1520 CD transport/player from 1988 and its tray belt broke in the late 90s and I had a dilemma. I was a bit drunk one night and noticed the belt was really close in shape/size of the ring of a Trojan (condom) so sure enough I tried one and it worked like new! :-D

And the karoke thing, I do remember those too. VCDs were becoming the thing with PCs that had MPEG decoders (486 didn't cut it). Now its possible to do it on a smartphone via casting.

EDIT: Looks like it's still up!

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/vcrfaq.htm
 
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Dudes. I sold my other new in box fw900 for over $30k in 2019. There were several who bid more than $10k. This got indeed ridiculous, but we also have to understand the rich people who could just go and order and buy a 200" MicroLED TV from Samsung... These things are for the rich nowadays ;-)
 
mod said:
Dudes. I sold my other new in box fw900 for over $30k in 2019. There were several who bid more than $10k. This got indeed ridiculous, but we also have to understand the rich people who could just go and order and buy a 200" MicroLED TV from Samsung... These things are for the rich nowadays ;-)
Click to expand...
I just think it's hilarious. I got one of these close to 20 years ago. When it was still "new." So, I got to use it during it's prime as my main monitor setup in College. Everyone was "upgrading" to LCDs at the time, so I got the monitor for under $200. It was my main until 2012 or so. When the tube took too long to warm up, I got rid of it due to lack of space. Knowing what I know now about CRT maintenance, I could have probably fixed it. However, I wasn't as educated then on the stuff as I am now. Nor did I have the tools at the time to do the work needed. Still it was a great monitor and seeing these go for what they do...it's just hilarious. These same people mocked me when I got this back in the day.

I got to play Half Life 2 on release with this monitor. Same with Doom 3. One of the last games I played on it was Mass Effect 2 on the 360.
 
Here we are almost 2023 and still no FW900 executioner.
C2 got the brightness finally but removed bfi....
Samsung OLED has the BFI and brightness but littered with bugs and input lag.
Should be around the corner though with some maturity of Samsung OLED panels.

IMO once we get FW900 motion quality from OLED/LED (without turning blacks into bright greys), VR will take off
 
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I miss my FW900, I was lucky and saw one used at a computer show for cheap, also picked up SGI CRT monitors at computer show for cheap. I was super sad when I drove to the repair shop to get it the FW900 fixed again and the repair shop had closed. Friend had been there the month before to get something fixed :(. If used FW900 could be had for a few hundred still I'd maybe get one for a retro rig but finally made the upgrade to 4k and enjoying my meta quest for VR so not looking back. Yes it was good but not worth paying an arm and a leg for.
 
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