CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[emdawgz1]

Ray was talking about his first CRT experience in another thread and it sounded like a good idea... here goes.

I was always into Hi Fi music as a kid. My dad tinkered w/ turntables and speakers and such so i used to visit the shops and hang w/ sales guys and whatnot. So when i go my first car, in 88 Took a drive and went to Danby's sound and vision. It was owned by Dan Greenfield, an old radio guy who used to claim that Amar Bose stole his speaker design. The shop had moved from Phila to suburban Ardmore. So i go in and i'm puttering around and Bob asks me if i want see the big screen.. so we go upstairs and he fires up Jurassic park on Laserdisc. on a Runco CRT


I WAS IN.

And i still am.

[rabies_70]

Great idea John. I'm totally interested in y'alls stories of CRT first taste. I'm reposting mine here for continuity

[jkruger]

My first experience came less than two years ago. I was perusing Craigslist and ran across an ad for a Sony 1000Q. I paid the $40.00 for it and took it home, Hooked up a composite from my dvd player and started fiddling. By the next day I had it fairly well set up. (So I thought)I started searching the net and found AVS a week before I found Curt. I've had two of the 10xx sets and three of the 12xx sets. Got the Runco about a year ago and now own two barcos along with a bunch of new sources. I'm lovin' it!

[dturco]

Still Waiting

[emdawgz1]

[dturco]

Man that's great I will actually be in Phila on saturday 2-28-09 pm sent.

[emdawgz1]

[dturco]

Get em big dog, I go to Phila to visit family often. If its's for free it's for me!

[Zubinell]

WHAT A DEAL. I now have two 1272's .(one works).. because they are cheap..easy and a good deal for what they offer and I don't have any money left after making certain that we could give the oil company executives a comfortable retirement and bailing out the crooks. I would love to get a 9" set but a 15 year old 1272 at 1080i just smokes the doors off of ANYTHING you can buy at any big box electronics store for 50+ times the price. Hell there is nothing in the stores that can give you 100" of wide view angle analog hi def at any price. There is a learning curve and some tedious reading of the manuals and a little set up aggravation with the tape measure and the laser level (not needed) but I will never go backward. What a deal.. Gee I eagarly paid $200 for a 4000 hour 1272 just last week after my prior gave it up after 18000 hours. Here I am right over the river from Philly and you get a freebee. .. You are on a roll and better buy a lotto ticket tonite! Have fun with it and there is a boatload of info and almost everything you ever need to know about that machine right here on this website.

[Nashou66]

This is why I love CRT its the community we have here!!! I wish someone would have given me my 1st crt !!! I first had a Sony Q400w or was it a W400Q? well any how it was a digital and I had it on a 12 foot screen and thought it was the bomb , this was 2000 or july i had it set up in my new home, just a bare basement with this huge screen hanging down and a lawn chair, fed by a laser disk. After I built the theater room i added HD to it(yes it did HD back then !!) That was a huge improvement over the 480i laser disk. Well after only 500 hours on the bulb it got very dim and had a pink hue to everything, i went on AVS and was looking for parts or help etc...then i learned on the digital site that they can be fixed and only CRT's were repairable. I lusted over the StereoPhile mag pics of the Vision 1 CRTs and always wished i had 45,000 to get one. well I dabbled over to the CRT thread and began reading, and reading, and reading...... I realized that Electohome was the same as the Vision 1 for al respects except the case and some other things. well I bought an 8000 from a guy in Ohio drove down checked it out and it worked while down there but when i go home it would go on !! So Everyone here was very helpful but no go. So i got lucky and found another one on ebay for 400 bucks, got it here and it was Minty tubes!!! What i saw almost made me Cry. that m8000 blew away what i thought was a great PJ in the sony, I paid 3500 for the sony and could not believe this 8 inch 1994 marquee 8000 that I got for 9 times less money was far far superior to the Digital, And HD was sooo effin awesome on it!!!! now i will have 6 marquee's when the Longbows come in tommorow !!

Athanasios

[Zebu Fellenz]

My first venture into the world of home theater came about nine years ago when I found a pile of 16mm film projectors at the dump. I started buying films and had a screening room setup with an 18' screen

Then about five years ago at age 13 I found a Barco Data 801s on Craigslist. It was $200 and the tubes were a bit worn but it came home with me. I set it up for an 8' wide screen and ran composite into it from the family DVD player and my laserdisc collection. I had the Barco for less than a year when it met an untimely death, two monthes later I found a Marquee 8000 on Ebay and picked it up. I did a few complete teardowns on that machine to see how it was assambled and did some work on it by machining new tube mounting plates where the threads had become stripped and swapping the glycol for the tinted glycol from my Barco tubes.

After using the Marquee for about 1.5 years I found a G70 at a garage sale for $150. I bought this and sold some extra's that came with it for $125, I kept both machines for a few monthes and even did a stack but the Marquee was taking up what little free space I had left so I sold it on Craigslist.

I have been using the G70 ever since and now run it on a 8' wide High power screen fed by my HTPC with HD-DVD and Blu-ray support.

[HaydnG90]

Crappy little Barco's at 35,000 feet. I'm surprised I even took a second look at the technology after seeing the washed out, misconverged image they put out....glad I did, although the G90 is making me second guess myself.

[HaydnG90]

[dturco]

Life is good

[dturco]

Nashou66, Where do you keep all of these wonders?

[scoobydoo]

THis is my story

Having tinkered around with surround sound in my condo for a few years I decided that when I bought a house I would get a big ass tv and have that home theatre feel.
I sold my condo and when I was looking for a new place, my banker mentioned he had an LCD projector and screen which he brought out to watch the game or a movie. hell I thought that would be awesome.

So I started to do research, found AVSforum and a copy of Curt's primer. Once I had read that and the fact that Curt was just a couple of hours away from my place and about 40min from my brother's place...I decided to get a CRT projector.
We (my ex now) bought a new house, I told her she can do what ever she wanted to the rest of the house but I wanted a theatre room in the basement. I had it all wired for surround sound.
went over to see Curt and bought a Barco Data 800 off of him. My original plan was not to spend too much just in case I didn't like it.
I get to Curt's place and the first thing he says is "you should really spend a bit more and get a better machine. You'll regret it later". Well with just buying a new house I decided I better just stick with the BD800 for now.

When I got home with it and brought it into the house the ex was like "holy crap that's huge".

We got into the house, I set up the theatre room got tons of great info from this website which was now in full swing.
This was about 5 yrs ago now.
When my ex and I split, it was time to upgrade and I went to an 808 from Curt. Should have bought a better machine orginally
my current GF loves that room and the home threatre but i'm starting to get the itch of upgrading again. hmmmmm

[ecrabb]

I'm a lucky SOB, I guess. My old man bought an Advent Videobeam... (the one in the walnut "coffee table" style case with a CATV tuner) in probably '79 or so... I would have been 9, then. I remember watching Rockford Files, Simon & Simon, Sunday Night Movies, and Laserdiscs in my parents' basement on cold winter weekend night in shorts and a tee because the wood burning stove was cranking out the heat.

Not much later came C-band satellite and watching HBO, Showtime and MTV. Helped my dad pour the concrete base, set the mount, and install the 10' Channel Master fiberglass BUD, in fact. There was also an early Pioneer Dolby ProLogic receiver driving some very early subwoofer/satellite system - the name of which escapes me - Design Acoustics, perhaps? I remember watching a few live music events that were simulcast on FM because satellite didn't even have stereo audio yet, then.

Then, in '85 or so, he replaced the Advent with an Infinity RSTV ("Reference Standard TV"). Heh heh... I was totally hooked on watching movies on a big screen. Completely ruined, in fact. I'd been watching movies in a "home theater" most of my childhood!

I had nothing but a crappy "college setup" for years. I'd been reading for some time about people building dedicated theaters, and every since watching movies in my dad's basement, I knew I wanted that. Finally, in 2001 my wife and I had bought a house, so I started looking to see what I could find. I did some work for a virtual reality systems integrator and heard about surplus CRT projectors. I found a nice 1271 at a local state university surplus for $700, so I bought it and started sponging info at AVS. The rest is history. I'm on my second house, my fourth CRT projector, and in most ways, have the dedicated theater of my dreams. Yes, I could have a bigger room, better projector, more seating, etc... But, I'm still giddy when I got down to watch a movie and think about how damn thrilled I am to have what I have.

SC

[rabies_70]

This is a GREAT thread. Curt and Kal, How'd y'all get into CRT?

[emdawgz1]

[nomadII]

Kloss or Advent CRT paired up with Magnepan Tympani 1-D's in an Old Store called the Hungry Ear @ Preston & 635 in Dallas.