Upgrading Sony's Grail CRT -The KV-27FV310 RGB Mod

[music] >> Hey guys, welcome back. Today we are looking [music] at a Sony KV uh it's a the grail of all grails the FV310. This one is a 27-in and and it's come to the shop first to be restored and then ultimately to be RGB modded with um the Sector Syntar RGB mux kit. So, that's what we're going to do today. I'm going to briefly show you uh an overview overview of the internal hardware first and then I'm going to jump in and we're going to go really detailed into the RGB mod and I'll even show you the trouble I ran into and all the troubleshooting I had to do. Uh before we get into that, please remember to subscribe to the channel if you like CRT content and CRT related stuff. And um that's pretty much it. So, let's just jump right in and check out this Sony KV FV310. And we're going to take our first look at the Sony uh FV310. And this is the KV27, so 27-in flat flat Vega Trinitron tube here. And pretty iconic front bezel and look to this TV. And I've already removed the shell. The interesting story on this one is it was sent to the dump and was rescued after it either arrived at the dump or when it was thrown out to go to the dump, but the owner told me the back end of the TV was completely destroyed, meaning the back shell. And then here we have a pretty bad impact point on this piece of plastic on the bezel, but thankfully there's nothing in this entire corner um that would be damaged by that impact. So, there was no damage to the actual TV itself. The screen doesn't even have a scratch on it. And so, we finally get to see the FV-310. And if we look over here, we do have a label telling the information on this actual TV and that it's a 310, December of 2003. Now, the owner was able to source a replacement back shell from a FS320 from roughly the same time period. You can see over here he took the label from the broken back of the original and taped it. Um but here's the replacement back shell. So, if you find yourself needing shell parts, it's probably a good chance that any of the parts from the 320 will fit the 310. Uh not the actual hardware inside as far as certain things, but other things like the shell and maybe even the bezel will fit. And over here we have the subwoofer with this cool speaker design, right? Over here, I loved how Sony, you know, they got quite inventive inside these CRTs um to try to enhance sound performance. And then over here we've got our Sony uh 10 ohm 5 watt speakers. So, stereo audio on this TV set. There's a lot of extra hardware inside of here. You've actually got a second board on these later high-end Sony >> [sighs] >> uh TVs that would do extra functionality to try to help you with your picture quality basically. Uh but here's our standard socket board, neck board if you want to call it at that. This is the flyback transformer. And then this board, the D board is mostly power, looks like. Yeah, we've got even power stuff in the audio power, it looks like right over there. You see that marking on the board where it says audio for the woofer. And you got some big caps under there. So, that's not really the caps I'm worried about on this one. We're more worried more worried about just getting the uh deflection capacitors checked out and replaced. And then um also the power capacitors that are kind of over here jumbled up. We're going to replace those because that's really one of the higher heat, higher uh voltage areas. This is where your power comes in directly from the wall. And then uh that is our power supply for the most part. Spent about 12 hours working inside the CRT here. And I have restored pretty much every board uh to some level. And most of it is caps being replaced as well as uh solder being reflowed and inspected on all these boards inside here. And a total of 63 electrolytic capacitors were replaced. And that's on a combination of all these. I mean, there's like five circuit boards in here. And uh it's not every single capacitor. There's probably twice that many actually in the whole CRT. And then I went ahead and re-seated these yoke wedges cuz they had all come loose. And what I've used there is just some black RTV silicone. You see that around whoop around the wedges right there? And that will hold those and they'll pretty much never move now unless someone were to come in here and intentionally uh peel that off the back of the tube and try to move it purposefully. So, that's good. And actually, what we're going to do next is tear it down again, not completely, but we're going to remove this um board right here, the A board, and we're going to install this Sunthar's RGB mux kit. Uh that's pre-prepped. So, I'll link in the description uh more information about this specific mod. We're on our A board here and we're going to remove three resistors to start this process. R2020 022 024 and I'm just going to do this with my soldering iron. It's pretty simple. There we go. Just like that. I'm actually going to clean these up. Some solder wick. I just want to avoid R19 and R21. Everything else is not populated. >> All right, let's see how we look here. Everything looks pretty good. Ready to move on to the next step. Next step, I'm going to remove some jumpers. There are three of them here. And they're not labeled on this side, but on the other side is jumper wire 42, 43, and 44. So, I'll show you a picture of the other side, but I'm just using my desoldering iron or tool here, the FR-301. And I have put fresh solder on each of these points. Just to make it easier. Let's see if we got all the solder out there. If so, our jumper wires will just fall right out through here. Yeah, it like we did pretty good. So, that's it. Those three jumpers need to come and uh oops, be removed. Goodness gracious. Okay. >> [snorts] >> That one may still need a little solder removal. Okay, there we go. All right, so this is a jumper. And uh we just need to remove this one. All three of these right here. And then we're going to install some diodes in their place. Okay, I'm trying an interesting technique here. This is my diode and it's flowing towards the left side over here towards this little hook. Um so that's the way the diode flows. So, if we look over here where we're going to be installing it down um in the jump jumper wire section, you notice my board has a connector there that a different board will go into. Uh right here. Right in here, a whole board sits going to go in there. So, what I've done is I've set the diode to flow again away from this chip right here and towards the connector and the capacitors. That's the direction it needs to flow, but I've installed that hook so I can come in and um do a cleaner job of installing the conductor wires than what we've got up here on our demonstration. And uh I just want to try to make it a little bit simpler on myself. So, I'm going to I'm going to do a slight hook on that diode uh lead right there that I've just custom bent. And I'll show you how this looks when I get it three of them installed right there. Okay, and here is what I'm talking about on the diodes. Now, each of them has a little hook on the end, and that's where I'll attach a conductor with the red, blue, and then the green closest to that burgundy connector over there. And I may even be able to get a nice heat shrink tube to fit over those points and make it look real professional with the hooks. All right, guys. I'm about to install my conductors. I'm going by the guide again at Sunthar for this chassis, but I'm going to make some alterations to my design and my installation. There's the hooks on that side for our red, green, blue. And it says I can get 3 V for blanking right here from this jumper on the other side. And so, you can see I've already removed that jumper, and I installed a new jumper that I had put a hook on, so that's where four of the conductors from our RGB mux kit will go. And then up here is where we're going to connect for sync. And um according to the guide, they went with the S-video connector up here, which gets in sync on luma. Um but I'm going to actually connect down, cuz if you see, you can see there's a trail leading down there. I'm going to try to maybe connect down here for sync and then ground just to make it look cleaner, and I can run the cabling kind of closer together down there. We'll see. Uh but that's where those needs to be those need to be connected. And then I'm certain that there's going to be an audio connection. All right, I've installed all the conductors and let's just start on the bottom side here. You've got my left and right audio connected over here to the two points that are on the board marked for left and right audio and then I used this point for the audio ground and I fed it around up top. I couldn't actually find a way to get to those connectors right there for the left and right audio from the top side but that right there is I know it looks white but it just has a little piece of the white shielding left on it. That's a ground cable, the black cable. Purple is also ground cable and I've yet to clean these points so they are a little dirty but um still has some flux on there so I'll I'll brush all that off. So there's the yellow conductor. That's sync. Go down here some more. There's our installed red, green and blue with heat shrink tubing. Same thing over here with the blanking. Heat shrink tubing. Looks great. And then right there is another ground, the brown wire. So you have brown, purple and black, three different grounds. They all connect on the same ground loop within the CRT. So let's get this all reassembled and see if we did it correctly. All right, so I was doing some quality control checks and I always recommend you do that especially when you're working on something like a modification. Uh everything's right over there, red, blue, green. I had these wires swapped so that's a good thing I didn't just go and try and test it. Uh the brown wire is supposed to be the blanking signal or the five uh 3 volts actually. And then over here is just the ground and I went up to Suntar's guide for the cable and the coloring on the cable. And that tells you everything you need to know. Okay, TV's back together and powered on. Let's see what happens when we turn on our C-syncs console RGB. Oh. Okay. No, no, no, no, no. That is not right at all. All right. Um Wow. Yeah, definitely not correct. Well, I managed to figure out the issue with the RGB mod. I've I've got the kit taken off here cuz I was fitting it to the outside shell. But what was happening is I forgot that this older kit and this particular TV, it's syncs fed in through this S-video. So, you have to put a dummy plug in it to get it to work. So, I had to put a just a S-video cable from the N64 into it. I didn't have to put any signal and then it just came right on. So, that's a good thing. Uh everything in here has been finished up on touch-up. Um I did install one convergence strip strip over here to help correct that corner convergence. I've gone through all the geometry. I also had to move these two rings. Uh these two front rings up here control the screen bow at the top and the bottom of the screen here. So, if it's a little bit bowed out, you can tilt those rings just a tiny amount. You could see how far I had to end up moving it. I had to move this one about oh, I'd say an eighth of an inch. Um to correct the tilt and everything. So, this thing's ready to go. I'm going to uh get the back closed up here. Let me show you what that looks like. I did install this SCART back here. It looks pretty good. And um now I'm going to try to fit this on the back of the television without breaking anything else and hopefully I can get it plugged up and SCART will work. All right, here it is put back together. Got the dummy plug in. Got the SCART plug in and then you can hear Super Mario World. You're going to get that more A pattern and a bunch of strobes because this is not the greatest screen to try to show you, but I just wanted to show you that it is working. Let me turn the volume down. The OSD works. But again, you have to have the dummy plug in for this particular build out. Now, somebody did tell me that there may be a new board from Sunthar that adds a transistor that doesn't have to have the dummy plug, but the dummy plug really isn't a big deal. You could leave the N64 plugged in and then use it when you want or some other S-video device. Just switch back and forth between them. Looks pretty good though. Um, I've done Today I'm using my physical copy of the 240p test suite on the Sega Dreamcast running currently at 240p scroll pattern through RGB. And I'm just going to run through some test patterns real quickly and show you the quality of this screen after adjustment. Okay, under test patterns I'm just going to go to geometry to start off and we're going to look at the monoscope pattern that's provided here within this disc. It's a little bit different than the newest version, but overall it looks pretty good. There is a little bit of a horizontal shift which you'll see between every single console that you use analog video with. And even the Sega Dreamcast. There. is um not a whole lot of like issues on the screen. I mean, everything looks really fantastic for the most part. In the corners, you're still going to have a little bit of convergence uh separation down here at the very bottom line. It's just too difficult to get any kind of magnet in there. And uh if we zoom in to the very bottom corners, you'll see it blow out a little bit. It's not nearly that bad when you go in about a quarter of an inch, but really the flat screen technology on CRTs always struggled a bit um with convergence beam alignment in the corners. And also, this TV is quite slim. I mean, it's not the slimmest CRT in the 27-in size, but it is very slim compared to something like a JVC D-series. And uh so, that definitely helps contribute to that. And it doesn't show up perfectly on here because there's some glare and um more A patterns on the screen, but this really does have nice balanced color. The white balance is great. Again, through RGB, just looks wonderful. One thing I wanted to test was light guns. I always get the question about light guns and RGB mods, and the light gun has no [music] problem working through this TV. I'll go through how I had to set it up. Uh but, this is RGB, and I'm using a light gun here through the PlayStation 2, and it works perfectly. >> I have my light gun in my PlayStation Slim. That's what you just saw me using. And then it comes through and it has this composite hookup for the light gun itself. And then I'm guessing this is a very old SCART cable, but I'm guessing it must be C sync cuz everything I've had to get uh had to use with this TV so far has needed to be C sync. But there it is going straight into SCART uh out of the console. And uh this isn't part of it. That was just a different cable. Uh it does need the dummy plug to activate the SCART input on this TV, but that's really the only weird thing about it. Everything else, I mean, this thing is gloriously awesome. All right, guys. This was a really fun project to finally get to tackle. I've been waiting years really to not only have a nice FV310 here in the shop, but uh also have an opportunity to modify it with RGB. This was again the first FV310 I've had an opportunity to even use myself. The FV310 does have a lot of hype around it. People are always talking about how great it is, but this is one of those few TVs that personally I believe lives up to the hype. And the major reason is because of that dual flyback or a There's like a output resistor something like going on here where you've got um voltage regulation uh that's not on the other Sonys that you know, it it eliminates the blooming effect. And I'm sorry if I just like scrambled through all that and didn't really talk about it in the most technical terms, but in the most part when you're using a CRT like this um generally speaking and you have flashes of white on the screen, it'll cause your image to expand in size and bloom. And that's because the old CRTs had a very hard time of regulating that high change in voltage from a black screen, which is nothing being transmitted onto the tube, to all of a sudden a big white screen. So, if you flash a lot, uh you'll notice this a lot like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opening for um Turtles in Time, how it flashes before the turtles come down the screen on the opening title sequence. That's a good test to show this. But, the FV310 actually has an engineered process to get rid of that. I also really like these subwoofer in the sound system on this TV. It does everything you want as far as like um composite, S-video, component, and now RGB with this kit installed. I was able to run through every console that does analog video, and I just had a great time using it. Um especially now getting to use the RGB input. The big trouble I had, obviously, was I didn't realize I needed that dummy plug in. I should have thought about that and like researched the whole mod more, and I maybe would have remembered this. But, I did not. So, I spent like hours, I'm telling you, after you saw where it wasn't working, trying to figure out what I'd done wrong. I thought I had installed something wrong on my process of installing it, and maybe my conductors were connected incorrectly, but all that was actually bogus. It was literally the problem was I'd forgotten to plug in that dummy plug. So, definitely do that, and you won't have any trouble. Um I was able to use like a Dreamcast with 480i and 240p looked awesome. And I tested out the Genesis, I tested out the Super Famicom, and uh really, again, anything that I could find that I threw at this thing, it looked awesome. And you're getting basically all the benefits from the CRT, you're getting now RGB input, and you have an extra large screen, great sound system. uh These TVs will support an awesome remote control. They have really good like features in their menu. And so that yeah, this was a great experience for me. I know the owner of the TV was really happy. It was a ton of work. Ton of work. I mean, we had to replace over 60 capacitors inside and work on many boards. A lot of adjustment phase had to be done. And finally the RGB mod. So this is definitely something I think that people should only do if they're really really experienced in doing this level of mod work. Personally, I love doing this stuff, and this is the thing I do every day here in my shop. So if this is something you're considering doing, you can reach out to me through the links in the description to get in touch with me. The only people I really do work for is Patreon members at this point. So you can go through and go to my Patreon account, sign up there, and you can get into our service queue if you want to have a professional service job like this done to your Sony KV- FV310. Thanks again everybody for watching this long video. I really had a great experience again with this TV. If you enjoyed this video, remember to hit the like button um down below. It will help out with the algorithm, and it will help out for other people who are interested in seeing this CRT job get done. It will help the reach of the video a little bit. So that's all I ask for you is to do that, and have yourself a wonderful day. I'll see you guys next time with some more retro content.