Message from Curt
Here’s another list of projectors.
Finally the HT season has kicked into
high gear after a bit of a slow start,
and boy, do I have some nice sets coming
in! But we’ll save the best for last
<grin>
Just a couple of notes regarding
emails that I get in daily:
-
I have a
forum that apparently a number
of you are not seeing on my site.
It’s now a relatively large
discussion group of over 1600
members to chat about all things CRT,
HDMI/DVI, and home theater related. Feel free to
join, there’s no charge, and we
don’t sell your email address to
anyone. See
http://forum.curtpalme.com
-
Also important, I do not personally
have any involvement in the selling
of the
third party items that are
listed in these mailouts and on the
site. We list them as a service to
our visitors as the items are things
that CRT and home theater
enthusiasts are interested in. While
I have used a few of these products,
the forum and emailing the vendors
directly is the best way to get
quick answers to your questions. The
forum area is chock full of useful
information as many buyers of these
products compare notes and give
application hints and tips.
Once in a while I will comment on the
‘lay of the land’ as it were when it
comes to CRT and digital projectors, and
I’ll do that again now, by reiterating
one typical example of a used CRT
projector vs. a digital. I sold a basic
NEC PG
projector about 5 years ago to a local
customer with a DVDO line doubler.
Nothing fancy, this customer has put
about 1800 hours on the set in the last
5 years. The convergence board died
recently, so I went over to repair and
look at the set for the first time since
it was installed. I installed a new
convergence board and gave the set a
tweaking, and it looked as good as the
day that I had installed it. That
customer had referred a friend to me
right after they had the NEC installed,
but that friend ended up buying a
Panasonic LCD projector, for
significantly more money than the NEC
projector. The friend with the Panasonic
digital projector has to date spent
about $1500 in replacement bulbs for the
unit, and had just sent the unit out to
Panasonic due to a blue haze over the
image. Needless to say, Panasonic wrote
it off, and the customer had to buy
another digital projector.
This is very typical of the type of
phone calls that I get almost daily from
frustrated digital owners, even though
I’ve never dealt with digital sets.
While the images of the digital
projectors is getting better every year,
they are still completely disposable
items and are far more expensive to run
on an hourly basis over a
refurbished
CRT projector.
New Stuff, Old Stuff
It’s about now that I am getting out
of the sale of
ES focusing projectors such as the
Sony 12XX,
the
Electrohome ECP and
Barco 800/801
projectors. I do not plan on purchasing
any more surplus units unless they are
local and literally given to me, but
I’ve still got about 20 sets and
thousands of parts and modules in stock
to maintain those sets out there for
years to come. Most of these sets still
have a lot of life left in them, but the
demand overall for entry level sets has
dropped, and the cost of tubes and parts
make it not worth rebuilding many of
these sets at this point. I will now
concentrate on
EM focusing sets and will primarily
be buying
8" and
9" sets. I’ve still got
a number of really good
NEC PG sets
here, and for the extra bit of money
over an ES focusing set, the performance
gain of the EM sets is significant.
On the positive side of this, the
retail and wholesale costs of EM sets is
more affordable than ever. I am getting
offers daily to buy large quantities of
late model EM focusing sets, to the
point where I’m even turning some of
those away. High end performance from a
CRT is a fraction of the price of what
it was a few years ago, and with a
typical expected lifespan of 10+ years
of an EM focusing set that I sell today,
your home theater can be an experience
that outperforms many of the $100K +
systems installed by the pros.
I mentioned that I have played with
the stacking of two projectors to form
one image, which I saw for the first
time in Chicago in June (see
my photos and review). I have
now done this here at home as well with
two Marquee 9500LC projectors, and even
though I only spent 3 hours aligning and
tweaking as compared to the 24 man hours
of the Chicago setup, the image of
approximately 2400 lumens with a
50,000:1 contrast ratio was simply
amazing. Many of you have more than one
CRT projector, and if you have the time,
give stacking a try... (hint: with the low
price of sets now, isn’t it time you
bought a second projector anyways?)
A/V Blowout
Continue to check eBay under my seller
ID ‘audiovideotechnician’ for older CRT
parts that I am blowing out, along with
specials and stuff that I’m listing
there on a weekly basis. Right now I am
blowing out my last three (2 new and one
demo)
AA 9A65 basic transcoders that I
used to sell for $175. I am selling the
last ones I have at $100, below my cost.
They are good basic transcoders that
work well, the more expensive
AA 1365
transcoder/scalers is what I’m stocking
now.
Incoming!
As mentioned, I’ve purchased a LOT of
high end CRT projectors. Many are in
transit, a couple are here, here’s what
I am getting in shortly (and will be
updating the site as I get them in).
14- Barco Retro 808s projectors. These
are CRT projector chassis that were used
in rear projection video cubes. These
were all used in the same place, and all
have about 3000 hours on them. No
visible wear on the MEC tubes (retro
sets all used the rebuildable MEC tubes,
not the Sony ones), with 120 Mhz neck
boards, and special short throw lenses
that will shoot about a 50” wide image
maximum. I’m selling these for far less
than I normally would, $750 per set. At
this price you can convert a front
projection Barco 808 set to LC (you’ll
need to source lenses that will give a
larger image), or buy these sets as
spare parts for an existing unit that
you might already have, or buy these for
the tubes, which can be dismantled out
of the LC housings and installed into
standard FP mounts. Your choice. I will
be picking these up next week, they are
currently in Seattle, and I will most
likely be scrapping a few of them for
parts and for the tubes. There are some
pictures of these sets
here.
9-
I have also just purchased a total of 9
Barco 1209s. Eight are coming from gov’t
surplus locations, so I have no idea
what condition they are in, and one is a
Runco 1101 with the colored C elements.
The Barco 1209s are equivalent to the
Marquee 9500 Ultra projectors in my
opinion. An easy setup and less tall
than the Marquees. The sharper PT 22
tubes are installed in the 1209s. I will
be posting these to the site for sale
area as soon as they show up. The Runco
projector comes with a high end 4404
line quadrupler, so I’ might package the
two together or I’ll sell separately.
Look to the site for more info in the
next 2 weeks or so.
4-
Ampro 4600. Not sure of the
condition of these yet, at least one
will be parted out. They should be here
sometime in November.
Also coming in shortly:
2-
Marquee 9500LC. Unknown hours and
condition.
2-
Sony G90. One is already here, but
needs G and B tubes. The second one
apparently has near mint tubes, but has
significant case damage. I will
transplant the tubes between the two
sets, and will use the damaged one as a
test chassis, so that I can now finally
offer board level repairs to the G90
projector. Outside of Sony themselves, I
believe that this is a world first.
1-
Runco 992 Ultra. This is the equivalent
to the
NEC XG 110, but with Runco added
color corrected C elements and larger HD
8 lenses. Black case. I’ll put a new
green tube into this set, and it should
be here next week. Along with the Runco
comes a Faroudja DVP 5000 scaler. A
number of people still use this as their
reference scaler, one recently sold for
$1775 on eBay. This one comes with the
original box, and appears to be in great
shape. Look to the site for information
on this soon.
2-
Barco Data 701s. One has all new
tubes, one has original tubes in great
shape. Priced to move.
I’ve received more
Marquee 8500s,
Barco
808 and
NEC sets, so the site list is
now updated.
1-
DWIN 700: I have purchased two of these
sets with worn tubes, so I can now offer
repairs to DWIN 700 models that I’ve had
to refer to DWIN previously. These are
well built projectors that are
relatively straightforward to repair.
I also realize that I have far too many
NEC XG sets here. I have literally
multiples of every model of XG save for
the XG 1352, but everything else is in
stock. I’ll start pricing these
aggressively in the next mailout.
One last set:
NEC GP 3000. I’ve got
one good working excellent example of
the pre- PG series of NEC sets. Tubes in
excellent shape, setup remote included.
$250.00
Xbox360 Repairs
Xbox360 repairs are turning out to
come in fast and furious. I’ve repaired
about 30 machines so far, and I’m
getting in 2-3 a week. A common problem
with these also seem to be sticking DVD
trays. I’m working on a fix for this as
well, and will post as soon as I’ve
nailed it.
As
is well documented on the internet, the
Xbox 360 consoles have been plagued with
the ‘red circle of death’ failure. This
causes the machine to shut down
completely, and the power/diagnostic
LEDs on the front of the 360 console
turn red.
To be perfectly upfront, Microsoft is
repairing these under warranty, and on
July 5, 2007 announced that the red
circle of death problem will be covered
for 3 years from the date of purchase,
and they will repair this
problem/partial design flaw. So why am I
offering the repair as well, you might
ask? Well, as it turns out, the
turnaround time for Microsoft can be
anywhere from 3-8 weeks depending on the
repairs required. In addition, if your
Xbox 360 has been opened already and the
Microsoft tamperproof sticker has been
removed or altered, Microsoft will not
even look at your machine! So for those
that have hacked into the unit,
Microsoft will not repair these
machines, period. I’ve also heard that
at least some of the returned consoles
that were repaired under warranty have
failed again shortly after being
received from being repaired at
Microsoft.
I therefore offer the following:
- I
will repair the red circle of death
problem for $80.00 USD (Canadian at
par!) if you pick up and drop off at
my shop, or $99.00 USD/CAD incl
return shipping if you ship it in.
-
Turnaround time is typically 2
business days, including me running
your unit for 12 hours after I
repair it to make sure the repair is
solid. I’ve repaired about 12 of
these machines so far, and all are
working fine.
- All
I need is the console itself. I
don't need the power supply, games,
controllers or hard drive.
Note that I cannot repair other Xbox
360 faults at this point such as
intermittent reading of discs, bad power
supplies, controllers, etc, but I
perhaps will in the future.
Send me an
email if you want to send your Xbox
360 in for repair. If you're shipping it
to me, make sure to follow
these instructions.
Reel to reel tape recorders
I’ve been ramping up my repairs once
again on reel to reel tape recorders, as
I was repairing and refurbing these long
before I got into CRT projectors. I’ve
just purchased a rare Akai GX 747 unit
that should be here shortly, as well as
the below:
Revox B77. A high end 3 ¾, 7 ½ IPS 10
½” machine Fully tested and aligned,
frequency response to 20Khz as per my
Nakamichi analyzer. All functions are
flawless on the unit. Included are the
rare rack ears (removable) in case you
want to want to bolt this into a rack.
Not listed on eBay yet, but I will this
week. $400.00.
I have others that I’m working on,
keep checking
my eBay listings.
Thanks for your support!
