CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[pm]

Hi,

As I've posted elsewhere, I'm new to the CRT PJ world and having fun with my 1252 driven by my HTPC at the moment.

A relatively local G70 has become available at a (relatively) cheap price. The reason for this is;

[Nashou66]

It be a step up but not with toasty tubes at that price. Unless you can find better tubes to replace them.

Athanasios

[emdawgz1]

if you can get the tubes at a good price...it's a good deal

g70 puts out a really nice picture

[Jeremy112]

definitely an upgrade over the 1252, just that your colors will be way off with the phosphor burn, like others have mentioned, if you replace the tubes, you will have quite a nice machine then

[CIR Engineering]

$200 for a running G70 is a good deal. But it won't look good with toasted tubes.

G70 is a fantastic projector and the 1252 is what it is.

craigr

[pm]

Thanks Guys,

Looks as though it's worth a peek then....

I've sent the guy a mail, so we'll see what happens!

How about tube availability for this model? Are we taking hens teeth, or just sit and wait like for other tubes.... they'll pop up eventually...

Cheers,

PM

[draganm]

[ecrabb]

Not that everybody hasn't already sort of covered this, but I'll just chime in with a little more detail since I did pretty much exactly this upgrade: 1271 to G70.

First, I had a pretty minty, low-hour 1271. It had less than 2500 hours on it, and was probably about as sharp as any 12xx ever gets unless it had brand new tubes. I'd done optical focus, electronic focus and stig pretty obsessively. What I found after all that was that the lenses on the 12xx's suck... Both the HD-8's and the PT-whatevers are incapable of resolving anything much more than 1024x768. 800x600 was better. I ran 1080i for most sources and 720p for HTPC, and while it certainly gave a nice, film-like image, it was really soft.

Enter the G70... FAR superior picture. Much sharper, way better contrast, much larger and dimmer halos which most of the time aren't even visible. The sharper thing isn't just sharper as sharper implies. It wasn't until I A-B'd between the two projectors that understood what Mike Parker meant when he talked about background detail being revealed in a sharper projector. So, huge step up between the two machines.

Still, as biased as he is against the G70, he has a point. You could probably part the G70 out and double or even triple your money. It's going to cost you at least $400-500 to buy a couple of tubes to replace the toasty tubes in the 12,000-hour machine, and then you'll still end up with a 12,000-hour machine. Of course, Curt would say with 12,000 hours on it, it's obviously a solid machine.

I'd definitely pick it up at that price. You can decide what to do with it later. Of course, I'm a hoarder, so it's easy for me to say.

SC

[rosenbush]

For that price get it. Get all the good image left on it and then keep it for a spares when you get a nice one. If you don't get another G70, you still can sell some spares and get your money again.

[pm]

Aha,

You guys have introduced an element that I hadn't considered...........

I didn't appreciate that chassis hours are a factor as well as tube hours.

I thought a chassis was a chassis was a chassis........ only the state of the tubes was important......

[CIR Engineering]

12k hours is not necessarily bad. Open it up and if it's full of dirt and dust that's one thing. But it is possible that it is still really clean.

craigr

[Curt Palme]

$200 for a toasty tube G70 is about right at this point. It will at some point have the PA and convergence boards fail. If the C board hasn't failed since the last owner has had it, then it's about to. They run very hot.

AS mentioned above, tubes are $650 each from VDC plus about $70 shipping per tube. Finding good used ones is impossible, save for the red.

[Curt Palme]

$200 for a toasty tube G70 is about right at this point. It will at some point have the PA and convergence boards fail. If the C board hasn't failed since the last owner has had it, then it's about to. They run very hot.

AS mentioned above, tubes are $650 each from VDC plus about $70 shipping per tube. Finding good used ones is impossible, save for the red.

[pm]

Thanks for that Curt.

I suppose the bottom line is whether being in for $2200 and having an "old" chassis, new tubed G70 is a good way to spend that much money?

I suppose it depends what the alternatives are.

I asked in another thread, but for a UK/Europe based guy, what would be the machine to aspire to, both in terms of performance and support of knowledge and spares in the short to medium term?

[zGman]

Do a search in your area for Barco 1208 or 808 models and compare prices
and condition. Barco made a lot of PJ's, parts are reasonable and reliability
is pretty good....tubes may be more available, but it is rare to find LC versions.

G

[barcoed]