I was at a K-mart returning some gifts, and I looked at the TV's. There's still some CRT models. I looked at a flatscreen RCA and I noticed that the red was bleeding, pretty badly too. The TV's new and the CRT is already tired... :no:

And I thought 90's Zenith's were bad... Why RCA? Why?

RCA is just a brand now. The red bleeding might just have been because they were over driving the CRT. The bleeding is caused by the video output amplifier clipping. At normal contrast it might be fine.

The older RCA's are excellent Televisions. Perhaps not the best picture, but it was a TV that was almost guaranteed to become a grandchild's heirloom. IMHO, RCA were the battletanks of the TV universe.

Nowadays, nothing really turns my crank. They all look grainy.

RCA is just a brand now. The red bleeding might just have been because they were over driving the CRT. The bleeding is caused by the video output amplifier clipping. At normal contrast it might be fine.

The picture was brighter then the other TV's there, but I've overdriven TV's before, either to compensate for a dim picture tube, or to better show darker scenes, and it's usually the 90's Zeniths that have color bleeding. The brighter the red, the worse it is. On the RCA I saw, the red was easily smearing a good 2 or 3 inches. There were no retrace lines, so the tube couldn't have been driven too hard.

Could it have been the wonderful video distribution system that walmart uses?

Could it have been the wonderful video distribution system that walmart uses?

I'd lay odds it was.

Yep, gotta love that smeary video.... Just makes me want to lay down 1000 bucks on some off brand TV.

On another OT and wrong forum thread.... the best picture on any TV I saw this Holiday season was on a 24 inch Westinghouse LCD. Whoda thunk it.

Not too surprising, really, as RCA is just another formerly great company now reduced to a label. And let me guess: the TV was made somewhere beginning with a C, ending with an A, with H-I-N in the middle?

The picture was brighter then the other TV's there, but I've overdriven TV's before, either to compensate for a dim picture tube, or to better show darker scenes, and it's usually the 90's Zeniths that have color bleeding. The brighter the red, the worse it is. On the RCA I saw, the red was easily smearing a good 2 or 3 inches. There were no retrace lines, so the tube couldn't have been driven too hard.

A set can have good retrace blanking and still be overdriven -sounds like what happened here.

You can't judge anything from the horrid video feeds at places like Wal-Fart, Worst Buy and Rat Shak. I bought my JVC from Sears many years ago, taking along a DVD that I was familiar with and prepared to drag in my Pioneer DVD player, in case they had crap hooked up to their sets (they did). A fellow shopper was complaining that while he like the looks of a certain set, he was disapointed in the snowy reception (multi-split cable feed) he was seeing. He eventually convinced the sales guy that if he wanted to make a sale, he'd have to get off his ass and hook the set up to a working tap. Eventually he did, the picture cleared up on and he made a sale. My point is, these places are no better at selling video than they are at audio. They are the same idiots that turn cheap subwoofers all the way up and crank up the bass and treble on "rack systems" claiming it's *hi-fi* at its finest.

I'd lay odds it was.

There's no way a video distrobustion system could cause bleeding of just the reds unless it was component video.

Nope. Just standard RF, and the picture on all the other TV's had no bleeding at all.

I'm still going to chalk it up to either a bad or defective picture tube. Color bleeding like that should not happen, and I've seen TV's 20-30 years old that handled colors better, and at the same or better brightness.

There's no way a video distrobustion system could cause bleeding of just the reds unless it was component video.

Wanna bet? Seen too many poorly set up displays at places like that with every set showing the same pre-recorded, over saturated and smeary feed.

And let me guess: the TV was made somewhere beginning with a C, ending with an A, with H-I-N in the middle?

AKA known as Communist China.... Or so that's what the Fox Network News calls that place... :D And I was told about evil Godless communism back in the early 1960's in grammar school... :thumbsdn: :D