Re: Sony Trinitron TV disappointment

[Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Kevin Dady <kevin@hackaday.com> wrote:
> So, for a while now I have had an orbital exercise do-whappy in my
> living room, we both can use the workout and going to the park is not
> always an option, a week or so ago we had our carpets cleaned which
> gave me the chance to move some stuff around, mainly the orbital into
> the spare bedroom, which is our "whatever" space.
> 
> The only catch was we wanted a TV in there, no problem I thought, I
> will get one at a thrift store, and maybe if it doesnt suck I can use
> it as a // monitor until I can get around to making a converter for my
> NEC RGB monitor (which has been in the design notebook for over a
> year)
> 
> OK then I hit the thrift stores, out of the 3 close by I found a pimp
> 9 inch color sony trinitron, its meant as a "space saver" design and
> mounts on a pedestal which can be attached from the bottom or top
> (like under cabinets), I looked at its picture at the store and it
> was , I could see the compression artifacts from the DVD they had
> playing on all the TV's. I hooked it up to the little comcast basic
> cable digital box and its so good I can just about read the fine print
> on TV commercials, which is impressive for a 9 inch SDTV and much
> smaller than 80C text... looking good right?
> 
> Nope, plugged the apple into the composite input and the text is a
> blur at 40C, featuring a large bloom around each letter. At that point
> I needed to move on and have not fussed with it, but thinking it over,
> why can I see mpeg compression artifacts and darn near per pixel
> perfection over the crappy RF link, and get what seems like an
> overblast on the composite from the apple?
> 
> Does the Apple (//C in my case) output its composite with 75 ohm to
> ground in parallel? Do you think the composite in is fried? Like I
> said I havent had much time to fool around with it, but the tube is
> outstanding, why does it look like dried arse with an apple?

It sounds like video overdrive. 

Try attenuating the Apple composite signal with a series resistor to a
shunt resistor to ground across the monitor input. I'd start with both
resistors 75 ohms, and then vary the series resistor for best results. 

-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon