This is were I found it. I only remembered to take a picture when I already put the thing into my car. It was laying tube down on the fridge.
This was also my first time working on a CRT. Was kinda scary, but nothing happened in the end. Not even a spark when discharging. Guess these newer sets all have a resistor that drains the voltage built in (this TV is from November of 2002).
The power cable uses a connector, so I could just remove the cable and solder a new one to it. Soldering it directly to the board would have probably looked cleaner, but I guess this worked well too. I simply cut off one end of a normal power cable and soldered it to what was left of the existing one. I planned on using heatshrink tubes, but they already shrinked while soldering. I just ended up using electrical tape instead. Not the cleanest soldering work, but it does the job.
This is how it ended up looking inside the TV:
I wanted to be on the safe side when turning the CRT on for the first time, so I did it outside.
It did power on, and looks pretty damn good!
As it turns out, the tube was actually made in the UK. I think that’s pretty cool, since everything has to be made as cheaply as possible today. The whole thing seems very well built in general, Rubycon capacitors everywhere.
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Of course I don’t have the remote for it, so I didn’t change any setting when taking these pictures. The black levels were still pretty bad, and geometry could be better as well. I ordered a remote to dial everything in, I hope it looks even better after that.
I see CRTs pretty rarily on the street. It’s probably because they’re getting rarer? But yeah, I know the feeling of seeing one and not being able to take it with you. I mean, I have already seen a few that I just didn’t need, like 100hz sets or just rather low quality TVs. I don’t have that much space so I never picked these up, even though I also didn’t want so see them trashed. With this one, I just couldn’t leave it there. It’s a 21 inch CRT, so I somehow made space for it at home.
And yes, this was also my first time working on a CRT. It would have probably taken a few more years for me to build up enough confidence to open one, but finding one that needed repairs greatly accelerated it if that makes sense. I still don’t really feel comfortable touching the electronics inside because every just tells you about how dangerous they are, but I hope it gets better for me in the future so that I can possibly do some more difficult repairs if needed.