Yesterday morning, during a stroll through my neighbourhood I came across this TV which had been dumped outside someone's home:
The photo really doesn't do justice to elegance of the styling. I decided to take a chance and lug it home and see if it works. For a "modern TV" it was surprisingly weighty. Here's the rear label information:
"Assembled in Europe" but of course the parts were
manufactured elsewhere... Anyway, let's have a look at the ports and see what's available.
- SCART/PERITEL/EUROCONNECTOR
- S-VIDEO
- 3.5mm Headphone Jack
- RCA/PHONO Composite Video
- RCA/PHONO Stereo Audio Inputs
- UHF/VHF Antenna In
- RS232C Control Port
Not a bad line-up but the omission of DVI and VGA is a tremendous shame, especially seeing as they'd included RS232C - which is really interesting and there appears to have been a missed opportunity in marketing this product to computer users given the RS232C presence. HDMI, which was starting to gain prevalence amongst new TVs during 2006 is also absent. The biggest concern though is, does the TV even work?
After looking through the user manual, the service manual and online photos I was able to conclude that it doesn't require an external mains transformer (one of my other LCD TVs does) and I just needed to locate a C5 3pin power cable and brief rummage around soon sorted that out.
The red standby light sprung to life and encouraged by that, I pressed the power button and...
This is a good sign!
Looking through the user manual I learned that it's a multi-system TV with full compatibility for NTSC and all variations of PAL and SECAM. I suppose the voltage details on the rear label should've given me a clue that although it was primarily intended for the EU market, it can be used globally and with equipment from around the world. Unfortunately the connectivity options limit it to standard definition video signals and the 4:3 display is outmoded in an age where 16:9 dominates - which is probably why it was abandoned.
Obviously in this forum, retro is our speciality and I've got no end of hardware that's perfectly suited to this TV. The fellow freebie 80s computer whose repair and restoration was covered in this thread was an immediate candidate. I connected up the A/V cables and voila - the pair worked together harmoniously.
In closing, this TV is a lovely addition and the picture quality is pretty solid - far better than my photos convey and it's a godsend for older hardware which uses the 4:3 aspect ratio. I'll have to see how it fares with my Dreamcast - because only one of my TVs is able to cope with whatever video trickery has been used by homebrew programmers for their games.
There's a couple of dead/stuck pixels but that's a minor issue and the LCD, along with the TV itself is in good condition so what can I complain about? Perhaps that the owner didn't include the remote control but I've been able to access all the options via the side panel anyway.
