Rear-Projection Questions (1 Viewer)

[Ryan_Guah]

Recently, my family was given a rear-projection 42" television from someone who just didn't have room for it. Weird, right?

Well anyway, I was excited because it's a pretty big screen. Only it seems like everything on the screen is brighter and blurrier. I thought rear-projection was supposed to improve on televisions? Instead, I'm wishing I had my 32" picture tube back.

 

[John S]

Not to much to go on....

The make and model?

brighter would be strange, a direct view should be brighter most likely.


Blurrier? What are you viewing? Larger screen size makes most normal NTSC look bad.

Is it an HDTV? HDREADY? If so, at least get a DVD player into it via the component video connections, progressive scan if at all possible.

Realy hard to come to any conclusions without more data.

 

[Ryan_Guah]

It's a SONY, I know that.. I can't really see the back of it because it's HUGE and the model is on the back of it. It's a rear projection television with a 42" diagonal viewing area. It's not HDReady or an HDTV.. well there are some connectors in the back, but it was made in 1994, so I don't know about that.

Brighter, like.. the black widescreen bars that should be a solid BLACK, like on other tube televisions, are a fainter 'smokey' gray/black. There seems to be a light shinging heavily in the background, making nighttime scenes really hard to see. It also makes colors be much more washed out. I think the blurriness is also a result of the brightness, but I don't know for sure.

 

[Tim Jin]

You need to consider that the TV is 11 years old. Depending on how much the previous owner used it, the TV is probably on its last leg of its life. Older non HD RPTV always had a bad picture from the start. They got worse as time went on.

A lifespan for a CRT RPTV is around 8-10 years, at best. By then, the picture will look awful and yucky because the CRT guns are done for. It's time for a new set.

There is a reason why you got the TV for free :frowning:.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

This is a large non-HD set it seems. You could probably elicit a good picture from it if you did quite a bit of calibration work. It likely needs all the lenses cleaned, needs to be refocused both optically and electronically, and then needs to go through calibration for greyscale, and black and white etc.

CRT RPTVs usually look crappy only because they aren't setup and calibrated properly. SD RPTVs will usually show scanlines though, which can be annoying even when it's perfectly setup.

 

[Ryan_Guah]

Thanks for the help guys. I guess nothing good really is ever for free.

We need an HD-Ready set really, really bad.

 

[Jerome Grate]

Well, get your funds together, you got a good selection to choose from, Sony, Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Panasonic. Now the unfortunate thing is if you want to keep the donated set fine, use it for games. Here where I live the local mall has one of those game centers and they are filled with big screen t.v.s and you play and pay for the hour. Anyway, if there is no room, then you can donate it to your local fire department or hospital or nursing or rehab home.