Since I haven't had any luck finding a 90's XBR these past months, I thought I'd look at a few others.

Came across a 27" Panasonic 'SuperFlat' set from '97/98. Model CT-27SF25. Looks nice, has s-video but no component, which strikes me a bit odd as XBRs had it by '97.

Anyways, I was wondering if you guys had any experience with 90's 'SuperFlat' sets, and how they compare to Trinitrons, especially XBRs.

Thanks guys.

A friend of mine had one of those. The geometric distortion across the top and bottom of the pic bothered him so much he got rid of the set.

panasonic no way

I have a 1994 27" SuperFlat that I bought new. Was my daily driver until around 2002 and it still gets regular use. It's never needed service, and the picture on it's so good (DirecTV via S-Video) people sometimes mistake it for HD.

Panasonic was considered a very reliable make by the TV fixin' guys at the shop.

The "SuperFlat" set my friend rejected because of the geometric distortion was another matter. They even came out and replaced the tube-yolk assy which only changed the distortion, did not fix it.

I still have the picture my friend sent me of the problem.
http://videokarma.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=175817&stc=1&d=1345210601

put a car chase or some tv show on there and there is no way your gunna be able to notice that......

Get some scrolling text rolling up the screen, or text banners across the top and bottom as commonly seen, and that kind of distortion is intolerable to me.

All SORTS of crap.....Even the yoke isn't on straight

Wow, didn't know Panasonic had such a bad reputation.

It seems like your friend's TV is an exception. Did Panasonic themselves fail to repair it?

I'm afraid to run a cross hatch pattern on my tv. Probably won't be much better.

Never knew this about panny CRT sets. Seems I remember the picture to REALLY stand out when it came to flat screens back when I would see a Panasonic among all the other brands.

Their little tiny B/W sets I have in my collection are among the most bulletproof and ALWAYS tend to be still running when I find them at swap meets and stuff, and with GREAT little pictures!

Huh. I've never run a test pattern on mine, but I played plenty of PlayStation on it back then (which would presumably show geometric faults quite nicely) and never noticed anything crooked.

Duplicate post.

I can't help wondering if the Panasonic and RCA so-called "flat" televisions of the '90s were ever mistaken for HD sets, due to their near-flat screens. I have a difficult time imagining how a standard CRT could be built with such a flat screen. The near-flat tubes must have been very difficult to manufacture, and may have been in short supply in case one had to be replaced during the life span of these sets, which couldn't have been very long since RCA TVs were going downhill fast by the beginning of the decade of the 1990s. I wouldn't have expected even an RCA TruFlat set to last more than three or four years at most -- like the life expectancy of today's flat screen HDTVs.