Video summary
The video documents the meticulous restoration and modification of a Sony KV-27V42 CRT television from 1999, widely regarded as one of the best consumer sets ever made by the brand. The host begins by showcasing the unit's exceptional "mint" condition, noting its pristine tube with only minor dust and scratches, before opening it up to reveal an incredibly clean interior despite being sealed since manufacture. A key focus is placed on the BA-4D chassis, which supports both RGB and component video modifications; however, for this project, the decision was made to pursue an RGB conversion while also addressing a bent ground wire that needed straightening during disassembly. The initial steps involve careful servicing of power boards, checking capacitors in the deflection zone, and documenting cable paths before proceeding with the electronic upgrades.
The core technical work involves modifying the main board (Board A) and the neck/CV board to enable RGB input without a scaler box. This process requires lifting specific resistors on the microprocessor side of the circuit and soldering 1N4148 diodes in their place, followed by removing other designated components like R086 and others nearby. To ensure safety and organization within the crowded internal space, heat-shrink tubing is applied to protect newly installed connections from accidental shorts or interference with hanging wires. Additionally, a manual on/off switch equipped with an integrated 1,000-ohm resistor is wired into the circuit to control blanking signals, providing users with a simple way to toggle between standard composite video and RGB modes without needing complex external adapters like SCART mux kits.
Despite initial struggles where the modification failed due to incorrect jumper settings found in service guides and accidental short circuits caused by poorly crimped wires bridging adjacent cables, persistence led to eventual success. The host eventually identified that a specific wire bundle was touching another conductor when compressed, causing signal distortion; after cutting and reinstalling the cable correctly along with adjusting internal ID values via the OSD menu, the RGB output finally functioned perfectly. Once operational, attention turned to correcting color convergence issues in the corners of the screen using salvaged adhesive strips secured over existing rings, significantly improving image alignment where colors previously separated or drooped.
The final result is a stunning display that rivals professional arcade monitors and PVMs, featuring sharp scan lines, excellent geometry, and vibrant white balance adjustments that make the picture pop on this 27-inch screen. The host emphasizes that while modifying such vintage equipment requires patience and technical skill due to its complexity, the payoff of owning an upgraded Sony CRT is immense for enthusiasts who appreciate bubble tubes and superior audio systems built into these appliances. Although component video upgrades are possible, they were not pursued in this instance; instead, the focus remained on delivering a high-quality RGB experience with manual switching capabilities. The project concludes by encouraging viewers to seek out similar units or commission professional modifications if they wish to preserve these legendary pieces of television history.
Read the full video transcript
You okay, Cole?
It's not too scary, is it?
Right. So, I've had a lot of interest in
this TV and uh
deservedly so. It's pretty phenomenal.
Look at it. It is probably the most mint
condition
Sony KV
that I've seen in a long time.
A little bit of dust on here, but super
super great condition.
A little
like minor scratch there, but
aside from that, really nothing.
Not a blemish on the tube.
Beautiful Energy Plus star
rated appliance here.
And it's in
uh such good shape. We still have our
little door here with a video two input
access
for composite video and
stereo audio. And what we have is the
Sony
KV-27
V42.
This is from 1999
and was made in Mexico.
And it has the BA-4D
chassis.
That is a very, very good thing.
So, we're going to open it up, take a
quick look inside.
I have to do some servicing
before
we uh do the good stuff and
modify this thing.
All right, here it is in the back end
and we are really clean inside,
especially for something from 1999
that has undoubtedly never been opened.
I've worked on this chassis
uh before and actually quite recently.
Um
I want to take a look at this. This is
something that's quite not right or
great is
that connection. Uh that is the ground
connection
uh
all the way from this power board, but I
don't like that it's bent over and done
like that. I don't know.
I imagine that was probably done just
right in the factory when it was
installed cuz
how else would that have happened? Um
Other than that, nothing looks I mean,
look at that. That is weird. Never seen
that happen.
Interesting. So,
it's not really a big deal, but we'll
make sure to straighten that out. Um
this can be RGB modded.
And also, it can be component video
modded.
But, we're just going to go for RGB this
time. We're also going to check out the
capacitors over here in the
um deflection zone and then we have this
little
isolated power input block over here.
We'll recap that, check the solder,
check the soldering caps out here on the
neck board, the CV board. We just got to
uh
document uh where all these cables go,
although I've pretty much memorized it
at this point. And um then we can take
this board out, service it, add that RGB
kit,
and check out some other cool things.
And let's see if we get a zap here from
the
anode cap.
Whoa.
That was a huge zap. I didn't think it
would, but dang, man.
We're in here looking at board A. This
is the main board and I have done the
capacitor kit and restored this
uh and it's ready for modification.
And this chassis, again, is in multiple
CRT, so there's a lot of documentation
on it.
We're going to um
go in here and work on the OSD and
inject RGB
as well as sync. We're going to add a
switch for this one, so we'll have some
manual switch to switch on the RGB mod.
I also restored this board. This is the
CV board.
And that's the uh neck or CRT socket
board.
So, let's take just a quick look in here
uh where we're going to work.
This is what we're looking for. We're
looking for these two chips. This is a
microprocessor and a jungle chip.
And
let's get this flipped around. We're
looking for these three resistors. What
we're going to do is we're going to lift
the legs on these resistors. Now, in
this particular model, we shouldn't have
to change these
three resistors, but we will lift the
legs.
And we will add
some
1N4148
diodes
uh
on this side where um before or after,
I'm not sure, the resistor
pattern, but that's what the directions
are saying.
So, we're going to go ahead and set up
and we're going to remove these
three resistor legs and we'll pull them.
And then um
if we look up here at the design for
this particular set,
that's the same area.
Um this is one that I've done before on
this particular chassis
and there's the modification I've done
with
lifting those resistors.
So, that's what we're about to do now
and let's see if there's something else
in here that's helpful.
There's the diode.
We're going to do all that, but if you
look over here, too, we need to remove
some components.
And that would be
right next to these legs.
Uh this one it's
R086.
And
88 right here we're going to remove and
we're going to remove one more.
Just like this one. So, they're all over
here. Let me show you on our board.
That is up here and we're going to
remove them. That's
that resistor, that resistor, and that
resistor. All three of those need to go.
And uh
that's what we're about to do now.
Let's start here by removing these
resistors by just adding some solder to
each side.
And uh
just get heated up.
There we go. It's just like that,
simple. And then we can come back in
here afterwards
and clean this up. But there's that
resistor. See it on the end of my
tip of my soldering soldering iron right
there. It's just getting boiled right
there. So, we'll get rid of it.
And that's the first one. Now we can get
rid of this other one right here above
it. Same thing.
>> You have to heat both
kind of sides simultaneously to
Oop.
Get those to come off cuz you don't want
to like
Sorry. You don't want to burn these
traces.
So, it's okay to take your time.
Like I said, I'll come in here and we'll
clean it up in a second, but that's
number two gone.
And then we're going to get this third
one gone, and then we're going to
actually remove the solder on See how
I'm reflowing right here? We're going to
remove the solder on those three points.
Um but first again, I'm going to come up
here.
We'll get rid of this one.
There we go.
There it is on the tip again.
Come in here with the
Can always use this guy
to just
suck up any loose solder if you want,
but we'll go back over that with some
solder wick.
Going to use my
FR-301 now to try to get the solder off
of these points.
>> Well, we got most of it off. Let's see
if
we still have more on there. Oh, there
we go.
So, I'm just going to grab them and
yeah, wiggle them, make sure there's
nothing left in those
points and we are good. Okay.
We are good. We can pull that through
the next side. Uh before I do that,
let's clean this wristy area.
>> [snorts]
>> Come in here with some solder wick and
uh clean up these other
points.
Excellent. Scoop here.
Okay.
Since they're good, I'm going to add a
little bit back to this
point. Not that it matters, it's
unpopulated, but
my OCD will kill me if I don't.
Okay.
There we go.
Okay, these are [clears throat] our
resistors. The top side should be Yep,
should be able to pull it just like
that.
Freely. [snorts]
Yes, sir.
And yes, sir.
And that step is ready.
Now,
I can connect my diodes. All right,
here's our diodes and
they do have
a marking on them to tell which
direction they are.
That is the darker ring or the black
ring right there on this end.
That end needs to go
in
these
vias or holes here. So, what I'm going
to do is I'm going to stick all three of
these in here.
And
I will then solder the backside uh
of them
onto
the circuit board and then it will be
easier to attach them
on this side to the resistor.
So, we'll just free float those in here
for now. Get them all the way up there,
it's fine.
Do like that to hold them in place.
There's the reverse side of those
diodes.
Okie dokie and
number three.
Come in here and cut these legs down.
Now, we did pretty good. Um
Looks like one of these maybe needs to
go a little further in.
All right.
Let's see.
For now, we can go ahead and definitely
solder
these points together.
And then we'll we'll wrap them.
As you can tell, I've already wrapped
the components around each other.
I'm just going to get some heat
introduced in here.
And a nice healthy amount of solder.
A little bit more.
And that's good.
And then we'll trim these legs.
Trim the other one.
There we go.
And that will be good.
Do the same thing here with the middle
one. Wrap that.
What the heck? We don't even really need
to wrap it.
Just set it like this.
And we'll just
add some
Whoop. Don't want to do that. Okay.
There we go.
Let that cool for a second.
Squeeze there.
Touch all that up.
That's looking good.
I mean, I guess it kind looks good. I
don't know.
Still pretty ugly, but what we're going
to do now is we're going to cover them
in some protection.
All right, let's get in here and add
some protection.
I'm going to just slip on some heat
shrink tubing that I've cut up.
That way these don't accidentally ground
out against themselves
or any other components.
There's a lot of wires that are hanging
inside this.
I could probably just do two, but
we're going to be neat and fancy and
we're going to do all three of them.
Okay.
All right. Now, I'm just going to add
some heat from my hot air station.
All right, this is how we are supposed
to look.
We've got our
setup all protected in there.
And look at that, nothing can really
mess with that. So, we're in good shape
there.
Let's install a resistor on a switch.
So, this is going to be a switch that's
just an on-off switch.
There's going to be a 1,000 ohm resistor
in the line of that switch, and we're
going to go from this point over here in
the middle here.
Um
through this hole right here on this
connection over to the bottom side.
And then that switch is just going to
send in
It's going to come through here, and
it's going to touch up to this point R31
right there.
R331
And this is the way the design for the
switch mod is on
the last time I did
this
modification. That's how I put the
switch in right here.
And then follow that up again
with a
big beefy switch. We're probably not
using that big of a beefy switch.
Goes through that hole and connects up
right here on
R331.
So, that's sending in like 3.3 volts
just to activate
blanking and activate the mod.
So, normally with this mod you'd use a
mux kit
uh, sometimes, you know, where you just
send the SCART signal in.
But, sometimes there's a difficult
people have difficulty using a mister
um, and getting it to sync. So, just to
bypass all that, we're going to add the
manual switch in here.
So, we'll add that
uh,
end of the switch to there and then the
other end of the switch will go
ultimately up to this um,
spot over here.
The middle point right here on number
three. Well, somehow I have wound up
with an even beefier switch.
Uh, I wanted it to say on off and I
ordered these massive 20 amp switches,
which are just completely overkill for
this little bit
of uh, 3.3 volts or whatever DC we're
putting through it. That's okay.
Just give it this little beefcake
version of the switch.
Um, and that'll give us something I
guess easy to solder to here. So,
I'll do the same thing and kind of twist
this
here.
Like that.
We'll see if we can't get some solder to
stick on that point right there.
Oh, yeah. Look at that beautiful being
footage.
Okay, come down here get a little bit.
Down there, that'll be beautiful.
>> [snorts]
[clears throat]
>> Cut that tip off right there, and there
we go.
That looks pretty nice. So, what I can
do now is I can just run a conductor
from here
to one point, and then from here
to the other point, and that way we have
a switch with a built-in resistance of
1,000 ohms right there.
And um I'll run those conductors, and
then we'll put some heat shrink tubing
or some protection on them. I've prepped
things for the board to have the RGB
added, and here's our kit from Suntar.
Sector Suntar. Now, this is
a type C kit, so
our conductors will plug in here. Our
SCART will obviously be here. We can
plug our input in there.
It's all soldered in right there, and
then those values on the
uh
resistors are given to you from Sector
Suntar's website.
They're pretty much all 1,000 ohm,
except for a couple 75 ohms
tying the uh RGB lines to ground, and
then we have one diode. Make sure the
diode is in the right direction.
And that should be all we need. Uh R11
is left blank because we're not using
the blanking pin. So, we're not going to
solder that in. We're going to use our
switch,
which is right here and has been
soldered into place.
The only thing left to do is
solder these conductors
onto the bottom of the board and uh
we will go red, green, blue up here as
well as
blanking.
Over here will go audio, ground, and
sync.
And that should be it.
All right, I've installed all the
conductors here.
You can see purple is ground.
Left and right audio are gray and white,
and then our yellow cable is our
composite video sync.
I've also got another ground cable right
there.
If we move on down this way, we've seen
where we will inject our red, green, and
blue.
Then our blanking will be fed from our
manual switch, which is right here.
And then uh
this is just a ground cable again, and
then there's our manual switch. So, now
it's just time to go put all this back
into the frame, and let's test it out.
Wow, so yeah, this is not working.
This uh RGB mod is just not working.
I've tried just about everything I know
what to do with it.
I removed the switch and went straight
over to where it's like s- blanking on
the signal, but it absolutely hates it,
and I'm just not sure what's going on.
Like, check it out. I'm getting all
kinds of video distortion while the
stuff's just installed, which is not
good.
There's definitely something wrong with
this mod. All right, I've tried a couple
different things here.
I moved my sync over to this point.
And then I have a jumper here for
S-video detection. I I all these jumpers
or these
up a little bit. I moved that blanking
to there cuz I finally found a guide on
here for this exact TV. I don't know how
I missed it before. It kept sending me
to a different TV that was a little
different on the
Sunthar website and I think I had
something wrong there. So, let's see if
this works.
All right, let's see what happens this
time.
It's powering on.
Video is up.
And we have no sync now. Um
I've got
the S-video plugged in. No sync on video
one,
two, three.
No sync, no sync, no sync you stink.
>> [laughter]
>> Okay,
um
let's unplug that see if that makes any
difference.
Uh no, no, no, no, no, no difference.
None at all.
Let's unplug this.
Oh, brother. All right, let's pull the
board see what we can do now.
So, this is like 100% matching the guide
now, right?
There's all those things
the guide tells you to do. What I did
with those things, okay?
All that's the same and then like
I go down further
the input side
I did all this. All those ground points
and sync and audio left S-video detect
grounded.
I did all that, see? Look, right here.
It's all right there. So, there's
a ground and a ground and there's the
supposed composite video, supposed
S-video detect, left and right audio.
And it didn't work. So, there's one more
thing in here that I just noticed. If
you scroll down, it says tip.
We got a sync separator IC for switching
this video. Um I'm not sure that this is
the problem, but
what we'll do is we will
go into the service ID
and change it.
ID
value 1 to 23.
Okay, so now let's put it all back
together.
>> [snorts]
>> I'm going to cry. If this doesn't work,
we're going to take it out. I have one
last idea.
And uh
we'll see.
All right, I'm sorry for the strobing.
I've got it here. We're going to change
it. It's at 151.
I'm going to go all the way down to 23.
It's pretty wild.
23
Then to write it, we press muting.
And enter. Okay.
You see that doesn't look right. I mean
the OSD definitely looks off.
All right, let's get out of this and see
if that made any difference.
Turn that off and
power it back on.
And we got it in video 1 mode.
And we got back to that other mode. We
>> [snorts]
>> We're back to where we started. Awesome.
There's definitely something wrong
with either the uh
kit.
Ugh, this is just disgusting cuz it's
sinking now, but it's just sinking this
garbled garbage image.
All right, great news everybody.
That's actually our GB on the screen. I
got it to work.
I got it to work.
And you won't believe what the problem
was. Or maybe you will.
All right, so as I started to look at
things closer, I came finally
to the point where this, which is
the conductor end
that was injected
like this. This is right over in here.
That was injected over into the actual
board.
And
I'm going to try to zoom in here.
Because what was happening
was over on the side
where
we have the brown and red cable.
The red
has actually the red pin is
touching the brown cable.
The brown cable
right there. So,
what had happened happened
is when I pinched
the cable set together like this,
>> [clears throat]
>> the
>> [snorts]
>> the cabling was not perfectly level and
aligned like it is here now.
And when I pushed this point into this
cable
and wound up bridging
bridging that cable. So, I cut the cable
and reinstalled it
like this.
Right here.
And uh
nothing was bridged. I checked to make
sure that
nothing was bridged down here with my
multimeter. So,
everything's good. All right, guys. I've
got the board out here and I've just
done my final touches on the
modification.
The kit's good.
I went and reinstalled that switch. So,
I'm going to have manual blanking
installed on this chassis just to make
it simpler to use a mister with.
All you have to do is have C sync on
this board. And everything in here was
good. Um at least I think it's good. I
mean, it was all good on that last test
run. I did clean it up a little bit. So,
there's blue, green, and red.
There's blanking.
I reattached this ground.
Go down here. I cleaned this up a little
bit more to make sure there was no
interference.
And we've got
audio, left, right, ground, ground. This
ground wire here is grounding
the S-video luma detection.
And then composite video sync right
there. And all that is good. Let me make
sure it's sync cable. I don't know. I
might need to trim this sync cable up
right here and and reattach it. But, all
right. Check it out. We're fully
reassembled.
And we're working again.
Here's our switch. Let me show you.
Just have it on here. It's on mute mode
cuz I don't want the sound to come
through. You turn the switch off.
TV's in normal mode. Turn the switch on.
Bam! We get RGB.
We get sharp old RGB right there. What
do you think, Cole?
Gosh, I wish that dog would get out of
his bed sometimes and make it. It's
always just
dirty bed and dirty dog. Just kidding.
All right. Check that out. How awesome
is that?
So, now we know why everything went
wrong and everything's back to
good shape.
Let me fit the
SCART port and the uh
switch port on the back shell.
We're ready to be done with this thing.
All right, I'm in here and before I
close the CRT up, the last thing I
really need to do is try to fix the
convergence up here in the corners.
See how it's uh
separated. The other corner down here
looks really nice and tight.
But, this one and then same thing with
this one.
What I'm going to try to do is I'm going
to stick this convergence strip, which
is just salvaged from another job, and
what I'm going to
do is while it's on here, I'm going to
actually stick this back in here in this
area right here.
And then, I'm going to set the camera up
cuz so you can see
uh what happens. And if we can get a
good spot for it, it should line those
beams up.
And once it does that, once those beams
align,
um
I'll put some adhesive on this, stick it
in place,
and then it'll have some nice tight
convergence in this corner.
I'm sticking it back there right now.
You can see my arm.
You see how that moves around like that?
And oh, look. Like if I can get it
just experiment. There we go. You see if
you can experiment with that. Oops.
And see, if you get a good spot like
that,
our beams are pretty darn I mean,
they're not perfect. They probably will
never be perfect. But, this is
much better. Whoop.
See that?
Yeah, that's better.
I'm going to get this lined up and stick
it in place permanently cuz if it moves,
it'll
go back to the bad.
Oh, just like that. See how much worse
it was before?
All right, let me get some stuff to
stick that in place.
Hey everybody, so here's a look behind
that tube and you can see I've installed
both of these
tabs.
Uh both of these convergence strips have
been
set with two-sided tape and
a caulk adhesive here.
And so that has been done.
And then there's another photograph of
that. And I also used some adhesive on
the uh freshly over the
convergence rings cuz sometimes those
will drift and fall
um and slip and then you'll have all
kinds of problems with convergence.
So that was all completed. Here's the
finished outside. Now I did go and take
this switch
and I had to find an appropriate place
to install it
um on this Sony
uh backside plastic here and
uh so there's two things I had to do.
First I had to find a spot to install
that
switch but also install the SCART.
And that's where
you'll see this rough cutout for a SCART
shape right here. This is where I
installed the SCART board. I have a
couple screw holes here for mounting and
then that is
the hole that's hand cut. So let's see
how this all turned out.
There's the hole for our switch
which is drilled out slowly by hand.
And then there's the inside
of that where it had to sit. And you
have to think about things like the
clearance inside of the TV and how it's
ultimately going to fit in here uh
because it can't impede with anything up
in this area. That's where your inputs
go. So you have to uh put this here.
There's the board mounted.
And like I said, after I finally figured
out that issue,
uh I was able to have no problems with
the RGB, meaning that issue with the
crimped wire. And thankfully, I didn't
give up on this one cuz I was really uh
considering just stopping and not
installing it cuz I thought something
was wrong.
>> [clears throat]
>> And I spent so much time, I didn't
really want to give up. So, I kept
going. And uh that's what it looks like
with the board and the SCART head
installed right there. And like I said,
thankfully, it all worked out.
This is a really clean television. This
KV is one of the best from that 90s era.
If you love the bubble tube, and this
thing was in such beautiful shape. It
has a great sound system.
Again, it's got stereo, so you got
speakers on each side,
remote support. It can have
modifications done to it to even add
things like component video. This
customer did not want to do that, but
>> [clears throat]
>> after you adjusted the white balance,
this is a good picture of what that
uh white balance screen looks like. It's
either white looks really nice down
here. I've also got some close-ups again
of this monoscope pattern, this older
one.
And it's got great aspect ratio, really
sharp here. I mean, in the center of the
screen, you can zoom in pretty far and
get get all the way to the beams and see
how converged they are. Really great
look for a consumer CRT. This is in the
RGB. And then if we look back here,
these are the corners
that we corrected with the convergence
strips you saw before when they had the
color drooping and separating.
Well, with those convergence strips, we
were able to correct a lot of that in
that corner.
You really
will get to see scan lines on this set
similar to a
uh arcade monitor
or even a PVM. It's not quite as defined
as a PVM cuz the line count on these
tubes is not up in that 600 range, but
it's also 27 in, so you get a lot larger
screen.
And the convergence
can be corrected through the methods we
use today, but also the geometry really
can get phenomenal on this TV if you
have it set correctly. Uh and you have
the yoke
set in the right spot. That's always a
great thing to have.
And then the white balance really helps
everything pop. Um again,
super thick scan lines you can see right
here on your screen.
And all in all, it's just a great tube
uh an experience to work on it.
I think this is one of the top notch
Sonys that if you happen to find
yourself
with one available, you really should
consider getting it.
And
you know, this is not the easiest thing
to work on, and it's not the easiest
thing to modify, but it is one that if
you find, you can
commission someone like myself to modify
it. And so that's what this customer
did. And uh so you can arrange that
through our shop here in Harrisonburg,
Virginia. There's more information about
that in the description of this video.
You can find out more. I'll also post um
additional details about this CRT and
some other RGB mods I've done uh for
Sony stuff in the description. So if you
want to follow up with that and check
out some more things, you can
take a look at those references down
below.