Sony KV1800UB 18" Trintron

[enjaydee]

I believe Trinitron picture quality was way ahead of the competition in the 70's. I worked in trade late 70's and it was the best there was at that time. B&O was more costly and positioned as up-market but used the Mullard (Philips) tube so picture was average.

[Welsh Anorak]

I think it was subjective. Many people loved the Sony but it seemed as many disliked the curvature of the screen and the striped phosphors.
I always felt the KV2704 gave a picture that was miles ahead of the competition. However, a Sony with a poor tube was very unpleasant to watch. The 20AX system and those following certainly brought the competition into line, and a good 30AX tube would give a Sony a run for its money.
However in the Seventies there was no comparison with a Sony 18" TV and the Pye or Thorn efforts.
Glyn

[mole42uk]

I was using Apple computers in the early '90s and many customers were very impressed with the Apple-badged monitors, all of which used the Trinitron tube. The striped phosphor seemed to be easier on the eye than the more 'traditional' dots.

[jayceebee]

With some versions of Trinitron CRT there were many complaints about the aperture grille support wires. These cast a shadow on the phosphor stripes which gave the effect of one or even two horizontal lines about one third and two thirds of the way down the screen.

Replacement CRTs, the large widescreens 28" 32" 36" were a pain to set up, sticky magnets all over the place and sliding magnetic strips between the yoke and flare to get decent purity and convergence. Don't miss those I'm afraid but the small screens were unbeatable at the time.

John.

[greg_simons]

Indeed, those crt's were a real headache to set up, I still have a draw full of the magnetic strips, the thick neck trinitron tubes in the 1800 didn't seem to last very long and didn't boost either, like many other comments here I agree they blew away any British competition at the time.
greg.

[Philips210]

Hi.

I think the 20" Thorn 9000 with it's PIL tube was a reasonable performer when compared to the Sony. The 9000 did arrive somewhat later (1975) than the Sony KV1800 however. Another good contender with an inline gun tube was the RRI Z718 chassis, the 18" version, which used a Toshiba tube gave a cracking picture, I liked the Z718, it was a good effort from Rank.

Regards
Symon.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by hans

Did Sony want to have Philips producing Trinitrons? I've seen SEL branded 20 AX tubes in ITT sets. (I can't remember what make they used later) Especially the 26" SEL tubes had short life. Not a good partner for making quality stuff. On the other hand the Philips 20AX tubes (at least the ones used in the Norköping sets) were of excellent quality. Due to my age I was not in the position to judge if Trinitron or 20AX gave the best picture when new. Was the Trinitron better when new or is that a myth?

The Sony-Philips negotiations is speculation on my part, but every Trinitron tube that mentions "Made in Western Germany" was made by SEL under license. This could have something to do with the tendency to go soft, but in my limited experience regular SEL tubes could at least be regenerated unlike some Trinitron tubes. I don't have any useful information as to which Trinitron tubes could be revived and which not, unfortunately.

I think the 20AX tube had better convergence and geometry when new, but the Trinitron had better contrast. Its personal preference but I've always been firmly in the inline-camp. I too was too young to evaluate when they came to market but I've certainly repaired my share of TV sets.

ITT used almost exclusively SEL tubes, since they owned SEL at the time and SEL was also one of 3 or 4 major factories producting ITT TV sets in Europe. The tubes were branded Nokia after ITT sold off SEL to them, and later on Panasonic took over. I don't know whether Trinitron tubes were still produced there by that time.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by mole42uk

I was using Apple computers in the early '90s and many customers were very impressed with the Apple-badged monitors, all of which used the Trinitron tube. The striped phosphor seemed to be easier on the eye than the more 'traditional' dots.

That's exactly the opposite of my experience. Especially when viewed from nearby (as one does with computer monitors operating at a reasonable resolution) the stripes made my eyes tired as they were visibly interfering with eachother (comparable to looking at a picture of lines in contrasting colours such as yellow and blue next to eachother).

At the time I calculated that the AG-pitch as presented in the tech specs and marketing material was a flattering figure and the horizontal pitch of a delta mask (as was at the time used in most inline computer monitors) was actually better and due to that and being dotted instead of striped wouldn't present misleading focus patterns to the automatic calibration mechanism of the human eye.

Resolution wise, those tubes operated at their technical limit (late 1990's, so the technology was as good as it would ever get). Viewed from a distance, this wouldn't have been a problem and at least those 17" flat tubes had a good geometry.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by jayceebee

With some versions of Trinitron CRT there were many complaints about the aperture grille support wires. These cast a shadow on the phosphor stripes which gave the effect of one or even two horizontal lines about one third and two thirds of the way down the screen.

Replacement CRTs, the large widescreens 28" 32" 36" were a pain to set up, sticky magnets all over the place and sliding magnetic strips between the yoke and flare to get decent purity and convergence. Don't miss those I'm afraid but the small screens were unbeatable at the time.

The larger the tube the harder to get it right, both with regard to manufacturing tolerances and to serring it up. Especially on the larger tubes the improvements between the generations were very clearly seen. One generation had terrible convergence and geometry, then came the next generation and it was for a short time even better that that of the inline competition. Setting them up always required some work, though.

The "coffee stirrers" as we called them (in Dutch "roerstaafjes"), were actually not magnetic, but permalloy assemblies. They were used to correct the magnetic field of the deflection coils in areas where a good enough convergence could not be achieved otherwise.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by Maarten

The Sony-Philips negotiations is speculation on my part, but every Trinitron tube that mentions "Made in Western Germany" was made by SEL under license.

I forgot to mention motivation/sources on this. The production of Trinitron tubes by SEL was mentioned in promotional material about the take over of Wega by Sony as a strength (local sourcing of components). The speculation òn earlier plans with Philips is built on the rumours that Philips tested Trinitron tubes for their own production of TV sets in the mid 1970's and that they would have been a more logical choice quality wise for a partnership.

[enjaydee]

The KV1800 and earlier KV1320 were imported to UK from Japan; at that time 18" was the largest screen size that could be imported. Subsequently Sony set up their own production in South Wales and larger screen sizes were generally available later in the 70's. I was in the trade, principally covering Sony, Panasonic, Hitachi, Philips and B&O. The Sony produced the brightest and sharpest picture in my opinion as I recall; the Panasonic Quintrix became another favourite in the early 80's, while those wanting a more unique physical design were often persuaded by the Beovision.

[hans]

The mid to late 70's Panasonics were good, good picture and few faults. But Quintrix and the four circles: red, green, blue and yellow leads one to think that there are more primary colours, not the usual RGB.

[Maarten]

Quintrix was a marketing gimmick as far as yellow was concerned (actually some LCD panels with yellow subpixels were later developed, but not by Panasonic) but the tubes themselves probably had a slightly different shadow mask or phosphor arrangement.

The high brightness (contrast) was indeed Trinitron's strongest point (more suitable for daylight viewing and presentations), the sharpness didn't stand out in my memory but then again I haven't seen those sets alongside eachother when they were new. in later generations it was a race between the various manufacturers, effectively ending when the stripe mask was as narrow as it could be.