Electronics repair - Problems with the Sony 30 Wegas?

Author

Problems with the Sony 30 Wegas?

oddvark

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

Hello,

Have any of you had experience working on the newer 30 in Wegas? Are
they problematic? My dad wants a 30 inch wide screen, preferably flat,
but I've heard lots about problems with the wegas. Are the new ones
any better?

Thanks.

testortool

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

I've got Wega 24" and 32" TVs and neither have had any problems since bought
new several years ago.

"oddvark" <dgrdinh@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112905062.471577.158740@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

quote:

> Hello,
>
> Have any of you had experience working on the newer 30 in Wegas? Are
> they problematic? My dad wants a 30 inch wide screen, preferably flat,
> but I've heard lots about problems with the wegas. Are the new ones
> any better?
>
> Thanks.
>

Bob Shuman

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

As I recall there were two different classes of Wega TVs. I believe one was
a cheaper version (possibly the F or FV series?) I have had only one
problem with my 5-year old 32" model and that is with the clock. It runs
several minutes fast each month making it basically useless. Seems they did
not take advantage of the stable 60 Hertz AC power current for clocking and
instead have a cheap free running oscillator instead. Given the price of
the set, this seems almost ludicrous.

But, the good news is the picture still seems as bright and sharp as the day
we bought it.

Bob

"testortool" <mbillings@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:115b9r91vhakfed@corp.supernews.com...

quote:

> I've got Wega 24" and 32" TVs and neither have had any problems since

bought

quote:

> new several years ago.
>
> "oddvark" <dgrdinh@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1112905062.471577.158740@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>

Ross Herbert

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 16:40:41 -0500, "Bob Shuman"
<reshuman@removethis.lucent.com> wrote:

quote:

>As I recall there were two different classes of Wega TVs. I believe one was
>a cheaper version (possibly the F or FV series?) I have had only one
>problem with my 5-year old 32" model and that is with the clock. It runs
>several minutes fast each month making it basically useless. Seems they did
>not take advantage of the stable 60 Hertz AC power current for clocking

Er, a lot of people actually disconnect power completely from the TV,
especially when going on holidays or for whatever reason. It is a pain
to have to reset the time every time you switch on again so that
method is also next to useless. A battery backed xtal controlled clock
would be best a-la your everday PC. Of course, the added cost would
probably mean it is unlikely to be adopted for analog sets since these
are a dying breed. Hopefully, down the track, digital TV transmissions
will all send the time locked to UTC or some other standard.

This paper covers the problem
http://www.broadcastpapers.com/sigd...tTime-print.htm

JMK

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

I have had a 32FX65 for five years and no problems whatsoever.

Jan

--
jankro (@) saunalahti (.) fi
Please notice my new address!

"oddvark" <dgrdinh@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112905062.471577.158740@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

quote:

> Hello,
>
> Have any of you had experience working on the newer 30 in Wegas? Are
> they problematic? My dad wants a 30 inch wide screen, preferably flat,
> but I've heard lots about problems with the wegas. Are the new ones
> any better?
>
> Thanks.
>

Ray L. Volts

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

"oddvark" <dgrdinh@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112905062.471577.158740@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

quote:

> Hello,
>
> Have any of you had experience working on the newer 30 in Wegas? Are
> they problematic? My dad wants a 30 inch wide screen, preferably flat,
> but I've heard lots about problems with the wegas. Are the new ones
> any better?
>
> Thanks.
>

Would you like the good news or bad news first?

What the heck, here's the bad news:
I had to immediately return the first unit I brought home because the
timer/clock chip was faulty and the convergence was absolutely horrendous.
Edge and corner convergence is generally pretty crummy on WEGAs (or at least
was) considering they cost (or did when I got mine) much more than the
competitors.
The second unit I brought home had much much better convergence throughout,
so factory alignment isn't very consistent, either -- even given a generous
misconvergence allowance.
I'm comfortable making a blanket statement such as this regarding the
convergence, as I visited numerous retail stores which had these on display,
both in and out of town -- yes, I had too much time on my hands, but I also
had other things I needed to go pick up, so...
Every last one of the units in the stores, plus the two I brought home, had
varying degrees of misconvergence in the edges and corners. All were highly
noticeable and I'd go so far as to say unacceptable for Sony. Maybe they've
improved with tighter tolerances since I got mine. <shrugh>
Before people jump all over me for this, let me say that I've done my fair
share of yoke/convergence adjustments over the years and am well aware of
the difficulties in obtaining "perfect" (it's in quotes for a reason) corner
and edge convergence, particularly with larger CRT's, and especially when
rushed to do so (as factory techs would be). But that awareness doesn't
make it any less disappointing in a premium product that demands a mucher
higher price than its competitors (at that time anyway).
I compared the WEGAs side-by-side with other sets and some of the
competitors had far better convergence, but the overall pic quality was
inferior for other various reasons, which explains why I ended up buying the
WEGA anyway.
So why am I complaining then?!? Because I (unreasonably perhaps, so what)
expect more from Sony. ahh, looking through the flyers, I see WEGAs are
downright cheap nowadays compared to 5 years ago, so I'm still annoyed. :P
Yeah yeah, I hear you folks.. if I want zero misconvergence, buy a freakin
LCD or plasma set! That's a good idea. When can I expect you to cut me a
check? ;)
Here's another prob an LCD unit would remedy: this WEGA's flyback started
squealing about 8 months or so after purchase. That is far too soon in my
view, and it's highly annoying. This thing is heavy heavy, so I haven't
bothered pulling it from my entertainment center to open it up and dope the
FBT and/or check solder joints, etc. It has sufficed thus far to simply tap
the cabinet or shut 'er down for a while and power 'er back up and
experience blissful FBT silence. Why not take advantage of the warranty
then? Well, it's HEAVY.. and frankly, the prob isn't severe enough to be
worthy of hauling it 40 miles out of town and damn sure not worth the cost
of shipping it. Besides, I don't want to risk getting a unit returned back
to me that's in worse shape than what I sent in, or worse a new unit with
far worse convergence.

And now, for something completely different (the good news):
My 27" WEGA is still going strong after 5 years, requiring no "actual"
repairs. While the factory alignment tolerances are annoyingly generous and
the flyback transformer prematurely sings, WEGAs are obviously designed to
produce a like-new pic way past the warranty period.

James Sweet

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

"Ross Herbert" <rherber1SPAMEX@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:323c51h8nfcfs21np29qcc0750rhp6djde@4ax.com...

quote:

> On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 16:40:41 -0500, "Bob Shuman"
> <reshuman@removethis.lucent.com> wrote:
>
was[vbcol=seagreen]
did[vbcol=seagreen]
>
> Er, a lot of people actually disconnect power completely from the TV,
> especially when going on holidays or for whatever reason. It is a pain
> to have to reset the time every time you switch on again so that
> method is also next to useless. A battery backed xtal controlled clock
> would be best a-la your everday PC. Of course, the added cost would
> probably mean it is unlikely to be adopted for analog sets since these
> are a dying breed. Hopefully, down the track, digital TV transmissions
> will all send the time locked to UTC or some other standard.
>
> This paper covers the problem
> http://www.broadcastpapers.com/sigd...tTime-print.htm
>

They use a microprocessor anyway, it's virtually trivial to allow the clock
to lock onto AC when present and use the crystal oscillator if it's
unplugged.

Ross Herbert

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 03:21:22 GMT, "James Sweet"
<jamessweet@hotmail.com> wrote:

quote:

>
>"Ross Herbert" <rherber1SPAMEX@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
>news:323c51h8nfcfs21np29qcc0750rhp6djde@4ax.com...
>was
>did
>
>They use a microprocessor anyway, it's virtually trivial to allow the clock
>to lock onto AC when present and use the crystal oscillator if it's
>unplugged.
>

No matter whether the mains frequency was used as a reference or not,
and no matter whether a micro is used or not, when mains is
disconnected the only way to maintain correct time is by using a
battery backed xtal locked clock. However, it doesn't make sense to
provide both mains AND xtal locked clocks with automatic selection of
either depending upon whether mains is connected or not. Surely, if
the xtal controlled clock was included that method would always be
used to provide the time since it would have to be running all the
time no matter whether mains is connected or not. Just like in PC...

oddvark

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

ok, well, thanks everyone for the reply. Ray, thanks for the
information. I hope that I dont have the same problems as you
do...also, my dad doesn't even know what convergence is, so perhaps he
will not be too dissapointed. I believe that overall picture quality
is what matters to both of us, so hopefully that will be ok. As long
as its not obviously bad.

Anyhow, I hope they have improved things over the last 5 years. The
ones I see at Fry's look pretty good. So I guess I'm gonna go for the
plunge.. nervous time!

James Sweet

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

quote:

> No matter whether the mains frequency was used as a reference or not,
> and no matter whether a micro is used or not, when mains is
> disconnected the only way to maintain correct time is by using a
> battery backed xtal locked clock. However, it doesn't make sense to
> provide both mains AND xtal locked clocks with automatic selection of
> either depending upon whether mains is connected or not. Surely, if
> the xtal controlled clock was included that method would always be
> used to provide the time since it would have to be running all the
> time no matter whether mains is connected or not. Just like in PC...

Why doesn't it? I've used that feature on a microprocessor based clock I
built, it's just a matter of having code that syncronizes timekeeping to the
AC line when present, and if that goes away it uses a timer interrupt driven
by the CPU's crystal oscillator. The benefit is rock solid long term
timekeeping (better than any crystal oscillator) when power is present
combined with backup that's reasonably accurate for short outages with no
added hardware other than a resistor and capacitor for the AC sync. I've
seen other designs that even autoselect between 50 and 60 Hz, again just
coding, no hardware change. Modern microcontrollers tend to have vast
amounts of memory for what they typically need, there's usually extra space
for cool features like this.

*Many* clock radios and other digital clocks use a very similar arrangement
though most of them use a simple R/C oscillator for the battery backup.

Bob Shuman

2005-04-16, 3:16 pm

The point I was making is that the Sony designers really skimped here in
their design. This set cost well over $2K and the clock gains about 3
minutes a month on the cheap oscillator they provided rendering the clock
pretty much completely useless. I have a $49 DVD player that synchronizes
it's clock from the local PBS so it is always accurate to the minute. I
have a $30 alarm clock that functions as James describes below using the AC
house current and with a backup oscillator for power loss. It just seems
Sony completely missed the boat here to save a dollar. It can't help but
make any intelligent consumer wonder where else they cut corners on their
top of the line set...

Bob

"James Sweet" <jamessweet@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:5iG6e.15724$B12.6320@trnddc09...
Why doesn't it? I've used that feature on a microprocessor based clock I
built, it's just a matter of having code that synchronizes timekeeping to
the
AC line when present, and if that goes away it uses a timer interrupt driven
by the CPU's crystal oscillator. The benefit is rock solid long term
timekeeping (better than any crystal oscillator) when power is present
combined with backup that's reasonably accurate for short outages with no
added hardware other than a resistor and capacitor for the AC sync. I've
seen other designs that even autoselect between 50 and 60 Hz, again just
coding, no hardware change. Modern microcontrollers tend to have vast
amounts of memory for what they typically need, there's usually extra space
for cool features like this.

*Many* clock radios and other digital clocks use a very similar arrangement
though most of them use a simple R/C oscillator for the battery backup.

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