CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Marcel_D]

I happened to be in the city of Regina, SK the other day and my friend and I were in computer shop that takes in recycled computer equipment and sells them. I was going to by an old network switch when I saw a 21" Compaq P1210 being sold for $20. I had been looking for a large CRT to replace my 19" LCD for a while so I decided to buy it and asked an employee why it was so cheap. He said they received 14 pallets of the damn things and were trying to get rid of them. I followed him to the back and sure enough there were a bunch of pallets stacked 6 feet high with these huge ass monitors. I decided to buy 3, my friend bought 1 and we hauled them home. The total was $80 tax free and they included a 60 day warranty too! The place is called Used Computer Warehouse in case anyone is interested.

As for the specs:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10707_na/10707_na.HTML
Max res says 1920x1440 but it will go to 2048x1536 @ 75hz.

Pic of the three setup:
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=728
Picture makes them look smaller than they are...also the desk has a large attachment for your keyboard and mouse which I didn't need but will be putting back on before I go blind from being so close.

Problems:
Monitor 1:
-Slight convergence issues on both top corners.

Monitor 2:
-Slight convergence issues at top right and bottom right corners.
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=729
-Minor focus issue along left and right sides.
-Was emitting a high pitched whine @ 85hz and the beam was beginning to artifact in some areas but has since stopped.

Monitor 3:
-Slight convergence along top and bottom. Blue beam separates at the bottom left, red separates at bottom right. Red separates along the top.
-Ghosting around static and moving images.
-Overall color is greener than other two monitors. A solid black image has a very slight tint of green.
-If you zoom the image out there is a thin, red vertical line running down the far side of the monitor.

The toughest part is getting these calibrated to display the same tints of color. Monitor 1 and 3 match perfect but the color way far off compared to Monitor 2 which is the only correct one. I've yet to run any calibration programs and I don't have any hardware for it so it will be a challenge to get them to match.

Overall I'm very impressed with these beasts. Response time, color reproduction, off-axis viewing, cost etc. all spank the 2 year old LCD I was using. The image on Monitor 1 and 3 are just as sharp as my LCD was too. They may take up a bit of space and power but once properly calibrated I would easily take these over three 20" LCDs any day.

[Nashou66]

the convergence might be because you have them close to each other and they might not have great sheilding.

nashou

[overclkr]

Here is the bad boy of CRT Monitors. I would love to pick up a few of these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/SONY-GDM-FW900-TRINITRON-24-FLAT-CRT-SCREEN-MONITOR_W0QQitemZ350122224109QQcmdZViewItemQQptZComputer_Monitors?hash=item350122224109&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1419%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

Cliffy

[AnalogRocks]

I still need 7, GDMF-W900's, or more would be even better.

[AnalogRocks]

I still need 7, GDMF-W900's, or more would be even better.

[Marcel_D]