In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:40:09 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:
FWIW I also used a B&O TV for around 20 years and felt it gave an
excellent picture and sound (albeit mono).
If your old TV had a delta tube rather than a modern in-line gun, then
it used the old phosphors. They weren't as bright as those used now, but
they gave far better colour rendition - particularly skin tones.
This seems like a diversion into a 'television' group topic, however I'll
risk prolonging it as I may get some useful comments. :-)
The B&O seemed to be to be a good picture in two particular respects. One
was that the colours - especially those relying upon the shade of 'red' -
seemed to me to be more natural than on other sets. From what you and Dave
have been writing, I assume this is what you would have expected. I'd
assumed they used a different phosphor that I just happened to prefer.
The other was that the effective 'gamma' value seemed more comfortable.
With the set I now have it seems impossible to adjust the 'brightness' and
'contrast' levels so as to consistently get a comfortable image. The image
keeps coming out too 'variable' from one program/channel to another. For
any given setting, some programs seem to have excessive contrast with many
low-level details 'lost' in black, whilst other programs (with the set
unchanged) come out washy. My impression is that I'd like to adjust the
gamma so as to lift the darker levels to being brighter, but leaving the
brighter levels almost the same. Alas the new TV has no control that does
this that I can find. (All adjustments are done using the remote.)
Whilst moaning about this, I'll add one other irritation. :-) The new set
shows an 'oversized' picture. i.e. lines at the top and bottom are out of
view in the 4:3 and 16:9 modes, and the image sides are also out of view.
(In 4:3 they are clipped by the brightness being turned off.)
I can confirm this by showing an image from my DVD, freezing the image, and
then zooming down the DVD output. This shows a 5-10% loss of image area
(linear percentage) around the picture when in 'normal' scale.
I had a similar problem with the B&O when it was purchased. However this
came with the circuit diagram, etc, so I was able to open up the back, and
with the aid of a mirror and some trimmer tools, adjusted the image so as
to see the entire picture. Alas, I don't have the details for my current
set, and can't find any controls to adjust this. :-/
It seems to be standard practice to produce sets adjusted like this. I
suspect that the reason is it gives a 'bigger looking picture' so people
may prefer it in a shop to one where the image is sized so as to show the
*entire* image on the same physical screen area.
Slainte,
Jim
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