I am in the process of attempting to buy the largest, heaviest CRT set I have yet owned--the monolithic Sony Trinitron KV-40XBR800. There are several things I'd like to know beforehand, if anyone here has owned this set.

1.) Weight. This set must weigh nearly 300 pounds, so I'm currently brainstorming how to even move it from its current owner's house! :scratch2: What would be an ideal method to safely move a set this bulky and heavy?

2.) Problems. Are there any inherent technical problems that this set could develop in the future that I need to be aware of? The seller states that it currently works perfect, but I want to know what, if anything, might happen somewhere on down the line.

3.) Quality. As if I even need to ask about this, but I wonder primarily in comparison to two groups: other Trinitron sets and other jumbo-CRT sets. I have been told numerous times that the 40XBR800 has the best picture of any set its size, even including comparable flat panels and rear projectors. Also, the sound quality; is the built-in subwoofer noticeable, or does it not add much to the depth of the sound?

The deal on this TV has not closed yet; there is even a chance that it has already sold. Hopefully I will score this one after just missing out on the equivalent 36-inch set.:thmbsp:

Hope you get it-I missed out on one during the 2 1/2 weeks they were commercially available for sale orginally...Reckon Sony MIGHT have sold a few more if they hadn't let 'em out in the tiny dribs 'n' drabs that they did-It was almost like you needed to kiss someone's arse to get them to actually SELL one of the damthings...IF you could find a dealer who actually wanted to fool w/'em in the 1st place...

Wheels. You need wheels. Go rent a suitable dolly that this thing will be able to sit flat on. Blankets or lots of old towels for padding. Straps to hold it down. Your biggest weight-lifting buddy (or two) to help you. (Better two: figure on pizza and beer for later.) If the owner has light colored carpet, etc., make allowances for big pieces of clean cardboard etc. to lay down on that in the path of the dolly: a few pieces will do because you can keep moving them along. Lift with y'all's knees. Nobody needs a hernia! :yikes:

We put a new 36" Toshiba in my basement TV room a few years ago and lemme tell you, it wanted to go down there all by itself! Three guys holding back on it.

Here's how I unloaded mine:

http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m174/kx250racer/th_40XBR_1.jpg (http://s104.photobucket.com/albums/m174/kx250racer/?action=view&current=40XBR_1.jpg)

The best tip I can offer, is DON'T bang it. That enormous shadow mask is easy to bend, and cause the color purity to go into a rainbow. I keep a spare working board for mine, "just in case". Mostly, a 36XBR800 is the same chassis. Those sets are showing up regularly on CL for as little as $150, and now's the time to get them!!!

Charles

Weight: 300 lbs. Unless you can get three people, one underneath the carrying handle underneath the frame on each side (saves your skin from gettin torn up, nice round smooth plastic there) and one person on the face of the set. It's a bitch but I just got done wrestling one down a flight.
Try to make your journey as easy as possible,like the others said, get rollers, or a furniture dolly for a long move, protect it well. If your like me, put yr truck in 4x4 low and back up the hill into the yard right up to the front diir. Did this a bunch of times now. Take shortcuts if you can. And remember, yeah, it's 300 lbs, but freakaftr8 had to wrestle 510 lbs outta his truck, so my set is not as bad.. :)

Problems: Um, yeah....., so you get this beast into the house. Happy as can be and crack open a cold one with you and your buds for a job well done. All three of you are sweating cause you decided to move this beast on one of the hottest days of the year (stupid me). So you hook it up to a DVD and you wanna sit and relax. Poof, no sound, no picture, just a lil flashing red light flashing 6 times, then you reset it. 7 times, and sometuimes 4 flashes. The common cause is IC8002 and/or IC6502 (MCZ3001DB) failures, and to replace these with sockets and new ICs. And if you went this far, resolder flyback connections. I replaced mine w/o doing so, and I ended having to resolder the fly. On that note, if you don't have an electric screwdriver, I suggest picking one up. there are like a mass amount of screws to remove on this beast. I mean it looks like it was designed to withstand a UPS shipping!

Quality: This is one of Sony's last sets Made in the USA, (PA). CRT and all! Quality is top notch on this one! CRT's are not as bright anv vivid as lets say a 32 or 36" model, of course. THe bigger the CRT the harder it is to light it up. But it does look awesome. IMHO Between the brightness of this CRT and the brightness of my CTC-17XAB, are about the same.

Note, I dont know about anyone else's 40XBR800 but the tube is so huge and needs so much power that when the scene changes, sometimes I can actually see the dynamic focus trying to keep up. My CRT may be a bit tired too, cause I have entered the serrvice menu and had to adjust the red drive a bit. Alll I can do and sometimes the whites depending upon whats on the screen at the time appear a bit pinkish and a lil out of focus. At least the tube gets nice and bright at startup cold. After all I did get this set for 50 bucks broken and had to fix it.

Thanks for the replies! The seller just contacted me, and it looks like I'm gonna get this one. :banana:

I'm sure I could find some guys to help me move it, and we do have a nice large, flat dolly we can use to move it around with. @kx250rider: Darn, the city just took away their Ford backhoe tractor that had been sitting on my street for two months :D I'm lucky that my set won't have to go up or down any stairs. The biggest challenges, I think, will be getting it up and down from the truck.

I was unable to find anyone local to help me move the set, so my father, brother and I are going to try to wing it ourselves. We've got a low trailer and dolly to move the set. I'm worried about the set being damaged in transit; what can I do to minimize shock from the road trip? (after learning that one of my 27" sets has an irreparable bent shadow mask from a strong impact, I am very wary of subjecting this XBR to any kind of shock.) What would best be used to secure the set to the trailer? Or is the trailer a bad idea altogether? The TV will fit in the back of the Bronco, but it will need to be lifted up and down much more to get in there, which, for the amount of manpower we currently have, would most likely be impractical.

Hmmmmm...:headscrat

You might consider making the trip on a Sunday morning, or late some evening, when there's no traffic, and you can go as slowly as you want to over bumps.

You might consider making the trip on a Sunday morning, or late some evening, when there's no traffic, and you can go as slowly as you want to over bumps.
He wants us to come over on a weekday after 7PM, I think that'd work. Dad says he thinks we can get the TV into the back of the truck, which bodes well because the ride won't be as rough. :yes: We may go get the set tonight!:thmbsp:

Well, we're back! Turns out we could actually move the set between the three of us, though we had to dismantle the stand to fit it in the truck. :D Five hours later--it's now 2:30 AM and my new Sony Trinitron KV-40XBR800 is finally ensconced in its new home, my bedroom:

http://www.wolfness.com/up/files/40XBR800.jpg

It makes everything else look half-scale, it's so disproportionately large to the rest of the room. :D

No problems at all, except for some very slight discoloration on the screen, near the top corners. I heard about this before, supposedly caused by some sort of interference from an outside source, but it's not bothering me much. The only other thing is that the little door that conceals the front panel input is missing, but again, not a big deal. The Nintendo Wii game system looks absolutely fantastic on this TV. I've also got my matching Sony DVD player and VCR connected, and they all look awesome. The sound, with five total speakers, is phenomenal for a built-in sound system! This television is worth every penny of the $240 I paid for it.

Did I mention it's ALMOST too big? Almost, but not quite. :D

awesome set!last time i was in point pleasant w va,joe wilson had two of those in his house.he is the local repair guy working from his home,a converted funeral parlor.those are mammoth to say the least.the picutre they produce are outstanding considering the size.heavy,like a load of bricks but well worth it in the end.great find!

last time i was in point pleasant w va,joe wilson had two of those in his house.

One at each end to keep it from tilting?

One at each end to keep it from tilting?

That's a distinct possibility. :D

Weeeeeeeell, ifya think hit's Too Big, I might be perswaded t'come 'n' take it offa yer hands fer ya....(grin)

Weeeeeeeell, ifya think hit's Too Big, I might be perswaded t'come 'n' take it offa yer hands fer ya....(grin)

*hides this post from the parental units* :D I had to do some real perswasion of my own to get them to agree to letting me have it in my room. :tongue:

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Looks like a great CRT on that set! When I got mine a few weeks back (broken) and got 'er up and running, I noticed my CRT seemed a little tired. Fussed with service menus and it looks really good now. Your's looks like it has low hours on it ! Those blothes of colors are caused by the speakers in the tv. The other guys are dead on. Find some small magnets and pop the 1000 screws outta the back and play around in the top corners. Also, you could have a magnet that came unglued and fell off as well. There is a big subwoofer 8" cone mounrted above the CRT. This sub probably plays hell on the CRT as well.

if these speakers play that much hell on an unobtainium crt, wouldn't it be better to remove the speakers and use the audio outs routed to a home theater? Didn't Sony shield them?

Absolutely! I would remove the speakers and see if the purity blotches dissapear. If so, remove speakers and audio ouput to an amp.
I mean the sound is good, but not great. Alot of distortion at mid level volume and bass watching action adventure movies.
And, I dont think these speakers are shielded good enough.


if these speakers play that much hell on an unobtainium crt, wouldn't it be better to remove the speakers and use the audio outs routed to a home theater? Didn't Sony shield them?

Thanks for the replies. I too was surprised at how nice and bright the CRT is; according to the previous owner, the set was used a lot. There is a lot of dust built up inside, and I need to clean it out. As for the speakers and distortion on the screen, I would think it wasn't the speakers, as the slight distortion is not located near the speakers, rather, it's at the very corners of the screen, on the sides. Also, is there really an eight-inch driver back there somewhere?? I can see what looks like a 4" driver firing upward in the back, but not much else. I do like the TV sound a lot; it does great at moderate levels, but if you turn it up, the cabinet rattles. :D

If I am to add magnets to the CRT, how big, and where at? Also, where can I get them, or can I use any ordinary magnet?

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I removed the back cover and cleaned the set out two days ago. Fortunately, almost all of the dust came off very easily with some canned air. I also examined the speakers, as I was curious of their build quality. The front speakers have large rectangular magnets, and the tweeters are real tweeters with magnets, not piezos. What really surprised me is that the 4" subwoofer in the back is a dual voice coil driver! The cabinet for the woofer is pretty neat, similarly designed to the special form-fitted speaker cabinets used in automobile doors. All drivers (save the tweeters, of course) have rubber surrounds, as well.

There is a piece of tape affixed to the top right corner of the CRT bell where it looks like a magnet may have been attached, but it's not there now and I couldn't find it anywhere in the cabinet. Just for $hits and grins (:D) I removed all the speaker drivers and placed them near the screen while displaying a blue background, to see if there would be any distortion. None at all. So I'm guessing the speakers are not to blame for the color problems.

One other thing I found: I noticed a small dirt spot on the screen while playing a game on the TV last night. Upon rubbing at it with my finger to get rid of it, I discovered that it wasn't dirt, but rather a very tiny air bubble embedded inside the glass face of the CRT. :scratch2: It seems that it was either missed during quality control, or Sony thought it too minor of a problem to justify destroying the CRT. (whew!) In any case, unless you're viewing a solid screen color, you have to be right on top of the bubble to see it; it's less than a millimeter wide. It's not bothering me. :D

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Many Sony CRTs actually have a sheet of plastic glued to the front for anti glare and tint. The bubble could be under that plastic. You have to be VERY careful with these CRTs since the surface is not glass it's easy to scratch.

I don't think it's that, as there doesn't appear to be a coating on the screen, and I don't think this model used that coating. (I know what you're referring to) The bubble is also a good 1/8th to 1/4 of an inch under the surface.