I think it had a lot to do with backwards compatibility. In fact, the NTSC standard was developed so that early color broadcasts would be viewable on the untold numbers of black & white televisions then in use.
Even for component input, which is essentially equivalent to rgb that is used in america, it's basically only on the very high end models. Even some trinitron wega models don't have component input. Everyone says to just find one on craigslist for free or something, but if you're a retro gamer in america and are looking for one with component/rgb on it it's not nearly that easy, and ebay sellers have caught on this trend too.
It just shows what most of us missed out on CRTs in NA, even the crappy ones could produce better picture than they built them for. I noticed all the better CRT AV options like S-Video, Component and RGB shortly appeared ironically more so on HDTVs but only when they were still a relatively new thing and HMDI wasn't yet the dominant standard. Pisses me off that all that functionality was just sitting there dormant for decades just to save a few bucks.
Nice one! An excellent re-purpose for that poor and abused old tv set. Even a "crappy" CRT tube can most of the times have a very nice and clear picture as seen in this video, when the input signal is properly fed to it and all the stars are aligned.
A D Sorry for the bad pun. Actually, "flyback" refers to retrace (the beam flies back to the left of the screen to begin the next horizontal line sweep). This is no joke! But the joke is on the retrace. When (and if) you wake up, after flying clear across the room, , you will retrace your footsteps and try to figure out what went wrong. If you don't wake up, well, that explains the function of the horizontal hold. You will be held in that position forever. If you'd only adjusted that first! Then you'd be in sync... but instead, you're dead on the back porch, and all you'll ever see now is blacker than black. Moral of the story: A flat panel display is unlikely to lay you out flat.
They may have been on the chunky side, but it makes me appreciate how lucky we were to have scart in places like here in the UK as it gave us a much higher chance of getting an rgb input or at least something cleaner than the RF lead that most consoles came with by default.
Thanks so much for still publishing this. This type of thing is one of the big reasons I'm getting into electronics right now, and finding such videos seems to be a hard thing to find.
Wow this is ace! I'm in the UK and used to have a CRT TV with RGB Scart input, interestingly if I put RGB into the scart connector and only put a voltage on one of either pin 8 or pin 16, I cant remember which (u needed both to make it work correctly), the RGB image whould show through the on screen menus! Now I know why that might have been!
I'm not old enough to give a definitive answer on this, but from what I can remember every TV I ever saw (from behind) has had a SCART input (except for the black and white sets my grandparents kept around). However, I can't say anything about that input actually supporting RGB as I wasn't old enough yet to even know the difference. I know that we once had a lower end TV that had only one SCART input, which did support RGB, and one better one that had two SCART inputs, but one of which was svideo/composite (they were labeled as RGB and svideo). Other than that, every device I've ever seen had SCART outputs. Satellite receivers, VCRs, consoles, etc. With the N64 infamously just outputting composite over the SCART plug.
Adrian Black Yes, there were a very few sets in the 1980s that lacked RGB over SCART (I had a 1987 Philips like that made just as TVs started to come with the socket) but pretty much anything made after then (late 80s onwards) had it, and the picture quality tended to be excellent across the board on RGB. Starting around that time as well some satellite receivers (D-MAC and later DVB) received and sent RGB to the set. Most later TVs would have two SCART inputs, one Svideo and one RGB. Still, this video is fascinating looking at how RGB and OSD interact, so thanks for that.
I just picked up a Magnavox (Funai) 13" for 7.50. I know that it cost more than free but on the plus side, it has never sat in the dirt. It is a DVD combo that was manufactured in 2008. By my reckoning, there should be a couple of places to feed in an RGB signal. If I piggyback where the dvd feeds in, I can use both the DVD and the new RGB connectors and just have a toggle switch to switch between the two. With any luck, the DVD circuits are on a separate board with actual wires running the signal between the two. If that is the case, I can do this mod in my sleep. Oh, and you probably won't kill yourself if you inadvertently touch a charged flyback circuit. Probably.
Commenting from the future! It's amazing seeing the difference between this TV and the Sony TV's from early 1981 you've been looking at on the other channel.
Trash picked a Sylvania last night, that on the surface and osd, is very similar to this, only with more inputs. Gives me a place to start looking. Thanks!
I'm in Germany and wanted a small color screen for my Atari ST (mine only came with the high-res black and white monitor). I simply bought a cheap used 15" Phillips TV and a SCART to Atari ST cable from eBay. Very easy thanks to SCART. Only thing that annoyed me was that the seller where I bought the TV also had a very cool looking 70s TV that would've looked amazing on the shelf, but since that was 70s, it didn't have SCART and I was forced to get the Phillips TV from the 90s.
I love seeing things like this. I like seeing them on appliances, computers etc. When people who really have it all together start working on the hardware in question and I see it and think "My God it would've been cheaper for the manufacturer to have left that feature on!" thanks, great video!
Actually, when you're manufacturing millions of units, a tiny cost saving per unit adds up to huge savings over the total production run - and that's what lets you sell the units more cheaply. So while that Funai TV had the capability to handle RGB on its motherboard, leaving off the necessary input jacks saved enough for it to be sold at a more competitive price point for low-end TVs.
That series lxi tv was indeed sold by Sears .my dad had one up untill two years ago ... Ours is a great deal larger than yours the one my dad has has options not commonly found on TV's back then ..component in av in and some other options we never made use of he paid 1000 for it new it had a great picture and man is it heavy...two people strain to lift it ...it worked great untill Cox cables .. digital signal box thingy messed something up on it...looking forward to watching the rest of this video ..btw you've got yourself a great crt there I hope you keep it
Maybe but a pvm might have better color but I have never seen one to compare. The best I have seen was hooking my pi 3 to a crt vga monitor and tricking it to run at 240p via 120hz and man,seeing real scanlines was crazy and the picture was amazing,people say it's on par with a bvm. Here's the source. www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/5t7bmz/dell_p1110_showing_240p_output_from_snes_emulator/
Interesting. I never thought to do 240p with 120 Hz. I've always used line-doublers for VGA CRTs, and back when I started, XRGB-3s were about the only viable option without finding some really exotic used gear probably from Japan. Thankfully there's a lot better/cheaper options coming out these days--though I still use my XRGB-3 because it still works well for my uses. Doing 240p 120 Hz would mean _thicc_ scanlines if you like that, they'd match up with pixels unlike mine that double over pixels, and you wouldn't have any flicker like I get on white scenes with my setup. Also, I have a P1110. Absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately I need to fix mine up, but it's nothing too serious--just G2 overbrightness like a lot of them get over time. I don't know how to fix it exactly, but I hear it's fairly easy, albeit possibly tedious. In the meantime, my old Mitsu tube carries the torch until I can get around to that.
@@kbhasi a PVM should have a higher TVL count (something like 800) while those old trinitrons usually averaged around 450? (that is what mine is at least) but anyways, that higher TVL results in a much better picture sharpness/quality.
When I was growing up, we kept our television sets until the tube was so dim that we could only listen to it. Then, and only then did we get a new set lol.
There’s another TH-camr I won’t name who thinks he’s just top shit with CRTs and Reddit loves everything he does. He’s no Adrian Black though. Adrian is the real deal. Knows how to figure things out and actually understands what he’s doing. No magic cuts to “fixed it!” after never definitively showing a problem in the first place.
Unlikely to run across this exact TV? Lol - i found this EXACT make/model TV on the side of the road about 2 years ago - I was saving CRTs for Arcade monitor tube swaps. Ive got a pallet of TVs stacked to the ceiling of my basement. Fast forward to this month, and I've found a bunch of info on RGB mods, and this video!! I failed on a few, got close on an RCA, but i'm hoping to follow this and get a viable arcade monitor, My Dig Dug cabinet needs one! Thanks for this video, i'll let you know how my project goes! Hope you dont mind if i hit you up in the future for some info! THANKS!!!
Fantastic work ! Just check the ESR of all electrolytic capacitors, specially in the power supply, vertical and horizontal sections, replace all bad and your TV work for many years without problems.
RGB helps to neutre sharpness (negative - blur and positive - sharpness) and to reduce the blur and the color dirty. But doesn't look very focus because most consumor TVs haven't dot pitch. I'm recommended CRT monitor for computer for very focus. ;)
Pretty darn cool,i hope you come with another video of it how to mod the tv case,add switches to it to switch between rf,composite and RGB ,would be cool.
How I wish this video existed 2 years ago when I RGB modded my RF-only Zenith and this information didn't exist anywhere, and I had to figure it out on my own...
Can we assume that is not a hot chassis TV and used an isolated switchmode power supply? I guess most late model TVs did that because AV inputs were so common in the 80s and 90s. But 70s era TVs were mostly hot chassis. They sometimes drew low voltage B+, like 18 volts from the flyback or HOT, but the horizontal output circuit and often the vertical and audio output ran on rectified line AC and was hot chassis.
Someday I hope to do an RGB mod on a consumer set, but goodness do I not have the space (on the bench and ultimately for the set). Would probably shoot for 27" or higher if I am going bother with it. That said - I imagine if I found a candidate in the same way that you did, I would start down the dark path of an RGB mod. Ha! What are you going to ultimately use for your inputs? I would probably go with BNC, myself.
A friend gave me a 13" Symphonic television around the same vintage made by Funai. The TV and PCB look exactly the same with those two chips. I'm going to try to do the composite mod, as the TV currently has an RF input. Earlier I attempted to add a RCA jack in the front and switch the TV to front composite mode via a universal remote; however, the other components were missing to make it work, as you mentioned in this video. It would be interesting to try to get the front composite working; however, interrupting the tuner looks easy enough. I'm curious as to if there would be a difference in color quality between the two options. I plan on using this TV for composite video only. Great informative video!
I’m looking at a similar Mitsubishi processor; on the chip can see the R&B inputs, but I don’t see anything for green. Other than that the OSD chip does have RGB outputs. It’s a M51408SP, can you give me a hint?
I have two good tvs, with european Scart, both shows the OSD mixed with the RGB scart input signal. So they probably use the RGB official input as on this crappy. In the past we normaly use the scart with just the composite video, becouse VCR was directly recorded using composite video signal on tape.
Very interesting that this low-end TV from 1999 can support RGB yet a PVM from 2003 (a JVC model) cannot be RGB modded. I understand if the circuitry is not there but why it would be omitted from a PVM seems odd, especially if there are similar models that do offer RGB.
I've been on the fence doing this for a while. I have several SCART cables for my consoles, then RGB modded some more... but have been going through a RGB scart to component adapter.... while the adapter is good... I'm itching for that next step :D I have 19", 27" 32" and a 36" Sony Vega sets all begging for it. The 36" I am hoping will be my primary set... but I want to practice on one of the others lol. They are all in the same line / family. Hopefully I can plan this out and get all the info I need to do this soon.
You have all the stuff I like to see, maybe more.... "But your Attitude to retro tech in the so called digital basement?" And I can't believe that we are the same age, I look 35, you already look Win95 w/50 plus.
Hello friend, I have a CRT '21 TV and the Component input has the image flickering, I connected the Y to the Composite AV1 input, the perfect and stable image appears, but black/white, it is possible for me to inject the other 2 cables from the Component in Composite to be colored?
My old series LXI from sears was made by Thompson Consumer electronics. Some one I knew had the exact same tv as me with an RCA branding I also saw GE that were identical to mine at the time. . A repair man told me they were all the same manufacturer and so did sears. Try looking up service mode for RCA /GE tv and you may be able to gain access to the service mode. Then again yours may be funai Sears may have switched manufactures at some point.
I know this was 2 years ago but I have some info about service mode if you haven’t already found it: My ex had a TV with the same Funai Menus sold as an Emerson I think. We had an aftermarket universal remote and one button would enter service mode and you could change alignments and available languages etc. I don’t remember the universal remote but it would have been from the 2007 era. Once in service mode you had to use the front panel buttons.
It sucks that we didn't get SCART but we did get 60Hz so all of our old consoles ran at full speed. I would have had to mod every system I had back in the day and spend a fortune on an NTSC television. It would have driven me nuts.
Actually, most mid-range (and above) TVs sold in Europe from the early 90s onwards were true multi-standard, meaning they could sync to both 625/50Hz and 525/60Hz signals.
I have a PAl CRT television, and when I put a scart signal shows a very bad image, like, the blacks aren't black, if I put something white in a black it like shows a little white trace from where it is to the right, it haves artifacting like the min 12:40... I tought that that was the crt technology limitations, but wow, no it isn't. Good video man
I never understood why there was no scart plugs on TVs in the USA. All european TVs had one even the crappiest. In the 90s everyone has a games console or a computer. All that stuff was designed to plus on TVs by RGB.
i have an old magnavox with only RF and I'd be curious if it's possible... very interesting video! It's amazing how much CRTs were held back by RF/composite inputs.
Your probably missing a bias resistor to ground on the composite input, which would result in a 75 ohm input impedance. That could explain the colors and brightness.
So, I've been doing some thinking (always where trouble starts) couldn't you invert the original OSD blanking signal then AND it with a logic high signal and the result would be a blanking signal which knocks a mask for the OSD out of the RGB video? 🤔
Great TV RGB Mod! Im in process to mod a Sylvania TV with the same chips and everything seems really clear, but still dont get the part where you cut the trace (TV out), that enhance the overall picture quality? Or that can be left alone? Tnks!
I am so happy that we europeans do not have / had this problems. I even have a scart on my old Graetz from the year 1985. No Rgb thou.. But. Hey! It got a scart! ;)
ADRIAN BLACK, I'm confused how arcade game circuit boards send out RGB outputs and Horizontal sync and Vertical sync outputs. The arcade monitor takes the RGB signals and H&V sync signals and converts them to what for the Horizontal deflection and Vertical deflection circuits. How does the arcade monitor know how to trace and draw the games graphics on the CRT screen. I'm confused how the arcade monitor converts the RGB and H&V sync signals into drawing tracing them on the CRT screen, can you please explain how this is done?
Thanks bro for this video and your explanations! just a quick question, how can i find a tv already have RGB on it? if there is no TV have on it, is there a connector cable between my RGB cable and my TV?
Hi, amazing video pal. I have a Sony KDL-32EX305 television, it has 4 hdmi, composite, rgb, and even vga… but no svideo. Is there a way to mod the tv adding a s-video imput. Can be done? I have several Atari machines that uses that signal, the machines can be connected via composite, but image is terrible and darker… plz help 🙏
When you see RGB on a cheap CRT, and how GOOD it looks, you gotta wonder WHAT WERE THEY THINKING going composite here in the US!
ya man, I think it was the SCART cable format, but you guys miss on good cable connector and very good video quality
When you look at everything ever, in the US, you wonder what were they thinking.
@@Heidegaff money
@@qwertykeyboard5901 Backwards compatibility.
I think it had a lot to do with backwards compatibility. In fact, the NTSC standard was developed so that early color broadcasts would be viewable on the untold numbers of black & white televisions then in use.
For how much you badmouthed the TV it sure impressed you in its display of RGB!
Couldn't believe how much clearer it is on RGB when you switched it. Us Americans got screwed so hard without SCART.
Doesn't PAL have more scanlines than NTSC?
Lone pube Maybe, but my PAL Amiga had good use of those extra lignes.
Even for component input, which is essentially equivalent to rgb that is used in america, it's basically only on the very high end models.
Even some trinitron wega models don't have component input.
Everyone says to just find one on craigslist for free or something, but if you're a retro gamer in america and are looking for one with component/rgb on it it's not nearly that easy, and ebay sellers have caught on this trend too.
@@orbusg8451 eBay sellers? How do you sell a TV on eBay? It would probably cost a thousand pounds just to ship it. Yes I know that joke was lame
Nearly every colour crt here in England had at least 2 scarts and an s-video rgb input
"I'm shocked." Probably not the words you want to use doing this job. lol
I cry every time I see a CRT TV on the rubbish. Unfortunately I can't adopt them all.
It just shows what most of us missed out on CRTs in NA, even the crappy ones could produce better picture than they built them for. I noticed all the better CRT AV options like S-Video, Component and RGB shortly appeared ironically more so on HDTVs but only when they were still a relatively new thing and HMDI wasn't yet the dominant standard. Pisses me off that all that functionality was just sitting there dormant for decades just to save a few bucks.
I don't know what you are taking about most of the time... but I love this! :)
I love how cheaply this thing was produced - the neckboard was stamped out of the mainboard, that's just hilarious
Glad you are keeping it. You saved it from being thrown away.
Nice one! An excellent re-purpose for that poor and abused old tv set. Even a "crappy" CRT tube can most of the times have a very nice and clear picture as seen in this video, when the input signal is properly fed to it and all the stars are aligned.
You know why the horiz output transformer is called a flyback? Because if you touch it while it's energized, you'll fly back clear across the room...
There's a flyback pulse to return the scan back to the start
A D
Sorry for the bad pun. Actually, "flyback" refers to retrace (the beam flies back to the left of the screen to begin the next horizontal line sweep). This is no joke!
But the joke is on the retrace. When (and if) you wake up, after flying clear across the room, , you will retrace your footsteps and try to figure out what went wrong.
If you don't wake up, well, that explains the function of the horizontal hold. You will be held in that position forever. If you'd only adjusted that first! Then you'd be in sync... but instead, you're dead on the back porch, and all you'll ever see now is blacker than black.
Moral of the story: A flat panel display is unlikely to lay you out flat.
You made me chuckle.
Besides the horz sweep, the flyback xfmr also generates the high voltage for the CRT anode.
you're comin to my next party
They may have been on the chunky side, but it makes me appreciate how lucky we were to have scart in places like here in the UK as it gave us a much higher chance of getting an rgb input or at least something cleaner than the RF lead that most consoles came with by default.
This is fascinating -- the RGB overlaid/mixed in on top of composite, and then when composite's taken away, it's sharper. Crazy good.
I have basically the same TV made by funai and it was sold under the name Symphonic.
Thanks so much for still publishing this. This type of thing is one of the big reasons I'm getting into electronics right now, and finding such videos seems to be a hard thing to find.
Wow this is ace! I'm in the UK and used to have a CRT TV with RGB Scart input, interestingly if I put RGB into the scart connector and only put a voltage on one of either pin 8 or pin 16, I cant remember which (u needed both to make it work correctly), the RGB image whould show through the on screen menus! Now I know why that might have been!
I bought a cheap Sylvania television in 2005 and it used an identical menu, which gives me hope that this IC is common across many low-end, late TVs
I had a crt years ago with the same OSD, it had a built in game of tetris too
**Puts on the Sir David Attenborough voice**
Here we can see an American struggling with not having SCART on everything and anything.
as an european i sometime forget americans dont have scart
I'm not old enough to give a definitive answer on this, but from what I can remember every TV I ever saw (from behind) has had a SCART input (except for the black and white sets my grandparents kept around). However, I can't say anything about that input actually supporting RGB as I wasn't old enough yet to even know the difference. I know that we once had a lower end TV that had only one SCART input, which did support RGB, and one better one that had two SCART inputs, but one of which was svideo/composite (they were labeled as RGB and svideo). Other than that, every device I've ever seen had SCART outputs. Satellite receivers, VCRs, consoles, etc. With the N64 infamously just outputting composite over the SCART plug.
Makes sense that the Japanese are reusing the same technology internally (they had an equivalent to Scart after all).
Yeah but now I wanna do your cool little mod, but I already have RGB everywhere
Adrian Black Yes, there were a very few sets in the 1980s that lacked RGB over SCART (I had a 1987 Philips like that made just as TVs started to come with the socket) but pretty much anything made after then (late 80s onwards) had it, and the picture quality tended to be excellent across the board on RGB.
Starting around that time as well some satellite receivers (D-MAC and later DVB) received and sent RGB to the set. Most later TVs would have two SCART inputs, one Svideo and one RGB.
Still, this video is fascinating looking at how RGB and OSD interact, so thanks for that.
That is awesome. RGB on an old TV that was never enabled for it! I think that I'm more excited than you :)
Looks fantastic! Definitely add a composite input - it'll come in useful for an NES, C64, etc.
I just picked up a Magnavox (Funai) 13" for 7.50. I know that it cost more than free but on the plus side, it has never sat in the dirt. It is a DVD combo that was manufactured in 2008. By my reckoning, there should be a couple of places to feed in an RGB signal. If I piggyback where the dvd feeds in, I can use both the DVD and the new RGB connectors and just have a toggle switch to switch between the two. With any luck, the DVD circuits are on a separate board with actual wires running the signal between the two. If that is the case, I can do this mod in my sleep.
Oh, and you probably won't kill yourself if you inadvertently touch a charged flyback circuit. Probably.
Commenting from the future! It's amazing seeing the difference between this TV and the Sony TV's from early 1981 you've been looking at on the other channel.
Trash picked a Sylvania last night, that on the surface and osd, is very similar to this, only with more inputs. Gives me a place to start looking. Thanks!
im happy im not the only one who loves crt beautiful colors and contrast
If it looks good, its not a "crap tv"
well i mean, it is by default. sadly RGB didn't really exist in America (except for monitors)
I'm in Germany and wanted a small color screen for my Atari ST (mine only came with the high-res black and white monitor). I simply bought a cheap used 15" Phillips TV and a SCART to Atari ST cable from eBay. Very easy thanks to SCART. Only thing that annoyed me was that the seller where I bought the TV also had a very cool looking 70s TV that would've looked amazing on the shelf, but since that was 70s, it didn't have SCART and I was forced to get the Phillips TV from the 90s.
I love seeing things like this. I like seeing them on appliances, computers etc. When people who really have it all together start working on the hardware in question and I see it and think "My God it would've been cheaper for the manufacturer to have left that feature on!"
thanks, great video!
Actually, when you're manufacturing millions of units, a tiny cost saving per unit adds up to huge savings over the total production run - and that's what lets you sell the units more cheaply. So while that Funai TV had the capability to handle RGB on its motherboard, leaving off the necessary input jacks saved enough for it to be sold at a more competitive price point for low-end TVs.
I had two rebranded Funai TVs, and they were shockingly good for the price.
I just watched the 8 bit guy do the same mod!
he did it on a SAMSUNG not a lxi
This seems like a really nice candidate for an arcade build, maybe a table-top style!
I love hobby electronics modding. It's fascinating.
That series lxi tv was indeed sold by Sears .my dad had one up untill two years ago ... Ours is a great deal larger than yours the one my dad has has options not commonly found on TV's back then ..component in av in and some other options we never made use of he paid 1000 for it new it had a great picture and man is it heavy...two people strain to lift it ...it worked great untill Cox cables .. digital signal box thingy messed something up on it...looking forward to watching the rest of this video ..btw you've got yourself a great crt there I hope you keep it
Awesome video,glad you brought that tv back to life with a rgb mod.
I did the same mod on my trinitron and I was pretty blown away from the picture.
Whoa, wow, I'm guessing the video quality is as good as a PVM of the time.
Maybe but a pvm might have better color but I have never seen one to compare.
The best I have seen was hooking my pi 3 to a crt vga monitor and tricking it to run at 240p via 120hz and man,seeing real scanlines was crazy and the picture was amazing,people say it's on par with a bvm.
Here's the source.
www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/5t7bmz/dell_p1110_showing_240p_output_from_snes_emulator/
Interesting. I never thought to do 240p with 120 Hz.
I've always used line-doublers for VGA CRTs, and back when I started, XRGB-3s were about the only viable option without finding some really exotic used gear probably from Japan.
Thankfully there's a lot better/cheaper options coming out these days--though I still use my XRGB-3 because it still works well for my uses.
Doing 240p 120 Hz would mean _thicc_ scanlines if you like that, they'd match up with pixels unlike mine that double over pixels, and you wouldn't have any flicker like I get on white scenes with my setup.
Also, I have a P1110. Absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately I need to fix mine up, but it's nothing too serious--just G2 overbrightness like a lot of them get over time. I don't know how to fix it exactly, but I hear it's fairly easy, albeit possibly tedious. In the meantime, my old Mitsu tube carries the torch until I can get around to that.
@@kbhasi a PVM should have a higher TVL count (something like 800) while those old trinitrons usually averaged around 450? (that is what mine is at least) but anyways, that higher TVL results in a much better picture sharpness/quality.
Nice mod on that Funai set. They are super common, and quite reliable.
When I was growing up, we kept our television sets until the tube was so dim that we could only listen to it. Then, and only then did we get a new set lol.
How many times did you have to replace it?
@@kovyvuri Oh, we went through 3 or 4 of them like this.
There’s another TH-camr I won’t name who thinks he’s just top shit with CRTs and Reddit loves everything he does. He’s no Adrian Black though. Adrian is the real deal. Knows how to figure things out and actually understands what he’s doing. No magic cuts to “fixed it!” after never definitively showing a problem in the first place.
Unlikely to run across this exact TV? Lol - i found this EXACT make/model TV on the side of the road about 2 years ago - I was saving CRTs for Arcade monitor tube swaps. Ive got a pallet of TVs stacked to the ceiling of my basement. Fast forward to this month, and I've found a bunch of info on RGB mods, and this video!! I failed on a few, got close on an RCA, but i'm hoping to follow this and get a viable arcade monitor, My Dig Dug cabinet needs one! Thanks for this video, i'll let you know how my project goes! Hope you dont mind if i hit you up in the future for some info! THANKS!!!
I have a lil 19in I got for free and it has the same CC chip and similar mitsubishi video chip, time to give this a shot!
This is actually really entertaining
From the future: don't take it to e-waste, sell it for good money to CRTgamers.
Fantastic work ! Just check the ESR of all electrolytic capacitors, specially in the power supply, vertical and horizontal sections, replace all bad and your TV work for many years without problems.
RGB helps to neutre sharpness (negative - blur and positive - sharpness) and to reduce the blur and the color dirty. But doesn't look very focus because most consumor TVs haven't dot pitch. I'm recommended CRT monitor for computer for very focus. ;)
Pretty darn cool,i hope you come with another video of it how to mod the tv case,add switches to it to switch between rf,composite and RGB ,would be cool.
Very cool, about to check out the follow-up.
Kinda obvious mod but somehow I found this video interesting. :) I mean I'm surprised such topic got my attention so well. Nicely done, Adrian. :)
How I wish this video existed 2 years ago when I RGB modded my RF-only Zenith and this information didn't exist anywhere, and I had to figure it out on my own...
awesome mod! thanks for the vid! i would love to see a follow up with the finished case and connections.
Can we assume that is not a hot chassis TV and used an isolated switchmode power supply? I guess most late model TVs did that because AV inputs were so common in the 80s and 90s. But 70s era TVs were mostly hot chassis. They sometimes drew low voltage B+, like 18 volts from the flyback or HOT, but the horizontal output circuit and often the vertical and audio output ran on rectified line AC and was hot chassis.
Someday I hope to do an RGB mod on a consumer set, but goodness do I not have the space (on the bench and ultimately for the set). Would probably shoot for 27" or higher if I am going bother with it. That said - I imagine if I found a candidate in the same way that you did, I would start down the dark path of an RGB mod. Ha! What are you going to ultimately use for your inputs? I would probably go with BNC, myself.
That looks incredible
awesome video, great that you found or hacked the board to have a good use of the television set!
Nice! I'd love to see the finished case with the RCAs at some point. Keep up the good work!
I really enjoy your videos, thank you for posting them
A friend gave me a 13" Symphonic television around the same vintage made by Funai. The TV and PCB look exactly the same with those two chips. I'm going to try to do the composite mod, as the TV currently has an RF input. Earlier I attempted to add a RCA jack in the front and switch the TV to front composite mode via a universal remote; however, the other components were missing to make it work, as you mentioned in this video. It would be interesting to try to get the front composite working; however, interrupting the tuner looks easy enough. I'm curious as to if there would be a difference in color quality between the two options. I plan on using this TV for composite video only. Great informative video!
Why!?!? Why wasn't RGB a standard input on TV's back in the 90's. This is fantastic!!! No dot crawl and everything is sharp and perfect!
It was just in Europe though xD
I’m looking at a similar Mitsubishi processor; on the chip can see the R&B inputs, but I don’t see anything for green. Other than that the OSD chip does have RGB outputs. It’s a M51408SP, can you give me a hint?
It's a useful mod in old generations.
I have two good tvs, with european Scart, both shows the OSD mixed with the RGB scart input signal. So they probably use the RGB official input as on this crappy. In the past we normaly use the scart with just the composite video, becouse VCR was directly recorded using composite video signal on tape.
My mod involves inserting the SCART connector.
I wonder if rgb modding was done back in the day.
Hey Adrian, you do so cool stuff. 👍 Like almost all your videos 😁 greets from Germany 🤘
This is really impressive! Well done!
I'm from a PAL country where consumer RGB is plentiful, but I kinda want to do this anyway to be able to make 70s TV sets useful.
This is very close to the chips I found on the old Diamond TV I’m trying to mid now!
Very interesting that this low-end TV from 1999 can support RGB yet a PVM from 2003 (a JVC model) cannot be RGB modded. I understand if the circuitry is not there but why it would be omitted from a PVM seems odd, especially if there are similar models that do offer RGB.
I've been on the fence doing this for a while. I have several SCART cables for my consoles, then RGB modded some more... but have been going through a RGB scart to component adapter.... while the adapter is good... I'm itching for that next step :D I have 19", 27" 32" and a 36" Sony Vega sets all begging for it. The 36" I am hoping will be my primary set... but I want to practice on one of the others lol. They are all in the same line / family. Hopefully I can plan this out and get all the info I need to do this soon.
You have all the stuff I like to see, maybe more.... "But your Attitude to retro tech in the so called digital basement?" And I can't believe that we are the same age, I look 35, you already look Win95 w/50 plus.
Hello friend, I have a CRT '21 TV and the Component input has the image flickering, I connected the Y to the Composite AV1 input, the perfect and stable image appears, but black/white, it is possible for me to inject the other 2 cables from the Component in Composite to be colored?
There must be something wrong with your source, what are you using?
My old series LXI from sears was made by Thompson Consumer electronics. Some one I knew had the exact same tv as me with an RCA branding I also saw GE that were identical to mine at the time. . A repair man told me they were all the same manufacturer and so did sears. Try looking up service mode for RCA /GE tv and you may be able to gain access to the service mode. Then again yours may be funai Sears may have switched manufactures at some point.
I live in Germany, so most crts I can find on the street has RGB build in. I actually saw three of them, but I left them where they were.
That was crazy cool. Nice job!
Very interesting experience. Thanks !
I know this was 2 years ago but I have some info about service mode if you haven’t already found it:
My ex had a TV with the same Funai Menus sold as an Emerson I think. We had an aftermarket universal remote and one button would enter service mode and you could change alignments and available languages etc. I don’t remember the universal remote but it would have been from the 2007 era. Once in service mode you had to use the front panel buttons.
Pretty sure it was a Phillips CL035A universal remote. The CC button entered service mode.
Great work!!
Is it possible to go from RGB to Component (YPbPr)?
old tvs did not have component, they had compoSITE.
Why do you want component when Rgb gives a better quality?
Composite looks really good on crt tvs. Component isnt really necessary
component is not that better that rgb
Thouroghly facinating and interesting .. Thank you for sharing !
I love being british and having SCART.
Naoki Saito I love being American and having freedom of speech! Lol
It sucks that we didn't get SCART but we did get 60Hz so all of our old consoles ran at full speed. I would have had to mod every system I had back in the day and spend a fortune on an NTSC television. It would have driven me nuts.
Actually, most mid-range (and above) TVs sold in Europe from the early 90s onwards were true multi-standard, meaning they could sync to both 625/50Hz and 525/60Hz signals.
@@dunebasher1971 I love how you include the number of scanlines just to show Americans that pal was the standard with better resolution xD
i like RF and composite
I have an old 34 inch that I've always wanted to do this with. It has composite and s-video and I'd trade them both for RGB.
Amazing video! Great job!!
you are a genius man
I have a PAl CRT television, and when I put a scart signal shows a very bad image, like, the blacks aren't black, if I put something white in a black it like shows a little white trace from where it is to the right, it haves artifacting like the min 12:40... I tought that that was the crt technology limitations, but wow, no it isn't. Good video man
I have that exact TV. Definitely wanna try this. Any tips for injecting audio?
I never understood why there was no scart plugs on TVs in the USA. All european TVs had one even the crappiest. In the 90s everyone has a games console or a computer. All that stuff was designed to plus on TVs by RGB.
Preach to this American chior!
Interesting video as always
i have an old magnavox with only RF and I'd be curious if it's possible... very interesting video! It's amazing how much CRTs were held back by RF/composite inputs.
Yes as long as you know where to inject the RGB signal.
Your probably missing a bias resistor to ground on the composite input, which would result in a 75 ohm input impedance. That could explain the colors and brightness.
I just ordered a big pack of 75 ohm resistors for exactly projects like this. :-)
Nice work.
Interesting info!
So, I've been doing some thinking (always where trouble starts) couldn't you invert the original OSD blanking signal then AND it with a logic high signal and the result would be a blanking signal which knocks a mask for the OSD out of the RGB video? 🤔
Great TV RGB Mod! Im in process to mod a Sylvania TV with the same chips and everything seems really clear, but still dont get the part where you cut the trace (TV out), that enhance the overall picture quality? Or that can be left alone? Tnks!
What do you plan to do with this CRT?
Please help me to add a composite video input on a TV without this input. Only have the antenna connection.
you forgot to mention the Tandy PC Compatible Computers
I am so happy that we europeans do not have / had this problems. I even have a scart on my old Graetz from the year 1985. No Rgb thou.. But. Hey! It got a scart! ;)
ADRIAN BLACK, I'm confused how arcade game circuit boards send out RGB outputs and Horizontal sync and Vertical sync outputs. The arcade monitor takes the RGB signals and H&V sync signals and converts them to what for the Horizontal deflection and Vertical deflection circuits. How does the arcade monitor know how to trace and draw the games graphics on the CRT screen. I'm confused how the arcade monitor converts the RGB and H&V sync signals into drawing tracing them on the CRT screen, can you please explain how this is done?
This was fascinating to watch! Do you work as an electrician?
Thanks bro for this video and your explanations! just a quick question, how can i find a tv already have RGB on it? if there is no TV have on it, is there a connector cable between my RGB cable and my TV?
8:46 SMTP color bars? Are you emailing them? (SMPTE is the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) haha!
Hi, amazing video pal. I have a Sony KDL-32EX305 television, it has 4 hdmi, composite, rgb, and even vga… but no svideo. Is there a way to mod the tv adding a s-video imput. Can be done? I have several Atari machines that uses that signal, the machines can be connected via composite, but image is terrible and darker… plz help 🙏
Maybe some diode logic would make OSD work.