Testing & Configuring an $8,000 CRT | The Sony BVM D24E1WA

Today I wanted to do just kind of a relaxing more chill episode. I'm in the um vault storage area where I keep all the CRTs that are in the queue and the ones that are finished up and also the ones that are very big that's hard for me to transport out into the other shop and uh also the more fragile ones. So, we're going to go through uh the shop today and or this vault and we're going to do some testing on this guy. This is none other than the BVM D24 multiformat CRT. And this one has been pretty much entirely restored. There's a bunch of cards in here. They've all been rebuilt aside from a just two that contain data with um memory that I didn't want to wipe. So, we have spare boards that have been recapped of both of those boards as backups. Uh but right now, I'm using RGB for this first test that's we have running on the screen right now. Here it is. It's the D24E1WA and this one is a serial number 106. So this is the 106th one of these made. So it's an earlier one. This is the main input card that I'm using first for this test. So the lineup here is green, blue, red, and then I do have to have a 75 ohm terminator on the output of each color line there. And then finally at the bottom is sync. And that does not need termination. You don't need to worry about terminating your sync at all, but you do need to terminate each color. And these are some really nice Extron cables that I'm using. And I'm able to use that because of a couple cool modern devices. One is a dongle from Mike Chi. So the Extron cable goes right there, goes to VGA. This dongle allows me to go straight from that into Sega 2 style adapter into this. Um, it's from Insurrection Industries. I can't remember what the device is called, but it allows you to just plug in the back of a PC Engine and get RGB to the uh Sega 2 adapter. So, that's all done like that. And then, if I want audio, which you know, BVMs do not have audio support for the most part, I can do a 3.5 mm stereo audio out of that. So, that's what you're seeing on the screen right now is 240p through RGB. And I have AirZon on here, which is not a great one. It will scroll some, but it looks it does pop nicely if I can get the uh timing to line up like that on the camera. So, that's the first one. Now, I did have to put the CRT in VCR mode when I first powered it on to get this to work. And that's a pretty easy process. You just have to um well, what you'll do is you'll send in a sync that the BVMD series does not like. And what it'll do is it'll make this big wonky uh stretch at the top of your screen. And then to fix it, you just need to go into the extended menu, which is under the main menu for setup. And when you get into that extended menu, you need to input four ones. most of the time. That's the default password. Then hit enter. It'll get you to this extended menu. And in here, right at the bottom, is a VCR mode. If you turn that on and hit enter, it'll save it as being on. And then you won't have that sync issue. It clears it right up. Um, at least on this console, and a few others may have this problem. Uh, so that's how you fix that. And uh all in all, I mean, this is like one of those highly desirable CRTs, right? So, next up, I want to try out another format. Uh but I need to see what the configuration is on the input cards. So, I'm going to set the camera up and just like nonchalantly walk through that. We'll see um what configuration we have. Cuz what I'm using now is I'm testing this secondary analog digital input card, which is a 21D, which is marked right down here. This is an accessory card that does a bunch of uh different inputs and allows you to have additional inputs into the TV into the TV into the monitor. And uh right what I have set up here is component video. Now I have to put terminators on the back of the outputs for this uh but it's the same green blue red setup right there for uh PlayStation 2 test. And then I'm using here's what I'm using. I'm using these HOSA 75 ohm adapters RCA to BNC. Now this is one I'm just trying out uh for the first time but it's higher quality. It's supposed to be 75 ohm, which you want if you want to check those out, too. I'll put a link in the description of the video um on that part. So, now we've got that. The PlayStation 2 is actually running on the main menu, and I've been testing, and I set it up manually to be in component mode down there on my little KV9. So, what I have to do is come down here to the front of the monitor and first off, uh, let's press. So, right now I'm on input two. That's a safe area. I don't know why that's on. Okay, so somehow the safe area indicator got turned on. Crazy. Let's see. So, we should be able to do input config safe area display. So, to take that off, we just have to hit enter here and turn that off right there. And so, this is channel one input. Yeah. See? Hit enter. Okay. So, I'm going to go over here and I'm going to hit input three. It should turn. We don't want to do that then. Oh, here. Okay. So, here's um well, here's black and white. This is input five. It says 480i. It's so weird that it automatically. So, again, input configuration. Oh, this is PAL. So, it thinks it's PAL. We could go component And that should turn it to There we go. Back to color. Great. So, it was just set up for PAL. And slot number five, input 456. Uh, internal sync is what we want. Screen mode. Sure. 16 by9. Safe area, we want off. And I keep forgetting. Okay. Enter. Okay. So, this should all be good. where in this input is now on uh so let's back out of the menu. Okay, so we're in 48060i which is uh interlaced. So that's input five above input two should still be running. Yes, back into air zon and 480i. So, let's go switch back over here and let's close up the PlayStation because I have Gran Turismo in here. Man, that that rotation is driving me crazy. So, first thing I'm I'm I'm going to rotate the screen a little bit. Let's see if I can get that to go. setup alignment rotation. Yeah, it's real easy to adjust this stuff in this menu. So, we're going to adjust that up and flatten that. That looks better. Just that easy. Um, it's not been obviously calibrated yet, but we don't have to have it calibrated to test it all the way out. So, let's go now and go back to the main menu on this game. And I think that's how we can change the input resolution to higher resolutions. All right, let's first try 480p. Okay. Well, what's it doing? Interesting. It's not want to stay in 480p. All right. Well, there it is. It's switching over to 480p. So, it's just something where I'm just an idiot, so I'll edit out a lot of that. But you can see we got an alignment issue. So, I'm going to go in here and go to alignment. I'm going to reduce that horizontal size a little bit. Well, it'll be fine. Okay, so there you go. We do have it actually working. I doubt I can beat anybody with like a 2001 Ford Kia on this game, but uh my issue there was just not knowing how the PlayStation 2 would set up for 480p. Look at that stupid car I picked. There's no way this is going to be any good. Full throttle. Which Which button's throttle, let's go, Kia. All right. So, yeah. Uh, it's a little dark. Let me see. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pause it. I'm going to turn the lights out. Another thing I hate to do is use really any time of on these screens. So, I try to turn down the color, not stress the tube out too much, and the brightness. This is more of a contrast issue, I think. Yeah. Very slowly. Cool. Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't think I'm going to catch up to those cars with this Kia. So, component m video 480p and I imagine 1080i will work also. I'll test a few more consoles here just so we can get a good idea of what it looks like. All right. So, if I stop right here, just because I feel like I I'm seeing like it's very touchy, right? But if I turn it on, like that's the settings that are built in. I just don't like to run it that high, at least not on the uh brightness. So, other things you can do, um, let me turn the lights back on. So, a lot of these settings, well, these two main things right here, chroma and phase, you don't really have any impact. They they don't work on RGB because you're bypassing any filtration. But when you're using component, you can use these to like fine-tune color or get rid of color altogether. It's a color filtration system. that goes over that. Now, this monitor should be able to do composite video. So, let me uh set up that real quick. All right, the next session of testing is about to begin. And I want to test some lower end video. We're going to test analog NTSC composite. And we're going to do that with an additional 21D. Now, this 21D has been fully rebuilt and um so we're going to test it and test composite video, which according to the connection um guide for this card should be just a terminator here and then a BNC here. And hopefully it will automatically show composite video. And then I have another card right here. Now, this one's not been rebuilt and I've honestly never tested it. It was in my um donations bin or parts bin from another BVM or something. But this is a 24N and it does component video, but it also do uh Svideo. Now, it separates it out to Y and C. So, I don't remember. I think it's Y and then C. So, we'll have to adapt into that. And I can do that using this adapter. which allows me to go from Y and C to Y and C there through B and C and RCA. So I can plug this in and then I have a nice Svideo input uh where I can test Svideo on the Super Famcom. Now to get these engaged with the monitor, it's powered off. It's in standby mode right now, actually. So, I'm going to just slide these in. They go in these card slots, and they slide in. There are slots. If you get it in there correctly, it'll slide in the slot like that. And then you have to push it in, and it'll click like that. And you can turn these screws a little bit. So, it's anchored down a bit. I might need to push this one in a little bit more. We're going to do that one. Then, we're going to take this one out, which again, you just unscrew and screw in. I don't know that that's tight enough. We'll push this a little more. And uh I'm going to get this all set up. I'll get the monitor turned back on here in a second. I'm going to install this card, too. And then I'll install the cabling. And we'll see uh how it works and how to set it up through the front of the menus in the monitor. Now I'm going to first off send in. Let's hope this fine thing still works. Yes. Okay. So, right now it's in Turbo Graphics mode and it's in RGB mode through the main card. The other cards have been installed. You don't really have to do anything. It's auto sensing on the monitor, but they will need to be programmed as to what inputs going into them. Uh first off, I'm just going to send in maybe something with a darker background. Oops. Let's go legendary axe one because I know that a lot of that is a dark background and that'll be easier on the camera. Well, should be. There we go. Okay. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to get into the menus and I'm going to try to change a different input. Like I think input number one was SDI. My goal here first off is to program the input uh for the Svideo maybe because that one's plugged in. I'll show you that in a second. So, let's go to setup input. Well, let's go to an input that's not in use. So, we'll leave that one. This one says it's SDI. So, let's let's change this. No one's using SDI anymore. Let's go configuration. Yeah, we can do that. No, we want to do composite. Oh, YC. Why is it not on there slot number five? Okay. Can't change that one. So, that says we can go composite right there. Internal sync. Let's go down here and do 4x3 normal. Okay. So, what hopefully I should be able to plug this in to the back of the uh monitor now and we can get video to it. All right. Well, I've been able to get composite video on our screen. And check out that muddy composite video on a 1000 line BVM tube. Um, it still looks awesome. Scan lines and everything like I don't know. Uh, anyway, that's comb filtered and four line separation filters. It's got a bunch of crazy filters built into that uh to these monitors. Anyway, let me show you how I got it running. I do have it coming from the super uh Famcom down there over into the same card that I tested earlier, the 21D. Uh I I couldn't get these other two cards to function at all. I think there's something wrong with both of them, and that's not unusual. I'll see if there's a way I can figure out how to get them working. Uh I initially tried to move the slots around on here, but then it just kept causing more issues. So, uh, let me I'll show you how the programming works in here because, uh, you notice this has input this has a one, a two, a three, and then finally down here, the one I got to work for composite was input four. And you can actually use four, five, or six for composite video. The only problem is you're obviously going to have to unplug your component video. If you're trying to use it um for component video, you'll have to unplug it and uh send in the composite video that way. But I still got the main card here connected with the RGB and sync. And actually, that's still running. So, let's just make sure what input are we on right now. We're on input one. So, input two. There we go. So, input two is RGB, input one composite, and yeah, you can see that's really muddy. Let's go down here. Check out my favorite test screen in our muddy format. Sorry about that. Yep. Okay. So, composite video check, component video check, and uh I don't unfortunately that card, the 21D is not listed as being able to do S-video. You may be able to do Svideo connected to the main monitor, but we'd have to have a working 24N, I know for sure, to have an option card that does Svideo. And that one's not not working. So, unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to get an Svideo test done today. Um, if I do find a way, I'll I'll be sure to let you know. I moved the NTSC decoder over to slot number four. And now it's showing up in the status as being there. So slot number four is the one right there. This is slot four cuz you've got one, two, three, four, five, six. And then I need to see what it says if I if it'll let me configure that now on an input. So cool. Look, it's showing up 24in. So maybe we can get this. Let's go to input 8. I'm putting input eight. I pushed eight on the bottom. Let's go to setup input configuration. Um, oh look, YC. Okay. And then slot. No. Come on. Change to NTSC. Okay. Slot number four. One, two, three, four, five, six. I'm not sure if this going to work. Let's see. I've got it plugged up. Yeah. See, something's not right on this configuration. Why is it trying to do it like that? Why PBPR like that? Okay. Wow. So that's weird. Internal sync, right? composite YC H. Let's turn that off again. Let's see. Okay, input 8. I finally got it to change to YC. But see, it's still saying inputs number one, two, and three. It shouldn't say that because it's not separated out like three different things. It's internal sync picture off feels like something's just not right. Let's go back here and see. I'm going to try input. All right, let's go back to one, two, three. Now, if I turn that on, it looks nuts cuz something's not right. Let's go back here. It says input one, two, and three. What if I switch these? Does that work or look even worse if I switch those two? No, that's not right. All right. So, there, there, there. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure why it's not it's not looking that good, is it? Hey, it looks a little better. But, you know, that could be the from the crappy power supply I have there. But I have a really low-end power supply that may be showing through some information. But we actually did get it to show up on here. Let's see what happens if I go back to like input two and I turn on RGB. Oh, of course. Right. Pops out the back. Okay, RGB looks good. Fine. RGB looks fine and normal. Right. We get out of here. So, input one will be composite video. Input two is this. Right. Yeah, this is set up as composite. That's fine. Okay. One, two is RGB. And then when we try eight down here looks better, right? See, we're getting cleared up. Just looks like donkey dud duds. I don't know that. Uh maybe because of a number of things. So there's not like a different Oh, there's a zero. Let's try zero. I just think it's just a dirty signal. Let's see. Yeah, I think the Svideo is fine. It's just maybe the card itself needs to be rebuilt. It's got a bunch of blooming and stuff going on in it, but it's starting to work now. Okay, let's I'm going to test that other input card in the same slot and get rid of this one because I really do think that it works. It's just not not clean because everything's functioning on it. So, there's two things going on. It's bad power and then it could just be. Yeah, it's got weird blooming and nasty going on on the outsides. All right, but hey, at least it's like working. So, Svideo did work on the BVM through the BKM 24n accessory card, but the card appears to need to be recapped. There's a lot of surface mount capacitors on it and it's not part of the deal with the owner. This is actually one of my cards. So, if if the owner wants it, I told him he could, you know, buy it later on if he decides he wants to add Svideo. I'll recap it and he can get it from me. Uh, but that's the interesting thing about this monitor and BVMs in in general. Uh, they do have modular cards on them and so you do need certain cards to get inputs to work. Now, thankfully, there are options to help out um with aftermarket cards that have been built and kind of replacement cards for these BKM cards. Not every single one of them, but a good portion of them. Uh anyway, that's going to end the testing session for today. I am going to take some minutes here at the end of this video to discuss more on this Sony BVM with you. So, if you just wanted to watch the testing session, that's it. Thank you for coming. Uh, but if you want to know more about this BVM, I'd like to talk to you candidly about it. Uh, first off, there is a reason that I did not rebuild every single board on the main BVM and I'll go through that here. Now, on the 24in D BVM, there are two boards that contain memory. Uh those are the buff board BUFF that sits between the power supply and the deflection card and then there is the ISR board which is all the way at the other end. It contains all the data like the serial number, the hours, all that's logged in that ISR board, most of the settings etc. Now, the buff board is only on the 24 in and it may be on the 32in BVMD series. I am not sure, but it's for sure on the 24 in. It's not on the 20 or the 14 or the 9. So, it's only on the 24 and bigger. And that actually is a board that has added controls and uh settings for convergence mostly and some purity stuff. And all that is kept on the battery. If you remove the battery or you recap it, generally it's going to throw all the settings off and whatever was done to set up the BVM will be thrown off and you could have a bunch of convergence and purity issues. If the board fails, you'll notice a bunch of weird splotches shown up on the board on the screen. So you can try changing the battery, recapping the board, and then adjusting the settings in the buff board settings. Now, the BVM does have settings for each board. So when you go in the maintenance mode, you can get into each individual board and make the settings adjustments for that board basically menu down into that board. That's the great thing about the BVMs. Now, um, those two boards were not built or not rebuilt again because of that memory. So, we had two spare cards that are coming with the BVM that were part of an old salvaged BVM with a blownup CRT. And so, the buff board from that one and the other um ISR boards are both sent, but everything else was rebuilt in here. And that's uh the restoration process. I will include a link in the description for this video of the capacitor list. And this is going to go through and show you all the capacitors that were basically replaced in this thing. And um this can also be found at the back of the service manual for the BK or the BVM D series monitor which is well documented online. And um I hate to get too long-winded here, but I'm going to continue to talk more about this BVM for a few more minutes. So the D series uh as we saw does a wide range of resolutions and a wide range of inputs. And since it's also widescreen and then it has a CRT with a super high line count. Trinitrons really didn't get much higher line count than this. Um this one's at a th00and lines. This is the same tube that's used in the FW900, which is also highly touted as um one of the best CRTs that Sony ever made. Uh that was actually available more along the lines to consumers. These BVMs were not. They were originally upwards of 80, 90, $100,000 with a full loadout of cards and accessories to go with them. They were very expensive, especially the time when this one would have been bought. So, it's not like people would have had this where they may have spent $3 to $4,000 for a home version of a CRT monitor if they were doing some something with the FW900. So, there's a big difference there. Uh, a lot of hardware, a lot of things can go wrong. The good thing is is it's modular based. So, it's easy to service the cards by pulling them out and putting in through tests and servicing them and then reinstalling them and testing them after each one of those sessions is done. That's what was done to this one. And I wanted to say finally something about like availability of this monitor. One of the reasons I really did this weird testing session today was I thought it's getting harder and harder just to even see these D24s anymore. Um, they're becoming real unicorns out there and like the price on them has gotten really incredible. I mean, I don't know what even the real price of this monitor technically is. It's a lot of them have just been gobbled up already at this point by people who want them. And then like if you go on eBay, I think that the last couple I saw were listed $7,000, $8,000, $9,000 for this monitor, which I think is a little crazy just for a CRT. Um, but you know, people do go crazy over certain stuff, and I understand its value as the fact that it's rare. Um, and this also goes back to like one other thing about the test session video today. You might be like, why didn't you just like rip it apart and show all these, not rip the monitor apart, but just like throw all these crazy video uh demonstrations at it and do even more. And I hate putting time on these tubes um any more than I necessarily have to when I work on them. uh especially like the BVM ones. If it's just like a PVM or something that's not quite as rare as this, like a TV or something that's being serviced, I do not mind running it a little longer, running tests through it, doing things to show more gameplay footage on videos. But as far as like a DBVM, I'm not going to go and run up the hours counters. Now, I do want to get a little outage on the new capacitors and test them some, but I'm also going in and I'm manually turning down. You notice what I was doing a lot of times. I was turning down the brightness and contrast on this monitor. You're meant to, you know, you need to use this BVM, these two bigger ones, the 24 in and the 32 in. If you ever have one of these, they have to be used very, you know, tenderly. I hate to say this, but you've got basically the monitor has more power and more voltage that it can output than the tube can handle. And Sony had a big problem with these when they came out originally with tubes imploding because they would become overloaded when people would turn the brightness up and the contrast up way too high. A white screen would pop on and it's supposed to turn an overload circuit on that should just turn the monitor off and should go into the blanking standby. and it's not even supposed to hurt the monitor, but none of that really worked. And it winds up sending current occasionally through the tube. And you can literally explode the CRT just by blooming it too much with way too much voltage and pushing the uh brightness and contrast all the way up. I mean, a lot of times if you do that, it's supposed to kick off. I've seen that happen with other ones that have been uh in the shop before where you turn the brightness and contrast and it's supposed to turn the thing off as a safe safety protection. But anyway, never run these things super bright. You can run smaller monitors brighter and more contrast. And even though the monitor has the ability to do it, don't do it. They're meant to be run at like 70 to 80% brightness levels and they're meant to be used in a fully dark environment. So, if you want to use these properly, you need to set yourself up with a nice dark room where you can control the ambient light. And you need to use it in an environment where using it lower levels of dark, you know, lower settings on brightness and contrast won't bother you if you want to really have this thing last as long as possible. All right, guys. That's like a super long video. Um, look, YouTube's made a lot of weird changes this month. So, if you did va view this and actually got to this point, please remember to hit the like button. I have no idea what the true count for like views and interaction with this video anymore. So, if you did like watch this thing and made it all the way to this point in the very end, please do click the like button and I don't know, why don't you put D24 D24 in the comments if you want to really help out if you liked it a lot. That way, I'll know like the people are actually watching this. Um, if I missed anything about the D24, please feel free to add something in the comments. Um, this is a lot of stuff that's knowledge. It's just coming from my head and like my personal experience and there's very often times where I don't have I mean I never have a script. So something I could be forgetting is very possible. And so anyway, that's the D24 and I appreciate you watching and your viewership today. I'll see you guys next time with some more retro content.