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For Sale: Sony Trinitron KV-25XBRII

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Doug Matthews

Nov 16, 2018
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Original owner!! I have a 1986 Sony 25XBRII with speakers, and foot-pedal stand ( still in its original box ) and we have had it since 1986. And servicing has been minor over it's lifetime...and probably still needs a good tune up, as we have not used it for about 10 years. My instincts are NOT to junk it, as it is an exceptional unit for its time and now popular with Gamers today. I live in Toronto, Canada and would like any feedback on what to do with it, or who would take it...even for parts in need be...but it still works!!! Not really looking for $$$, but rather trying to have someone to take it and preserve for extended life!!!
 

davenn

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Sep 5, 2009
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Original owner!! I have a 1986 Sony 25XBRII with speakers, and foot-pedal stand ( still in its original box ) and we have had it since 1986.

A Sony Trinitron is a colour TV

But you start talking about something that seems not to be a TV

can you please clarify withy photos etc what you really are talking about


Cheers
Dave
 

kellys_eye

Jun 25, 2010
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It is a TV set - the foot pedal stand is a pedeSTAL stand! Some word confusion there!
 

Doug Matthews

Nov 16, 2018
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The pedal stand is correct. However the stand also has 5 foot pedal buttons on the front of the pedal stand base at floor level. And you can turn it on and off, change channels, and adjust the volume with your foot. I am not sure why they introduced this feature, as there is a hand held remote control that comes with the unit as well.
 

Doug Matthews

Nov 16, 2018
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I would also like to add....is that in 1986 this was the top of the line Sony Trinitron...and I paid almost $2000.00 ( Canadian dollars) back then. The reason it was so expensive, is the picture quality design was meant to be superb compared to any other CRT's at the time.

NOTE: The reason for this, was... there is not a typical single gun inside the tube as in most other CRTs, but instead incorporates 3 GUNS , ( yes three in one tube! ) each one dedicated to Red, Green, Blue respectively. So the R.G.B. was the sharpest and clearest like no other. Plus making the unit extremely heavy given the complexity of it's internal components. I suspect it is 15khz H. Sync. R.G.B. and therefore why it is popular with Gamers, being great for an authentic display of vintage video games, to offer authentic game play...vs playing on a flat screen today. I am basing this gaming information on other threads I have read for those claiming a purist experience for vintage gaming.
 

kellys_eye

Jun 25, 2010
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....eerrrr all colour CRTs have three guns........

Trinitrons were noted for their use of a slotted shadow mask tube rather than conventional 'dots' of other manufacturers which gave a brighter image. Additionally they had the three guns in a 'line' rather than arranged in a 'triangle' like other tube types did.

Unquestionably it was top-of-the line in its day and a composite input for games machines would have helped.

As a collectors item/curiosity it still has some worth - you could check for any 'vintage radio/TV' groups in your area where there will be someone keen to keep it in its original state for prosperity purposes otherwise it would (sadly) be destined for scrap.

Well done for trying to keep it alive though!
 
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Doug Matthews

Nov 16, 2018
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Thanks Kelly....my memory is not what it was. The confusion lay in the fact that Sony was able to converge 3 guns into one, not the other way around as I had initially stated.

It seems, in my research " ...the combination of three-in-one electron gun and the replacement of the shadow mask with the aperture grille resulted in a unique and easily patentable product. In spite of Trinitron and Chromatron having no technology in common, the shared single electron gun has led to many erroneous claims that the two are very similar, or the same."

Having said that, thanks for your suggestions Kelly. And I am hoping this XBR will not end up in the scrap heap.

We live in a day and age where the turn-style of technology is so rapid, that our perceptions of what "has" or "had perceived value" diminishes not only with obvious time, but our nostalgia tries to push back against the inevitable wave of practicality, in this 4K / 5K, and soon to be 20K visual world.

Thanks again!
 

hevans1944

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Jun 21, 2012
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I remember purchasing an over-priced Magnavox console color TV in the 1960s, complete with a complement of about twenty or so vacuum tubes and a humongous shadow-mask CRT. Then for the next ten years or so, I tried to keep it running by replacing various "valves" as their filaments failed, or the bulbs became "gassy" or their electron-emissive coatings on their indirectly heated cathodes simply gave up the ghost. At some point near the end of the previous century, we junked the Magnavox and replaced it with a Sony Trinitron TV. IIRC, the picture was noticeably brighter but not sharper... a deficiency of the NTSC scan definition.

It was many years later (seemed like forever!) that the technology improved enough to create a higher definition television using "flat screen" technology as typified by plasma and LCD displays. For awhile it looked like rear-screen projection was the way to go for bigger screen formats, and we did in fact once own such a monstrosity that used three separate CRTs to display red, green, and blue rasters... precisely registered of course... except at the edges of the screen. For a very brief period I was enamored with the Texas Instruments light-valve method of rear-screen projection... I even seriously considered purchasing one for home use, but after some due diligence and research decided it wasn't really ready for prime time home use.

Of course, years later, film became obsolete and theaters began replacing 35mm film projectors with light-valve projectors, and receiving their entertainment product digitally instead of in huge film canisters that traveled from theater to theater. It was somewhere in this time-frame period, near the turn of the century, that wife and I decided we could afford a flat-screen LCD color TV... well, two actually, one for the bedroom and a larger one for the living room. Both made by Samsung, along with a Samsung Blu-Ray DVD player. The Blu-Ray player promptly failed and was soon replaced by a Sony (no bologna) real Blu-Ray player. We then proceeded to rent and/or purchase a fortune in both DVD and Blu-Ray movies, replacing a fortune in VCR tapes that we had earlier acquired and giving up cable television but keeping our cable ISP. Netflix and Amazon Prime became our primary "paid video" streaming sources, although for a short period of time we also subscribed to the Netflix disks-by-mail program too.

And so it remains today... a house full of DVDs and Blu-Ray disks, a newer Sony Blu-Ray player with Internet connectivity for streaming video, an Apple TV thingy for streaming to/from wife's Apple products and the HDMI Samsung TV in the bedroom, an Amazon Fire Stick (just because it was available really cheap) that is our primary streaming connection now.

The bigger Samsung LCD TV finally failed this year, but we had a spare, inherited from my brother after he died last year. There is a YouTube video that shows how to DIY repair the Samsung, but it requires an almost complete face-down disassembly, starting from the back and proceeding toward the front to access a circuit board that is "shorting out" some sort of signal against something metallic. The repair, IIRC, consists of placing insulating electrical tape around the offending part and then putting it all back together in reverse order of disassembly. Wally-World is selling "55-inch class" 4K TVs for less than $300 this week... an unrecognizable Chinese brand of course, but why not give it a try? Except wife wants me to buy a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner first... or at least a functionally equivalent look-alike. And she also wants a steamer/vacuum cleaner for our all-ceramic tile floors.

You wouldn't believe how happy I was when they started selling TVs without visible scan lines, or tiny colored dots (or bars: Trinitron) on the screen!
 
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