Off topic: SCART Hunter needs your help!

Hey all! Aside from spending my time geeking out with vintage TVs, I also play in a rawk 'n' roll band called The Hidden Venture. Recently we entered a video competition for RØDE Microphones and today we found out that our video was short listed! Out of the 500+ entries we made it into the Top 10! YES!

Anyway, it would be great if anyone that has read my blog in the past and perhaps got something out of it took 30 secs to help me out. The grand prize is pretty juicy so we're all really keen to make a proper go of this!

You can click here to vote for The Hidden Venture. To register your vote, you can sign up to the RØDE site or simply use your Facebook login. Thanks guys!

TV on the TV

P.S. - The video does feature a television set (pretty sure it's not SCART equipped), albeit briefly... Oh, and I'm the guy wearing the green Milo T-shirt in case you're wondering. ;)

O-M-G!

Before I returned from my parents' house in the country today, I decided to stop by their local waste dump in case there were some TVs laying about. As you can see in the following pictures, yeah, they did have a few TVs kicking about...

Enough tubes to last several lifetimes! I didn't take any TVs but sliced off about five VGA cables to build VGA to SCART cables with. Nice score and amazing (if somewhat depressing) sight!

A sorry end for our tubby tellies

Political commentator Annabel Crabb has written a story for the The Age newspaper about the sad demise of TVs. Of course, she's not writing from the perspective of a nostalgic CRT freak like me but she makes some great observations about the current state of affairs that range from the humorous to the troubling. I love this paragraph:

"Spare a thought for burglars, who now face urgent professional development challenges. What's the point of nicking a television when the streets are already full of them?"

Read the article online here.

Also, this article reminded me of a post by David Viens, one of the Plogue developers: Analog TV Death toll.

Anyway, despite all the teary eyes, the figures mentioned in the article suggest that 2012 should be a bumper year for the SCART Hunter!

Finally, a Loewe that will play R-Type!

Just picked up a Loewe Profil Plus 3472 that was offered as a freebie on Gumtree.

This TV seems to be something of a transition model for Loewe as it's not a 100 Hz chassis but it runs the same Super Flatline tube used in the later models. Also, the internals are very much like an E3000 but the menu system is closer to that of the later Q2500 and such.

Anyway, I was curious to see if this unit had the same issues as the E3000 when it comes to showing games with 256 lines. It was a nice surprise to see that it will display the full image for R-Type and, as a bonus, doesn't have the trapezium distortion issue of the E3000 when displaying refresh rates that aren't strictly PAL or NTSC. Very cool!

I suspect this chassis still has a few quirks that make it less than ideal (in terms of fast modeline switching) but the picture quality is great (vivid, focussed, stable, etc.) and it's nice to finally see R-Type on a Loewe after all my previous failed attempts.

All four borders visible? Check!

In game

Profil Plus 3472

An artist's impression

My girlfriend has her own blog called 100 days of drawing. She's always looking for something to capture with her pencil and she recently drew one of my TVs with the guts hanging out the back... nice!

Grundig in Blaupunkt

Today I cleaned up the mess I made on Saturday and then did some more tinkering. After my experiment yesterday with tube swapping, I couldn't get over how good my ancient analog Grundig looked with the Loewe CT1170 Phillips tube attached. So, I got to work and mounted the Loewe tube in a cool looking black case from a digital chassis Blaupunkt that had stopped working. That's parts from 3 seperate TVs in total! Not sure if the Grundig chassis will properly fit inside the Blaupunkt case yet... gonna require some careful thinking and reworking of external controls. I had to use the Blaupunkt case rather than the Loewe CT1170 as the audio amp in the Grundig is 4 ohms. The speakers in the Loewe are 8 ohms so they wouldn't match up. Either way, it was a fun adventure and the image looks AMAZING running GroovyMAME. Probably the best I've seen so far!

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the Grundig chassis will last the distance as the flyback and other transformer look really tired. It'll be fun in the meantime though!

Loewe screen + Blaupunkt case + Grundig chassis = big mess!

Produces a sharp, vivid image...

... that is solid and very well focused.

"The first step is admitting you have a problem..."

D-Day has come. Some TVs are gonna bite the dust! Either that or I'm gonna end up on the TV show Hoarders. To be honest, I'd love to be on TV! How ironic to earn a place on TV by collecting too many TVs?! Unfortunately, my girlfriend tells me that's not an option... So, instead, some TVs are staying, lots are going. Here's a picture of how my lounge room looks this morning:

My personal SCART television showroom!

More news after this messy operation is completed.

SCART crimes

My girlfriend was riding her bike down a lane way the other night and saw something I might be interested in: a neat little Blaupunkt telly! She SMSed me and, of course, I checked it out ASAP. Unfortunately, this beauty had been treated rough. Too battered for me to be bothered with, I have to admit. I just can't love a CRT that has scratched glass right in the middle of the screen. This poor thing had been placed face down on the concrete... ouch!

It really kills me that people don't (if it works) a) donate their used TVs to charity stores or, b) sell them on eBay. And if it doesn't work, c) take it to the tip! It doesn't belong on the street, you pigs!

Back sticker

Face down, eating concrete

Look at those connections!

Ouch! My poor face!

Happy New Year!

So, it’s 2012 and I find myself here in the New Year with 17 (!) SCART equipped CRT televisions in my apartment. Some are good, some are bad, but one thing is for sure: I own far too many TVs! This predicament is the result of 6 months of chasing TVs online and on the street just so that I can experience late ’80s and early ’90s arcade games in their full glory.

In 2012, this blog will be a place for me to document what I have discovered up to this point and then beyond, detailing the specifics of each individual TV as I narrow down my collection through a process of monitor tests, A/B shoot-outs and, of course, play testing. ;)

Let the games begin!