Advice on monitor settings for Sony KV-HR36M31

[vagrant_17]

I managed to aquire a Sony KV-HR36M31 HD CRT TV, the picture quality on this thing is amazing!
It has RGBHV input on the back.


I'm at loss of how configure it properly in vmmaker, could I get some advice on which monitor preset would be best to start with, or perhaps the right approach to creating a custom preset?
According to the manual it accepts the following resolutions, but I could not find any timing or ranges info in the service manual;
1080i @ 50/60Hz
720p @ 50/60Hz
576p @ 50Hz
576i @ 50Hz
480p @ 60Hz
480i @ 60Hz

[buttersoft]

I'll dump a load of advice by editing this post when i have time, hopefully tomorrow

EDIT: decided on a new post instead, see below.

[vagrant_17]

Awesome! I really appreciate it thank you

[buttersoft]

The KV-HR36 and 32 sets are, IMO, amazing. Absolutely stunning for displaying current content/movies/consoles/indie games, back to maybe the Wii. And pretty good for older consoles too. A lot of the information here comes from Thumptech, and the rest is from me.

These sets are effectively the same as the US KD-34XBR960/910, but instead of the HDMI port the Oceania KV-HR models have an RGBHV input (via RCA jacks). These CRT’s use a Super Fine Pitch tube which makes the image much clearer (the KV-HX and 970 sets do not have this tube). I’m going to write about the KV-HR sets, and things may not apply to the US models with the HDMI port, or only partially apply.

You should of course always use the RGBHV inputs where possible, using something like a VGA-to-5-BNC cable and then BNC-female to RCA-male adapters. If something outputs YPbPr natively that’s a good option as well.

General Information:

•   Native resolutions - 720p and 1080i, I think* and maybe more around those two. The list of input resolutions is much larger, starting with 15kHz 240p/480i and going up to probably about 768p from a PC. The sets are pretty flexible that way, and you shouldn’t need to worry about setting up special modelines beyond 1080i.
•   Always input 1080i. Three reasons why. Firstly, it's clearer than 720p. Secondly, for inputting lower res/15kHz, in terms of internal scalers the one in these TV’s is about as good as it gets. It looks okay. But an external scaler like the OSSC or Retrotink is going do a much, much better job (if they do 1080i). Something like a Wii is still going to look great at 480p widescreen, and YMMV for older consoles. If your source/PC will output 1080i, however, you’re better off sorting out your scaling on that end and inputting 1080i into the set. So you don't really need CRT-emudriver or VMM to use these sets. The third reason why you want to use 1080i, over 720p in this case, I’ll come back to.
•   The KV-HR32 has overscan. The KV-HR36 does not have this problem. With an uncompressed image, it is not possible to fit a complete 1920x1080 image on a KV-HR32, you lose about 5% around the edges. This is after you’ve tweaked everything you can in the service menu. If you can see an entire 1920x1080 image, it’s been scaled. See below, because this scaling can affect the KV-HR36 too.
•   A video card or inbuilt video often scales a 1080i image without telling you. This can be tested. Use this image on your natively 1080p LCD desktop monitor.

Notice how the TVL stripes in the centre circle are clean on an LCD, and there’s no blending or patterns over them? Now put this image up in a smaller window on a 1080p monitor and look for moire or patterns in the same places. At 1080i on the KV-HR, if you see *any* patterns or diamond shapes across the stripes, the video output is being scaled. It's not the aperture grille. You can go into your video control panel/ NVCP/ Radeon Settings and disable desktop scaling. If it says it’s already off, turn it on, save, then turn it off again. This may force your set to lose sync, and you may need to try various resolution tweaks – like going to 1080p/30 or /29 or other settings. Even then it’s often not possible to eliminate scaling on 1080i, it was like an unofficial industry standard or something, from when 1080i meant CRT’s/projectors. Any information you can find on this would be interesting. Even with this scaling 1080i is still noticeably clearer than 720p.
•   When it comes to eliminating image scaling, a PS4 is about perfect. Those stripes will be clean as clean is. After that, Linux is better than Windows, and HDMI beats VGA.  You would need to convert that HDMI to VGA (RGBHV) I use an HDFury2, which is about as good as it gets. Cheaper adapters are a crapshoot. The Tendak one isn’t great. I'm using windows and not sweating it, but the issue is there
•   Make sure to disable as much of the image processing in the set as you can. DRC in particular. A lot of options grey out above 480p anyway.

Assuming the set is in ok condition, you shouldn’t need to adjust the convergence rings or the yoke. But you *will* need to use the service menu to get the most out of the set.

 The Service Menu:

•   This is the service manual. https://anonfiles.com/b6i7n6x9ue/kvhr36m31_no_schmeatics_pdf Pages 15 through 55 are the service menu. Be prepared to spend a few weeks camping in there
•   Go slowly. Change one setting at a time. Remember to save.
•   If you push too far and lose the picture, drop the remote and turn the set off at the power button instead. That will reset things you haven’t saved.
•   The settings you want to play with are in the following sections:
o   LUMA (brightness, gamma and contrast)
o   COLR (colour balance - cutoff is low level, drive is high level)
o   DEF1 (geometry part 1)
o   DEF2 (geometry part 2, etc)
o   DEF3
o   DEF4
o   OSDP (master black level – set LEVL to 0)
o   Landing and Convergence – these are between the SFC and AP categories, which is not stated in the manual. Read sections of the service manual first. Section 4, areas 4.1 (possibly 4.5), and then 4.7 through 4.9. Beam Landing adjustment is fairly straightforward, and will probably be ok already.
•   When it comes to geometry settings, generally the ones near the head of any category make the most visible changes (H-size, H-pos, etc). If what you're doing to one particular setting has no visible effect, i wouldn't bother saving it.
•   Convergence. This is the big one. Convergence can be adjusted digitally in the service menu. Not in as much detail as a lot of CRT projectors, but still at just over 120 points over the screen. Don’t kid yourself, even if the set is in good shape for being 15yrs old, it could use a tune up.
•   The set will have different convergence at different resolutions (1080i vs 720p). (This is the only evidence I have that the set is showing at least two native modes – this convergence difference). The inbuilt grid is 720p, I believe. The set will also have different convergence at different brightness levels - i think due to age. See test grids below for this purpose.
•   Practice how to adjust and save things using the remote, how to get to the fine adjustment (vs coarse, the default). Input a 1080i test grid like the ones below, then go into the convergence adjustment and practice switching between your image and the test pattern. Adjustments should be made while looking at your 1080i grid image, not the default one.
•   Setting the convergence for 1080i means you should input that resolution whenever possible. 720p is still going to look great, especially if that's the native res of a game or something, and the lower the input resolution the less misconvergence there will be anyway, to the point that you’re not going to notice anything wrong at 15kHz without a lens.

I haven’t really found any need to adjust other settings in the Service Menu, but happy to hear about anything you find out  And to take any questions of course.

Test grids:

[vagrant_17]

Wow, what an incredibly informative response It is waaay much more then I was expecting, thanks so much for putting the time in buttersoft, huge respect!!!

I can see this TV is going to take some serious invested time.. and I expect to have a fully-grown beard at the end of it.
Well tomorrow, the first plan is relocate the screen to my desk and hope the weight doesn't crush it into a million pieces.. I have a friend coming around to help me shift the 90kg behemoth.
I already have a vga>bnc>rca cable, ready to plug straight into the analog out of the R9 380X.

So your saying that the way to go is always use 1080i output, and let the software do all the scaling.
So I should uninstall emudriver and replace it with the latest adrenaline drivers.

What about switchres though, will it still do it's thing and change refresh rates on the fly?
Mame.ini currently has values set for my old crt setup, I'm guessing I should set all crt_ranges to 'auto', turn modeline generation off and just leave switchres enabled?
It's this area I find particularly confusing

[buttersoft]

Switchres isn't going to work, because it's normally hunting for integer multiples of the horizontal size but 1:1 matches for the vertical. And you won't have any 1:1 matches for the vertical size. Which means you're better off telling mame how you want it to scale on a per-game basis and enabling... triple buffering, is it? (how you would normally prevent screen tearing on MAME). Which might be a pain, or not ideal, so you could leave everything in place and just increase the scan range of the monitor preset in crt_emudriver to cover everything up to 1080i and 720p. Or even 1080p if this is your main desktop.

Also 1080i modelines are something of a crapshoot. Try the defaults out of your video card and see what gives. The HDFury's are great because they have an EDID that sets up the modelines for you - though finding the right settings is still an effort. Cheaper adapters might have an EDID or might not.

[vagrant_17]

Well, things did not go to plan unfortunately.
The display out of RGBHV was working ok at first, the blue connection would intermittently drop out but it seemed to stablize after after a while.
After about 30mins of use the set started to exhibit vertical rolling for brief moments, and then correct itself.
Then after about an hour, the vertical rolling was back.. and this time it did not go away.
It's a very fast vertical roll, and is across ALL inputs on the TV (even RF).. and to make things worse there is no on-screen display at all, which means I'm locked out of the service menu (or any menu).

I tried power-cycling the display for a few hours but it did not change, looks like something internal has gone kaput

[buttersoft]

Err, that does not sound good. There is a classic problem with one of the power IC's on these sets, but this doesn't sound like your issue. Normally that shows the red light on the front, but no other signs of life.

I haven't spent enough time poking around the insides of the KV-HR sets to offer much advice. I'm not sure google will help either. I could give general CRT advice and say look at the vertical section, but if you're not used to poking around inside CRT's that's not going to help much... :/

[vagrant_17]

Thanks mate, no I'm definitely not used to digging around the inside of CRT's 
There was no warning light on the front, it blinks 6 times but stays green the whole time.
My friend that helped me lift the TV lost his grip as we were putting it down.. he kind of broke the fall with his leg, but the front-left still came down harder then planned, perhaps this was the cause.

We have a well-renowned arcade & crt repairer here in Perth called Jomac, at some stage I will take it in to them.. I have a nice 21" sony monitor that also needs a service, may as well take them both in.
To be continued 

[buttersoft]

We have a well-renowned arcade & crt repairer here in Perth called Jomac, at some stage I will take it in to them.. I have a nice 21" sony monitor that also needs a service, may as well take them both in.

Joey won't touch Sony He hates them.

The blink codes might be somewhere online. Google them and see what you can find out. I might be wrong about the light being red.

[vagrant_17]

The fact you know the guy, and the fact both my screens are Sony does not exactly instill confidence within me 

This is from the service manual; though it does not switch to standby mode, it displays a permanently rolling picture across all inputs and the OSD no longer works at all.

[buttersoft]

Ok, so if it still 6 blinks, that would be a low B+ voltage. Which is probably a power supply issue. You might try Jomac and see what he says. I don't know him personally, he justp osts a lot on the Aussie Arcade forum - which might be a better place to seek help for this. Someone else in Perth might be able to help.

[b0nz0beavis]

Bit late, but have some data to add. More as a repository of info, in case anyone else scores on of these god-tier HD CRTs and goes hunting for info.

1080i is clearer than 720, but you may see some interlacing artifacts affecting the image. Sort of aliasing-type effect. Not major, but it's there in places it doesn't show in 720p when displaying the same source (could be issues at the source, I s'pose). Small impact to overall PQ, but it's there. These might be able to be addressed via SM tweaks to the many sharpness related settings, but I'd expect this will negatively affect picture sharpness overall.

More relevant to gaming is input lag. I've measured the lag with the OSSC DIY latency tester, 720p has 14ms and 1080i has 32(ish)ms. So it's a full frame slower. I find 14ms OK for e-sports and shooters, but 32ms is more suited to slower-paced games. So I guess 1080i is probably excellent for RPGs and other slower games. Acutally yeah, No Man's Sky from PC supersampled from 4k to 1080 did look phenomenal on this TV.

As for SM adjustments, these should ideally be made in conjunction with calibration done using a colorimeter or spectro. I have spent probably 20-30 hours (maybe more...) messing around in the SM and calibrating with a colorimeter. Before calibrating, the following should be set in the SM:

Under the LUMA menu:

- BROF, GAMM, GAMS, R/G/BGAM, BLK all should be 0. Anything other than 0 causes a few different issues. It makes it impossible to get a gamma line that is anywhere near to flat, you will only end up with a very too low near black and elevated whites, in most cases. Changing GAMM, GAMS, R/G/BGAM mostly resolves this. Also, BLK set to anything above 0, makes the TV struggle with shadow detail when there is other high IRE content being displayed. EG, if there is a scene with a lot of white and also darker areas, everything between 0-30 IRE will look the same. Shadow detail will be completely crushed. There is no mitigation for this, or there might be but the hours I put into this specific issue might just have missed it. I doubt it, since I've literally changed every single setting in the SM and none showed a benefit, other than BLK set to 0. Ya never know though....

CLTY menu
- MIDE. Each setting (0-63) is a preset, that controls all the settings under the MIDE menu. 42 gives IMO the clearest and sharpest picture (note: will mess with this at some point and see if can improve the look of 2D pixel games)

CCPM menu (this is related to sharpness and related image processing, has some interplay with the sharpness setting in the OSD, two settings I've found to have the most obvious impact on clarity)
- FUP2, I use 2
- SSHP. I use 8. 0 is very fuzzy, higher settings above 9-10 start to noticeable degrade the picture quality, with ringing creeping in.
- YTRP. Changing from 0 to 1 has postive impact on picture.

MCP menu
- ABLT. This is the equivalent to automatic brightness limiter (might be exactly what it is, idk). Set to 0 to turn it off, best to avoid displaying white images for too long, just as a precaution against wearing out the tube to quickly.

MID3 menu
MHPH - acts similarly to HPOS. I need to use it since HPOS doesn't have enough range.

DEF3 menu
HBLK - setting to 0 will reveal more video at the left side of screen. In my case it's probably 3-5% of the total width, so defintely necessary. YMMV

There are maybe a few other ones that I've forgotten about, but these are the main one. Oh, the CLTY has some settings that impact vector modulation, there is an extensive blog from a XBR960 owner about it on AVSForum.

OSSC isn't doesn't appear to be an option with this TV, it looks pretty bad in my case anyway. The DExx_vd-isl add-on for the DE10-nano is better, but still not really usable. Theoretically they should be excellent, but for some reason the results are underwhelming. There's a slight chance the dexx can be made better, but the OSSC cannot since it's 720p mode isn't compatible with the TV. Maybe there is some special sauce in the TV SM options to make it work, but I haven't found it despite a few hours of digging around. The TV does handle 240p and 480i/p throught the OSSC, but they look just OK and are very laggy, I think up around 48ms from memory. I think the problem might be that the TV is excellent at everything *except* for 2D pixel art. Maybe it just requires a set of tweaks to the SM to get pixel art games looking good. As it is, I expected that the 3x line mulitplier from the dexx would look excellent, but the displayed image makes it look like the TV is mishandling it and creating uneven sized columns of pixels. It's pure ugliness. 

Personally, I find this TV to be amazing for modern games. It doesn't have the sharpness of say a PC CRT, but the motion resolution and CRT factor make it an excellent use for modern AAA titles. And the size means you can appreciate the art and stuff, without having your nose up against the screen. The contrast, colours and black levels are excellent also. Sometimes I put a game on and it just blows me away again, how good this TV is. Mine only has 13,000 hours on it, so I'm sure that helps.

Games like Returnal from PS5 look excellent on this TV. As does Cyberpunk 2077 from PC but it does require the use of supersampling from a higher res, in order to make it look good enough to be a viable alternative to a big OLED. I have a C1 65 inch but mostly use the HD CRT for modern gaming. It doesn't have the sharpness of say a PC CRT, but the motion resolution and CRT factor make it an excellent use for modern AAA titles.

My set does have some notable issue are the edges of the display area. I can't really describe them, but they easily noticeable but not distracting since you're mostly looking at the centre of the screen. They can be resolved in SM, but it's subjective as to wheter the trade-offs are worth it. It's possible that a recap or other intervention may resolve/reduce these problem.

Interested to see how OP went with the repairs. I was carrying mine out with the bloke who sold it to me, and we both got sweaty hands and started losing our grip. So close to dropping it, but we managed to get it in the van and I ended up with the entire 90kg on top of my legs while we dried our hands and figure out how to get it off me. A dolly is definitely the way to go.

Hope this helps someone, I've got some footage of this TV showing Returnal at 720p up on YT. It's not even close to depicting the feel of this TV, unless you watch on a CRT, but it does give a somewhat OKish impression. I'm trying to figure out camera settings or post proc stuff in Resolve to get the footage to match how it looks on the TV.

[buttersoft]

Cheers for the extra info! I'm going to have to dive in and try these extra settings at some point

[b0nz0beavis]

No worries mate. I couldn’t ever figure out how to effectively use the convergence controls. Just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I can move the cursor around and get it to the section of screen requiring adjustment, but then it’s like the lights go out and I dunno wth is going on hahaha. Any tips?

Edit: also, curious about the HDFury 2 and it’s image processing. I used the HDFury X3 (I think, whichever the most recent version is) to convert PC video at 1080p to 1080i. The image was noticeably worse than both the VGA>BNC 5 breakout adapter I use, as well as the Portta HDMI2COMP. It also added a variable processing latency of 1-2 frames. I was able to return it so at least the few hundred clams wasn’t wasted. I ended up trialling GPU pass through on Windows, using a 3080 ti for 4K rendering and a 970 to scale to 1080i. Image was immaculate but the dual GPU setup is too much of a heat trap so now I just use 720p.

[buttersoft]

man, it's been so long since i adjusted it i'm not sure. I do remember having to go to the right spot, and then click enter again to actually adjust that spot? Does that sound right? And i wanted to switch to my own grid pattern for each spot as well. So you memorise how to adjust, then go to a spot, enter it, then switch patterns, adjust things blind, and switch back.

[b0nz0beavis]

I could select a spot, but I couldn’t make any adjustments. Added a query to prev post about HDFury2, curious about how it compares to the HDFuryX3 I tried out.

[buttersoft]

The convergence doesn't move fast. you have to adjust things a long way, IIRC before the change becomes obvious. At least, until you get used to what you should be seeing happen.

The HDfury3 also features 4 customizable EDID® banks, two of which may be used to limit the output resolution to 1080i out of the box (again via DIP switches).

I don't think the HDFury2 has the above feature, it's just a passthrough conversion. It seems like the HDFury3 should be able to do that too, but not if your newer GPU won't output it of course. I'm using a 980ti, which outputs 1080i fine via HDMI.

Could you put an even smaller card in there, like a 930 or something else with no external power, and get 1080i with less power use?

[b0nz0beavis]

EDIT: all mentions of HDFury X3 are incorrect. I had the X4, only realised the error when jumping on their site just now.
_________

The main problem is the cards are only a few cm apart, so the warm air coming out of the 970 is going straight into the intake fans on the 3080 ti. No doubt a smaller card would help a bit, but it has the potential to introduce performance issues. The 970 runs at 30-40% utilisation when just downscaling 4K >> 1080i. There’s another issue with 4K >> 1080i compared to 2560 >> 720, with the higher resolutions somehow ending up with added aliasing artifacts in some scenarios (rendering things like power lines, lane markings on roads, wire fences, etc). Unsure if due to the rendering/downscaling or the display itself. So it was another tiny issue that made 720p the better option for me. I did consider looking for motherboards with more distance between PCIE slots or a third or fourth slot, but thats overkill even for me and by this stage I’d spent a solid four weeks messing with SM settings and sourcing solutions and I just wanted to play some games.

I contacted the HDFury support team and they said the X3 was more of an “out of the box solution”, and couldn’t offer any remedy to the issues I raised about image quality and so I got a refund instead. The X3 product page states the device has lag free scaling, which is incorrect per my testing, which I pointed out to HDFury and I think also contributed to the ease of refunding the product. The support team were excellent and I rate the company highly on that basis.

 

The convergence doesn't move fast. you have to adjust things a long way, IIRC before the change becomes obvious. At least, until you get used to what you should be seeing happen.

Good to know. Might go have a play with it later today.

 

man, it's been so long since i adjusted it i'm not sure. I do remember having to go to the right spot, and then click enter again to actually adjust that spot? Does that sound right? And i wanted to switch to my own grid pattern for each spot as well. So you memorise how to adjust, then go to a spot, enter it, then switch patterns, adjust things blind, and switch back.

This sounds like it could be right. I don’t recall trying multiple presses or putting much effort into figuring it out, just sort of giving up quickly.

Cheers for all the info, haven’t come across many other owners that have done a deep dive into the SM. It’s more owners of NA HD sets in the various forms and Discord channel.

[buttersoft]

Well, TBH i got most of it from a guy who goes by Thumptech, who was a huge help. He actually owns the HDFury2 i use, it's been on permanent loan since he got his HDFuryX3 (which seems to work fine). I don't believe it is a scaler, obviously, and was confused by your post

Cheers for the info you've provided as well, i'm keen to give it all a go at some point

[b0nz0beavis]

Yeah, I s’pose they broke the X4 somehow…. it definitely degraded the visual quality when going from 1080 p > i. Probably a decent enough unit for most folks, but I was deep in the HD CRT rabbit hole searching for the optimum results and it didn’t pass muster.

[buttersoft]

I guess i can understand were you having problems with downscaling and interlacing an image, but was it still blurry when you were just using it for passthrough? I know that what's considered best for AV in terms of image scaling/processing isn't always the same as what gamers would usually prefer, and the HDFury is mainly aimed at video processing. Maybe they added certain filters for the X4.

[b0nz0beavis]

Didn’t test 1080i passthrough on the X4. PS5 does 1080i so it’s connected directly to the TV and when I had the X4, I didn’t have the 970.