 Well, hey everybody, welcome in today. I am of course Steve with Retro Tech and I have a special guest Joining me today Just a second to let everybody kind of catch up and get in here as this show comes online I realized that you know where I live it's 9 20 in the morning on a Tuesday So the majority of people in my area are probably at work But if they catch a stream I have been told that they like to watch it while they're supposed to be doing some work, but Anyway, I'll be a joint today by a very special guest from Digital Foundry. I have John Lennon in here and John is coming to us live from Europe to discuss everything about the B&O CRT and So thank you John. Thank you for coming in Happy happy to be here Steve. You know, I love talking CRTs anytime any place And yeah, since I live in the land of the B&O's I figured what better thing to talk about because I went on an adventure this week Weekend I suppose to obtain one. Yeah, I was I was followed you closely I had been so busy this past weekend with this retro world expo is one of the big expos at us all retro guys get together and everybody does and Connecticut and then right when I got back to town I started getting these amazing pictures you were sending me of this crazy bang and olfson television and Myself just getting done working on one. I thought what a great time to get together and kind of talk about these amazing machines so, yeah, let's uh, I see a lot of people starting to come into the chat. This is great and Well, we already have Bob in Bob's coming in asking if if you didn't if you've already used thunder and paradise on it Well, I will explain why we haven't when we get into More details about how this thing works and what's going on here. All right. Well. Yeah, so I think this is probably good enough I mean, it's only been a couple of minutes but if you are joining us and The stream will be up and I will probably, you know, re-releases a video a little bit So it it doesn't just disappear into the live stream ether because I think it'll be a good conversation But oh, yeah, that happens a lot. Yeah, you know after a couple days just disappear So we're gonna I'm gonna throw it over to John. I'd love to him for him to explain everybody about this specific again B&O CRT And you know just more about it Although so yeah, okay. This all kind of comes back to Years ago, right I discovered the existence of a B&O CRT with a built-in CDI player, you know the Phillips CDI the Prince of the Netherlands The Dutch, you know, it's it's amazing, right or not But it was actually a big deal over here Weirdly enough and a lot of people I've met from there actually have experienced with it But it turns out that one of the things My buddy Audi Surly of limited-run games and DF has we've we've always loved talking CDI playing CDI games Sometimes to come and get comedic effect sometimes for actual fun. It varies. I mean, you know how the CDI is but this this CRT with the built-in CDI has been sort of on Audi's list of dream CRTs for years ever since I Showed that it existed to him. He was like, I need to get this thing But they're not that easy to come by and years past It's in that time. I picked up my first B&O CRT this year the BO vision one. I Kind of like it. I think it's great. I was impressed by it You know, I'm mostly surrounded by pro monitors But I enjoyed getting the taste of something consumer and just like the the design of the unit impressed me a lot So I kind of kept an eye on these things and recently this BO center AV 5 showed up for sale There was exactly one for sale that I could find in all of Germany and it happened to be about an hour away from me Last week I was at gamescom in Cologne and All of my colleagues Alex Richard were there So was Audi and Audi drove up with me and his buddy Tom to gamescom And we knew we were gonna come back the following weekend after we survived the show and I was like, dude There's an AV 5 for sale and not too far from my house What do you want to do? And he's just like, you know, he lives in Norway and North Carolina depending on the time of the year or what what's going on But it's not that close, right? Well, it turns out he actually wanted to go get it with the plans of actually Loaded into a truck in the future and hauling it back up the Norway But for the time being I said, all right, if we go get this thing I'll keep it at my house and my setup for the time being and when you're ready We'll we'll take it up there So we drove down to get it the guy had it in a basement and was like, well, we can't you can't test it But you can sure take it. So we went down there. We we saw the unit. We gave him the money He had sent photographs of it working. It showed that CDI was supported. He had tested a burned copy of Zelda The wand of Gamalon on there and it worked But one of the weird things we noticed right when we picked it up was he was he said Yeah, most of these have Controller ports for the CDI back here pointing to where this video output was but this one doesn't have it for some reason But I wasn't familiar enough to understand what that actually meant yet. So we we took it, right? We we right hauled it into my car. It's 70 kilo is like 160 pounds or so Yeah, I was gonna say let's stop right here for a second. Okay, and yeah just to keep this story like when we're going you guys go and Is this person that you got it from was it another person? That was like, I mean if they had a burnt copy of a CDI game I would have to imagine they were into gaming, right? It's not just like an old person's No, it was in their basement It's a dude that had three other B&O's, okay And this one being as big and heavy as it is. He basically ran out of space for it and was like, yeah I needed to sell it. Okay, that's what he did So he put it down in his storage locker under his apartment and that's where it was so so you guys had to get it all I did you was it a struggle to get it out or it was it actually Elevator or something so because he had it in a basement We actually were able to load it up on a dolly Okay, it out into like garage area and there's this undercover Like garage section of the apartment buildings. I could pull my car down there. I've got a large hatchback trunk Okay, that's what I was about to ask next is what Okay, good Yeah, so I I have one of the the B&W are not B&O BMW 4 series grand coupé. So it's like a four-door car, but it's got a big old Hatchback trunk, right? Okay, so I'm able to like, you know There's a ton of space in there for this and we were able to lift it up the three of us Set it gently in the back of the car, which was pretty difficult to achieve Made sure it was lying down sort of face first But protecting it with the sort of plastic wrap around the tube and around the bezel and we just got it in there snugly and Went on our way and drove back another hour to get back to my house And that's when the struggles began in terms of lifting it because we had to lift it back out of this thing Yeah into my house and So this thing actually has some pretty good carrying handles and it's a good There's there's specific points designed for carrying this thing that helped a lot, but even still It's pretty heavy, right? It is a solid machine. It's a mix of the tube There's tons of metal in there and wood and all these are thick people need to understand This is a luxury product. It is like not cheap wood It is it's like high quality high-cost thick dense wood that Really adds a ton of weight to these TVs Yeah, it feels super premium and it's got like this sort of paint finish We got this burnt orange color like you see there on the stream. Yeah, that's beautiful in person It's sort of pearlescent. It actually reminds me of like car paint. It's it's really nice looking I was impressed by that in person But anyway, we get it into the house and set it up and the first thing I guess so We'll get to cleaning but the first thing we just wanted to test it and see how this bad boy works That's that's obviously a shot that's coming up. But yeah, you know, I plugged it in flipped it on and It came right up and of course being one of these B&O TVs It has the mechanical rotating stand. So you hit power it rotates in the place But it has some other tricks up its sleeve. I'd heard about this, but it's amazing seen in person is the speakers So it has a subwoofer in the back. That's hidden But then it has these two speakers on this on the left and right you can see it there on the web page, right? Right, but those When the system is turned off they retract inside the body when you power it up in into the body Yeah, so it looks like this picture when it's turned off. Is that right when it's turned off? It looks like that when you power it on the thing rotates and the speakers Push their way back out at the same sort of speed. So it's all in sync Yeah, it rotates the speakers come out and then they have this effect where it sort of opens like a curtain in front of the CRT Yeah, so it's like it's designed to like present itself to you in a cinematic fashion Every time you hit power And it looks awesome like it's just like okay. This feels premium as heck and it is yeah I love that about it. So but then it's like alright Let's let's look let's start with a music CD just to make sure the laser works Well, and here's a rudimentary picture of the back to before we look at your specific one Yeah, there is that subwoofer you were talking about in the very bottom of it That's right. There's a subwoofer down there And it's beefy So we started with a music CD. I grabbed a copy of Phil Collins greatest hits Because why not of course it felt suitable for this for this era And holy crap the sound quality. Yeah, actually before even that the tray quality So you can't really see it too easily is like on top there where the CD tray opens up. Mm-hmm That thing is mechanical, right? It's so you press a button and it opens up in the smoothest possible fashion It's like very nice on that picture that yeah, that's Hang on a second. Actually. Oops. Sorry. Yeah, you can't really see it up there No, not from that picture, but if I get back to the folder here, we go. Let me exclude that Yeah, if I go over here to the yeah, there there it is one. It's it's that one there It is that's the picture. So bring this one over here. There it is you So you see that when you so that lid lifts up and there's actually a pair of lights that shine inside sort of illuminating the tray It's like is it this it's this moment of truth this consumer moment of truth where it's just like please good, sir Place your compact disc within me You're just like, okay. All right So we drop the disc in there press the button the tray smoothly closes You can see that in the front and the back the disc itself protrudes from the unit So you can actually see it spinning live. So that's that's actually while it's playing it sits there like that Exactly. Whoa. It's wild So that stays lit up and then along the top bezel there directly to the right of the CD tray There's actually a series of lights that light up based on the number of tracks it detects on the disc so you get this read out of all the tracks on the disc and Based on which track you're on it's it highlights it So it's this really fancy looking thing where you just like, okay This is rad and then the music starts playing and like the depth of the sound and the bass like it actually Genuinely took me by surprise because I am a home theater guy I put a lot of money into my speakers and it's not gonna match that per se, but This thing is it sounds better than just about any like Standard sound system you could buy it sounds better than any sound bar. I've ever heard in my entire life It sounds better than any other TV. I've ever heard in my life I was genuinely shocked by the quality like the depth of the bass and the clarity It's like how the heck does this thing sound this good? I think all of us were sitting in the room like looking at each other like goddamn It was it was powerful like the quality of the sound is top tier And I think that feeds into why they have this like really heavy Case full of metal and wood is that they want to keep it completely steady. There's zero rattling There's no like noise or vibrations or anything. It just it's rock solid So when the sound comes on because this is like my life it gave me Asked if against all odds was the song I was gonna ask What was that song that just like popped on at the Phil Collins the Phil Collins song that just was like boom Like the first thing like you see the CD spin and then it just hits the first track. What is it? It's um, I think it was easy lover by The one that sounds like Dragon too. Yeah, so it's totally it's totally double double dragon is ripped that song off, right? Like the straight up stage stage to the rooftops double dragon. It's that song and has great bass. It's awesome That is incredible. Wow. I just a little joke here, John I tried to convince my wife to let me Play easy lover as one of our dance songs at our wedding And she totally shut me down. That's like the only thing she said no to but oh, that's hilarious So, okay first impressions Awesome, then I run upstairs and grab a stack of CDI games. It's like all right. Let's let's see how the CDI works So the first thing I do is pop in a copy of Tetris You know the famous version of Tetris for the CDI Where it presents the the play field on a large monolithic object nestled within natural scenes With very calming music. It's a wonderful thing. It's a very serene version of Tetris Pop it in get to the main menu First thing I know is you know if you've used the CDI by default it actually comes with IR remotes, right? So you're actually kind of using this IR remote to control the cursor on the screen And so I do that load up the game of Tetris to start to play You know, obviously the soundtrack on here is not redbook audio So it's actually somewhat compressed sounding, but it's still suitably impressive The Tetris game looks awesome. I noticed immediately that it's running in RGB. Okay, so the image quality is pristine European CDIs do often ship with RGB So I you know my CDI has RGB But the smaller the 450 the consulized CDI does not have RGB none of the American units have it You need to mod it in right so picture quality Excellent even better if you go to the options menu within the TV itself There's an option you select CD and it shows like music CD video CD all these different like options with the with the ability to specify PAL or NTSC and that includes CDI so you can set the CDI to whichever you prefer So we set it to NTSC which is the shot you're seeing there. That's running in TSC mode. It's full screen Works without a problem Yeah, I talked to to other people about it And they were explaining to me that they could run in either PAL or NTSC, which kind of blew me away first consumer set Yeah, that's freaking cool. Yeah, and the TV itself obviously supports NTSC and PAL as well, right for external Inputs, but for the internal thing. Yeah rare to see an actual CDI unit that allows you to select which one you want That was cool Then I pop in my copy of Lost Eden, which is a very cool game from Cryo French developer Cryo First thing that happens a menu pops up and says you need the CDI digital video card to play this title Shoot So we immediately hit this brick wall. It's kind of like well, that's not good So not every most CDI games don't actually require the DVC, but there's a fair number that do So not having that is a bummer and more on that in a bit once we open this unit The next thing we know we noticed there's no control reports on here Just as the guy said like a back on on the back of the TV along the upper lip There's an S video jack and a headphone jack, but there's also supposed to be composite video input to RCA Inputs actually, I don't know if it's input or output. I haven't tested Yeah, find the right picture kind of see it. Hang on All right, I guess just find the rear Rear shot where it's open or this is fine. Yeah, let's do that. It'll be fine Just showcase when we talk about this folder over here so I can look at it. Well, we're talking get it ready kind of Yeah, this is how we roll. Sorry, I know Okay, come back here there we go Oh, there it is. Okay, bring that baby in All right, so graphics team is working hard today if you look Steve up there along the top left edge I got a miss area over here. Yeah, right there Right in that area. My handiwork. It's not great. I need to file that down a little bit. Okay, right So you see those buttons there beneath that on the left there you have the headphone jack To the right of that is an S video jack in between there There's supposed to be RCA plugs and then to the right of the S video jack further you see the right there There's two controller ports obviously spoiler. They're there, but by default. They're not it's covered by plastic, right? You can't actually access them So we didn't know what was going on there. So right now. We're at the state no DVC games no Cable-based controller just the IR from the B unit from the B04 remote by the way So playing games the B04 remote not the best thing. Yeah, it doesn't work. Well So we also understand is this is like so just to give I know you see people see this on the screen right now But when before before this you didn't see this you just saw a block of plastic right over this area So it wasn't revealed. You just saw this S video Audio in the headphones. Yeah, that's it. Okay, so I'm like well dang. That's that's not cool, right Then there is the last matter and this one we're not actually sure about is that Games from the vision factory like the apprentice And Demos quest, which is honestly not very good, but it's funny. Yeah, those games don't load on this thing at all They just are detected as music CDs. Hmm and looking into it It seems like very select CD I games use some special sort of method for booting I can't recall the name and those don't seem to work on this unit for some reason and I need to investigate that further But by and large What I found is most of the library that we tested works fine as long as it doesn't have the DVC Requirement or it's one of the vision factory games So everything is boots up, but you can't play with controller and that's where we were Sunday evening Before we all settled in to watch the AEW all-in pay-per-view You're like, all right, that's enough break time The pay-per-view and how was the pay-per-view by the way? It was excellent. It was a fantastic one There's some amazing matches in there. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's the Audi for Shelling out for it brought back old memories. Oh, those are so we had a great. We had a great day. It was a good time so the next day comes around and In the late afternoon, we were like, all right, let's let's dig back into this bad boy and play around with it some more So the first thing we did is I actually decided to check out the scart inputs there You see on the back. It's got three scart inputs, which is excellent by the way That's just awesome having three, you know, you have three RGB inputs right there waiting for you So I grabbed my one of my Genesis to 32 X Sega CD combo Plugged that bad boy in and fired it up. I'm sure enough great RGB picture looks awesome I played a bunch of games in there, you know, it's one of the newer tubes as you can see from the back It's an LG Phillips tube Whereas if you look at earlier CRTs And a V5 family, they are just listed as Phillips So this is post the LG Phillips deal where they started working together to create these products My BO vision one also has an LG Phillips tube in it pre-2000 B&O's all seem to have just Phillips tubes not the LG Phillips. Well, that's kind of gives you an idea of the age The one that I had in America had a touchy tube That's interesting. So that what you the one you had was like an 80s model. Yes, 80s Everybody else beyond that has told me Phillips. Just like you said And by the way Phillips you might look at the name and not think much of it But Phillips was a huge deal in the 90s and you know early 2000s They were basically like the biggest European manufacturer of electronics. They were very successful They were one of the founders of the compact disc format alongside with Sony I mean, they played a huge role that the compact cassette like Phillips was a very influential and important company and they were also LG Phillips together was like the largest manufacturer of What is it of CRT tubes in the world at the time like they were making so many tubes, right? So this they knew what they were doing. They produced a lot of stuff They were good. I like these these tubes. They give a very What should I say? I kind of describe it as an arcade like image, right? Right, you don't have the scan velocity modulation enabled. It looks to me like an arcade monitor fed with RGB It's very very nice, you know, not a super high line count. It doesn't look like a trinchon But it's a beautiful picture. Nonetheless. I'm a big fan So we got that in there So yeah mega drive looks good sounds good running great on there, you know The menu it has software revision 3.1. So it's one of the newer BNOs in Terms of software, which means the menu system is actually usable Whereas the older models I would describe the menu system is basically useless. It's extremely hard to parse and do anything You don't have to tell me that I felt like I literally felt like yeah The whatever it is just completely dumbfounded like I'd never messed with a television before when I was trying to use that remote control On that MX. Oh, no, absolutely. It's not like that on this in the newer sets. It's quite easy to use. I would say So there's that what else about oh, yeah, if you look down at the bottom there, you see that red button Yeah, I was gonna say what is that? That's the power button like the main system power power level button, right? Okay, it's like a toggle switch and then to the right of that is the power cable connector So it's a figure 8 plug not that that yeah, but you see that little input you next to the right of the power cable That bad boy is covered by plastic when the shells on Yeah, it looks exactly like the din for a CDI controller as well And that was actually the first thing we saw when we took the back cover. Okay, wait What is this mystery plug that is covered by the plastic? It is it's not user accessible by default, but it is right there So maybe let me jump to the next day actually then because that's when we actually took the top off I was like, all right, so we're gonna explore in here. So if we can figure out the CDI stuff And actually there's a question in here. It says, why do you think there's a CDI in it from JJ because Phillips pushed it? I would actually say I believe B&O. They are a Dutch brand, right? Yeah, I think they are right and Phillips. That's what I've always thought at Dutch company It makes sense to me that that they would actually have sort of a collaboration on that, right? Oh, no, they're date. They're Danish. They're in Denmark. Oh, yes, that's right And wait, where's where's Phillips from? Are they are Dutch, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's not too far either way. They're not too they're not too far from one another So you've got the Dutch and the Danish working together on this I'm not surprised they went together, especially given that, you know, Phillips helped create the CD format in the first place It makes sense to just go why not CDI? You know video CDs. How about all that stuff extra value in there? I assume that's how this also would allow CDI to be able to push the limits of some of their like questions on how to maybe solve some issues on their hardware where B&O is not gonna Is is more about luxury so they're spending more and like just like the example we went through on the CD Disc operation itself how unique that is it was all trying to push the envelope Feels super premium and really the CDI itself isn't really a platform design specifically just for games Right. It was a whole multimedia thing games are just part of it Even if they weren't great So I can see what they were trying to do there with it and makes it makes somewhat sense to me But anyway, jump ahead next day. It's like alright We got we got to get inside this TV because of for a few reasons one We want to figure out if there's any way to fix the missing features on this system, too You know as with any new new CRT that I get you got to open it You got to clean it these things that accumulate so much dirt and dirt and dust in there Like you leave that stuff in there and running. It's just gonna shorten the life of the tube There's no reason to do that And then three I was just curious like what's in this thing because you know, it's gigantic and heavy So we popped off the back And that's what we found as you see in the photo except for when I first opened it It was horrifyingly dirty There was so much like that ashen black yet on all the cables All over the place collected the the focus knob down there by by the high voltage area You can't really see in the photo. It was literally it was just faked in the stuff. It looked black To the left you can't see yeah, okay Around the corner there is where you find the fly back transformer and then there's the focus knob next to it separate Oh, right, right. Yeah, I could see I'll come in here. Oh see so they they did a little bit different on this TV But yeah, this whole this whole thing just always Especially to the seat it all like funnels down into the back there Yeah, it's like it's hot high heat and it's it's attracting that dust down in there almost like a Exactly like a sucker into there for 20 years Exactly, so that's you know, so I was like, all right, we need to take this outside Because this is filthy so we did I compressed aired the heck out of it and got as much dirt out as I could And it looks pretty good in the end I wiped down all the cables with some isopropyl and paper towels and kind of tried to clean up that stuff I actually really was impressed with the the cleanliness of the yoke design there like it's really like nice It's a really nice It's a nice looking yoke, right like it's just it's on there. It looks good I looks like it could do a lot more than than than just yeah, it looks like it's got a way some extra Extra parts in here that are possibly to me to design to give you a little bit better of a look on the edges On a tube like this to be on actually that's what I gather like it It looks like a pretty premium yoke and you can tell that they put a lot of engineering effort into this Which is cool to see and yeah as you if you look at the back you zoom out again It is very complicated, but I would say very well organized Like I was actually really impressed with the way the wires are run throughout like there's a ton of circuit boards in here But it's in sort of this u-shape design all held by that plastic chassis there Which is by the way on for most of it's like wood and metal But like the boards are held in my plastic and I hate old plastic like that And that's why I was afraid to go too deep on this thing because once you start pulling the plastic parts out as you well Know Steve That that old plastic it's very brittle and it's super easy to break those clips off, right? Yeah And I didn't want to do that right now No, I don't blame you and if it's you know this this you look at I Already see in the future of this TV. Look at this. You got a lot loads of surface mount capacitors in here So I can just imagine the complexity in there Now what I will do is I will second exactly what you said about the way being a design these things It does look incredibly intimidating at first, but They tended to make every single one of these plugs even though there's a hundred of them different so you could never really plug in one in the wrong spot and I know that if you have the documentation for the TV, they would include wiring diagrams specifically for servicing Yeah, it's pretty complicated. But as you say due to the fact that they're using all these different clips on there It's Sorry, they use all the different plugs on these cables It's it's easy to not plug in the wrong cable into the wrong spot. Yeah, everything's sized up just perfectly They have these special unique connectors everything there. It's awesome So I had no troubles like connecting and and reconnecting things or though the story about that in a moment Now one of the cool things about this set though I know right away as you see that little battery there on that backboard. I do right there Yeah, right. So that that can actually be swapped out fairly easily And that's key because that is the battery used for saving the settings of the TV But it also Serves as a timekeeper basically it's it saves the cdi settings I don't know how familiar are you are you with the cdi hardware? I've never been able to actually acquire one since like all right So they're notorious for something called the timekeeper chip. Have you heard about this thing? No, I've not You can explain it Basically the cdi has a battery backup installed on the motherboard and that batteries would save the settings and your save games And the cdi itself requires this to function correctly Here's the thing that battery is inside of an integrated circuit So there's a chip with the battery inside. It's actually inside the chip along with other components What's the solution? Well, you could desolder it and put a new timekeeper in but guess what that's that specific I see is old and any of the ones that you find are likely going to also be old and that battery is going to be dead The solution you dremel the chip apart until you reach the connectors You pull out the battery and then you hook up some you know soldering some leads to it put a little battery holder in there and Swap a new battery and it's a huge pain in the butt and it's very destructive. I hate it That's that yeah, that's insane. I've never every cdi is like most cdi's are like this uh That's why this bno is very special because it doesn't have that it has that little battery a little coin cell battery That can be it's it is soldered there with this connector replaced But you just you just desoldered those little leads Swapping the new battery and you're good to go. It's so much easier than the old method Uh, so that is a huge plus side of this set is that you you actually have a replaceable battery Well, and I could tell you are dremeling and I could I could tell you that that that the reasoning It was probably done like that is because it had the tv itself had to have The battery also so they couldn't say well, we're gonna it was already integrated in the tv Every other bno tv that I've ever seen has a battery in it all the way back to the 80s ones Yep. Yep. Yep. And what's cool though is that obviously this means then that the cdi components are integrated directly into these all these different boards that bno built So it's a it's a completely bespoke solution to the cdi right like they're not just using some off the shelf philips board Like it's a real unique uh design which I thought was awesome And from looking looking over the board myself like the quality of the capacitors they're using Seems significantly higher than those in a normal philips cdi. Like there's some pretty decent components in there Uh, if which you know as it should be it's an expensive tv, right? Right, but So that was awesome and the picture quality is the best I've ever seen from a cdi Okay, it's very very sharp and clear With the rgb direct feed. That's awesome. Uh So we we've we've been through all that the next also if you look to the left and right of the tube That is dual amplifiers Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's what that looks like stereo amplifier right there Yep, and they're on the left and right and look at them. I mean they're bouncing the frame that frame looks like something like like something out of a, uh, like hot hot rod Motor I mean, I know I know It's like something out of an old car From like the 70s or something like a metal bracket I'm just five pounds of steel. It's got like a radiator on it Dude, I know, right Dual radiators. Oh my gosh. It's freaking off. It's freaking awesome. What year is this one that you guys got? What do you remember? My guess is that it's 2000 2001 actually Okay around that time as I So it's one of the later ones and that kind of gets to why one of the reasons we opened it up was like The missing control reports, which you've already seen up there. Yeah, okay Basically, here's what's going on like being that this is a late model and the cdi was probably dead by the year 2000 It's pretty obvious that bno was like, hey, uh, having cdi in our new tv Probably not the best idea like who wants a philip cdi at this point, right? so I believe that as a result they simply decided to remove the feature But in this model, they didn't actually remove it. They just disabled it. So by default you buy this thing Cdi games don't work. There's no control reports. It's just a cd player I guess video cd player possibly as well That's it Oh, this unit played cdi games And I quickly discovered in the service menu, which you access by hitting menu 00 and then okay, you write into the service menu. There you go on the newer bno is it simple Um, there's a cd option you go down there and it's like cd mode. It's like audio or cdi That's it. He just said it's a cdi and now the cdi player works Uh, but you're still missing this control reports And sure enough if you when we started exploring around there you go back to the rear picture Um, you can see that you want to bring up that rear picture again. Yeah, yeah, sure Sorry, I just and then I'll show you I'll show you All right, the picture we were just looking at Yeah, yeah, yeah, there we go. Okay. So now if you look back along the top there That top area with all the buttons, right? That you'll see um, it's missing screws there because we unscrewed this whole the whole thing not just that area The whole thing has to clip off and it disconnects and you see that all that mess of cables running up there Those are all disconnected to a pair of circuit boards up there one for the buttons and one for this the The inputs and such okay, and I just peaked I peaked under the plastic lip and sure enough Not only are there three rca jacks under there. There's also the two. Oh, here we go. Here we go. There it is That's it. That's it. So you disconnect the bats. This is the bat side. Those are the two boards You're talking about right there. Sorry. Let me get this picture. That's the two boards sized Over here so that we can Keep everything good Here we go Yes, there's okay. So we can't see the cdi ports so easily from here But what you can see is the top one is the is the headphone jack and then look at that There's the three the three rca jacks are right there covered by plastic But they're they're all the same right there. How about that? Yep So that's what you saw you just turned around you're like dude. They're right there, right? Yeah, and the next it has this video and then below it and off the off the camera It's the cdi ports. Okay And you could I mean as you can see plain as day, it's like they're right there on the circuit board Right, so I pulled this whole there's not even any components missing. It looks like it's all just populated and everything Exactly everything was I was my first thought and audi in the car was like Now maybe they're still on the board or something and we can get in there and I didn't want to crush a spirit so quickly I was like, dude thinking like it's probably not there or At best the board has the spots for it, but everything's unpopulated. I that's honestly what I expected, right? So I was genuinely shocked when I opened this up and saw this and audi's like smiling in the corner like hell, yeah Yeah That's probably why I was hugging that thing Was he was he hugging it before you found all this or after? Yeah, that was before I mean he hugged it harder after Um, so Okay, so I popped this whole piece off unplugged all the cables went to work on it on my dining room table uh and got the uh There's ports free. I freed the ports Freedom with just a dremel. I scuffed a little bit on the side there. Yeah And um, I think I had it down a little bit But it's it's enough. It doesn't look unless you look closely. You can't really tell how much was done to it. It's fine Uh, but here's the thing one when I I I did that reassembled it turned it on with the back still off and we tried to boot up, um Tetris and then nothing it didn't work no control Sorry, the game worked, but the controller still didn't work plugged into the port So like well shit. That's a bummer. How about we try hotel mario? Um, so I actually didn't have that so we burnt an iso real quick uh Came downstairs popped it in and same problem The controller didn't work and I was beginning to get like feeling Disappointed by this right and I could tell audi was also bummed out. We're like, well, it didn't work So I went back around to the tv And that's when I noticed something you see that little white ribbon cable there coming from from the top This one that one there. Yeah Yeah It was hanging loose. I didn't plug it in You just didn't have it plugged in. I just I just missed it. I didn't plug the cable in it was just hitting sitting there I was like, wait a minute. So I took it back off plugged the cable in Turned around turned it all back on popped in Uh hotel mario I plugged in the controller It started to play the intro and I pressed the button And the intro skipped to the main menu and you guys were like and we all looked at each other like oh Shit, and then I got into the game and it worked perfectly Oh my god, uh, and we were just like That's it. It works. It's fine. Yeah That was the point actually when we decided to really clean it all out after that because we were feeling good about it Okay, so At this point we had the whole thing open. We had the controller ports working It sounded great. It looked great. There's just one thing missing and that's the digital video card But I didn't feel like exploring too deeply in it at the moment until I was sure that there was actually some sort of method for this And so sure enough somebody that seems to be an expert on these and has three of these was like on twitter pretty much pointed out like I think it was a Skripok 007 He says yeah, the avia this model of av5 Still has the socket for the digital video card. It's buried on the cdi board somewhere above the subwoofer Oh Well, I need I need to explore around and see if it's actually if I'm just missing something on the outside there Or it's actually the it's the cards in there. You think or what the card is not there So the digital video card is something that philips sold separately. So can you still see the eye players? Yes, the cards you can get okay, you can get on ebay, right? There's there's different models of the card is the smaller more compact version than the larger one for the older cdi's It seems that the smaller cdi cartridge digital video cartridge It's the digital video mini cartridge. That's what it's called Apparently that does plug into this unit on the back and they simply omitted it because well It wasn't intended to play cdi games anymore, but the port is still there So the next step, which we don't have it yet. We need to obtain One of these dvc cards And that's it. It should slot right in and work. It's unreal and but without that card I can't play thunder and paradise. So there you go. That's the reason so That's that's just unreal that It's it's that capable and that you have basically discovered What may be the ultimate like cdi collectible? I would think kind of yeah And here's the thing apparently these av5s like the older ones that had the full cdi support out of the box Yeah, those are The cd player is often not working in them So this is actually an old this is a newer model So it's more recent components. It has the newer lg phillips tube The components seem more robust And you can restore cdi functionality to it. So it kind of seems like the best of all worlds Exactly so Wow, so did you even try my one question It's going to be during any of that time period when you guys were messing around with the controller ports Did you ever try that port down at the bottom with the back off? Yeah, we did try that and it did absolutely nothing. Okay Uh, the cdi controller plugged into it, but my guess is that it's something else entirely probably I don't actually know what it is. I need to research that but I was a little bit confused by the port It's probably cdi related given that it's hidden by the plastic again, but I For what reason I don't know I need to check on it Okay, and then what about for a remote control on this television? Did you use your same old, uh universal or the one you have? No, no, no It came with its own bo4 remote. Okay, which is um, it's this one Basically, which I have right here. Okay. It's the same as this one It's almost the same mine is a little bit newer It has v mem and a mem as well because I've got his head the dvd bus one Yeah, it's that one. But you see where it says v mem On the av5 remote it actually says v tape So mine is a bit newer and it came with the bo4 that has like doesn't mentioned, uh cassette tapes any or sorry vcr tapes anymore Okay, vhs tapes not vcr tapes vhs tapes So His still has the v tape button on it suggesting it is probably from around like 2000 or so And by the way for those look at the remote there the thing is like a solid block of aluminum Oh, yeah, I I brought like zinc coating or something on it. Yeah, well just to give like it hasn't it's it's funny how it They they went with a remote design and obviously kept it because this is the one I had to use with the tv I was working on and you could tell it looks almost the same just without the screen. Whoops Went too far. It does look about the same but and it's super right. The layout's worse But it's super like you said super heavy and dense and I actually brought it So when I at the retro world expo, I told you I had to give back the person who paid me to service their Um tv which is that that's behind it the 5000 And right I gave him the tv and then like he calls me five minutes later. He's like I forgot to get the remote I'm like, oh, yeah, we definitely need that And yes, so I took it back up to our booth and I let people like feel it and hold it and they're just like Blown away with how it's dense and heavy it is. What is it made out of? It's like aluminum like zinc coated aluminum or something Okay, so it's state the reason is is that the zinc helps it retain coolness So in your hand even in your warm hand the remote always feels kind of cold Which is nice This thing's a beast honestly. I freaking love these remotes. They're really really nice to use But yeah, but there's a good example right there of how this remote still has v-taste Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it actually says other things. I didn't understand any of this stuff abc store For a second. I thought I was going shopping Like through the to the remote or something So the main thing with these remotes you got to remember is that they're designed for the whole BO link system and all the different bno components That's what that one port on the back of the tv is That's unusual looking is that you actually connected up to other bno systems um And that's like, you know your hi-fi gear cd players all this stuff It's all meant to link together and you use this one remote to change it Yeah So that's kind of the idea Uh, which is cool. So yeah, that's the BO vision or the I guess it's the Whatever they call it the AV AV 5 AV 5 I I don't know if they have the BO vision name attached to it, but No, the BO center. I love this. Uh, so we're looking now at bo world.org specifically at the AV 5 and And it tells you the manufacturer's years like you say you guys have a Later one. I love how it gives like the designer credit. Yeah, what is it so cool? I wish I could find like this guy and do an interview with him just to talk about the whole design process I wonder if I mean because it seems like there was as much detail put into this as like they would have done with Uh, bridge design And other things. Oh, yeah building design architecture. It's definitely An emphasis of this This whole line of televisions and there's a lot of these tons of information here on this particular unit I do like that. It does have multiple colors that I made a green one. That would be crazy in a blue And I'm guessing it's a blue like wood still that just looks beautiful. They all use that per lesson paint So on the wood So, yeah, this thing It's it's extra premium feeling and it just looks cool Like if you got to have a crt in your place The fact that it's a stand-up unit also means that you don't need to set it on anything And it's very narrow at the bottom and it just has this it looks like a monolithic object with a crt stuck through it Like it's really like it almost looks like an art piece more than a piece of a living room gear Right and and just looking at some of the things on here from This has always been an emphasis of bno2 is to make a flat crt Because the one from the 80s will not flat on the screen, but flat is in thinner and This like you said is a 25 inch and here's what I've always heard And this might speak to this a little bit more on why this is like set at this 25 26 inch size Is that once you get over that threshold on the size? It almost becomes impossible without extending that tube length To get the focus geometry And convergence specifically along your edges of your pictures to look good And so that helps Uh, I think that they were they were like that's the max because that's most of them. I see are in that format Yep, I think that's I think anything above 25 inches just a bit too much for the chassis Uh, though, I think they did a 28 version of the 9 000 which I can talk about a little bit. Okay There's some experience with that Yeah, so we could switch over now from the av5 and uh, what you search for the BO center or the BO vision 9 000 on there Okay, let me see if you can find it Actually, you can just Google Let me see if I can find the BO vision 9 000 And the world yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, so Um Okay, I found it. Okay. No, that's the BO vision 9 000. That's a different that's a different thing Let me see here. Uh, there it is the BO system av 9 000 Okay, you can send you the link to that link and then I'll just okay cool I'll just pull that up and then I'll flip that over there we go and So this one is manufactured earlier This is an older an older unit, right? Okay Uh, so here's my experience with this thing. So I obviously I got my BO vision one So I'm kind of sold on being at this point. This thing comes up for sale Or sorry, it comes up for free Uh And I was like dude to my so my buddy thomas Who is also now into crts. Thanks to me. Sorry I clogged his living room full of stuff now Um I was like, yeah, dude Be there's an av 9 000 for free Right, it's an older model. Yeah, but like look at that. Oh my god The photos don't do it justice. No, they don't at all right there when I first saw this thing in person It is I think it might be one of the most beautiful crt displays. I've ever laid eyes on it It's just such a gorgeous design like really beautiful Like I man it it's shockingly good looking in person. Just an awesome awesome design um But of course and it comes in two parts Uh Thomas made the mistake of going down there by himself though. Mm-hmm to bring it back to his house Um I'm actually on so he drives like a smart for four right So it's a fairly small car and somehow he managed to get it in there and back home And I'm just like in awe like how did you actually pull that off? Well He did it either way with much frustration But then there's a problem so he gets at home. He can't get anything to work So there's actually turns out that there's There's two parts to this problem and boy is it frustrating. First of all the guy that gave it to him He gave him a third party remote Uh, it does some functions, but not all by losing the original remote However, it means that there's a lot of stuff on this tv that you cannot access at all Right. Yeah, including including the additional inputs. You can't do it You can't get to any of the other inputs except for like the first one Uh, which brings us to our second problem The first input was damaged the scart socket is damaged somebody obviously put weight on it So there's loose solder joints inside right so you can kind of wiggle it and get a picture, but it's not stable So the only way to to access To get a good picture on this tv is you got to plug it into one of the other scart sockets And you need a bo4 or you know one of the bo remotes to select the right input That's it Which wouldn't be a problem if you didn't have If you had the remote But he doesn't And that third party remote doesn't work with it Um, it also says he can he can the remotes Like can the remote you have work work with this one? It does. Okay. Yeah, it does. We tested it. We found out like oh, that does actually work Uh, actually, I let me correct myself though the second scart socket can be used If the pin for uh, auto selection is hooked up on the scart line itself Like you know how scart plugs they have have that sort of auto selector circuit or whatever Uh, if that pin is hooked up It'll actually work The problem is is if you're using like a scart selector or anything like that Some reason doesn't seem to pass that over So he could only hook up one machine at a time to the scart input which is kind of a pain in the butt So the real solution is you know get just get the remote which we're working on but they're Kind of expensive to obtain those remotes though considering you got the tv for free, you know What's a remote cost i'd say right? It's like whatever. Yeah, and that is uh, that's always going to be probably a big Difficult thing for people trying to get this television is one the challenge of needing the remote and that's what I thought I wrote an article about I did a video on the bno restoration But I also wrote an article for retro rgb Where I included a little bit more information I didn't get to in the video And it was two big challenges of this thing is the obviously complexity of the tv and the fact that they're older And you're kind of hoping that everything still works on them right now But we're all coming to this point where this stuff in the next decade is going to need to be Kind of taken care of to some level and then the remote controls. Yep. Yep. Yep The two biggest hurdles kind of I I it was so frustrating trying to figure this out. I think um I thought thomas was going to explode in a rage and just like I Have had enough of this and I don't blame him because it was but we did at least isolate the problems It is the lack of remote and the scart socket, right? So once that's solved, it'll be just fine uh, but we actually tried to Fix the scart port. I brought my soldering iron and all my gear over Yeah, let me just try to fix this and then I popped off the back And you thought the back of the av5 was complex The inside of this thing was so insane It was a frankenstein of circuit boards and you know what steve? I bet you know exactly what I mean because it's probably not far off from the one you just worked on Where it's just all these boards hanging on plastic Sliders a million cables everywhere. Uh, but this thing also has an amp in it as well And the base has a vcr in it. Oh my goodness So the whole thing is just this gigantic mess of cables Yeah, and Well, here's the problem is like The scart sockets are like connected. They're on this they're mounted on this plastic piece Which is then mounted directly to the board and the only way to service the scart port Is to basically take all of that out and due to the way it's mounted in there It would require like taking a ton of stuff apart And I started to do it a little bit But then plastic clips started breaking off just like crumbled beneath my fingers And I was like, well shit. I can't I didn't really want to get in there and and break this thing down because I was afraid I would destroy the entire plastic caging With and without that like how do you even get those parts to stay in there? Yeah, what's crazy is that this was based on an mx design like the whole chassis is mx based okay extra stuff on top of it So they actually added in this whole like mounted system with extra inputs and plugs for the stereo stuff That's just mounted inside a plastic cage It's literally like hanging in place and clipped on to the other plastic cage And it's it's all slots together in this crazy way Uh that it actually kind of scared me off from pulling it all apart to fix the scart socket So I was like, you know what let's just leave that scart socket alone and focus on getting the remote sorted So that we can just use the other start inputs instead Yeah, which is where we're at now. I think that's a good idea for now. Yeah I'll tell you when when I opened the bno for the first time. That's what I said I said, oh You know my head just kind of dropped. I was like this is going to be quite a challenge and I can't give a little bit of advice on For example, when you have to service that kind of a tv and that kind of a setup, uh the Naturally, there is a design back here in these boards and I'll pull up the picture you had here for as an example Just the back of the tv. We had been looking at the avi five as a good example here because it's not much different than The mx 5000, but yeah, it's a lot of compacted boards But there is there is one thing I've learned over the years By servicing crts. There's generally a way to get like 90% of these clips out Of the exterior and then you can pull this whole board setup as one cluster out And there's about five connection points, but the problem is you're pulling everything out then But that way I could safely set that whole cluster of massive boards down And slowly follow the manual to pull it all apart Whereas if you had been working on these all your life, if you were being o-tech you would know how to go Okay, disconnect this one this one this one this one this one this one pull this tab here And the door swings open and slide the board out, right? But that's it's like you don't know that anymore So until you learn that it's it's definite and like you say this plastic There's there's plenty of there's plenty of But I I had to work on a pvm for bob this last weekend And I was laughing because I had worked on it before and it's a 14l Five which has a bracket in it that falls apart all the time it holds the deflection card in place And I had worked on it before and I was laughing because I reopened this pvm And I I had to hold the whole half of this thing together with like four huge strips of electrical tape And I would say oh look there's this lovely electrical tape Electrically taped held on Thank you for you bob still in here But uh, yeah, it's it's that's that's like the worst part about messing with this stuff is the fact that there is Extremely brittle plastic. I'm always nervous Messing with these connection points too Even on the board Yeah, because those things will snap off if you're not careful Hey Oh, there he is. Yes Thanks for coming in we've been gushing about your tv for 45 minutes I know man. This is like The greatest purchase he will ever make Will he ever get it back from you john? No, absolutely My goal is to make this thing as clean and complete and functional as possible So that when the day comes that he gets to transport it up to his house Everything just works man. Well, I just hope that like somehow We could get our stuff working together. I'd be able to come over here and look at that thing So that would be awesome, you know Yeah, yeah So actually one one weird thing is you see on the right there you can see the exposed motor And the the right there well not that's the cd lens the motor for the spindle that's below it right there Right there, but but there's actually supposed to be a little plastic cover for the top part Yeah, that goes there. It was missing when we got it But like I always wondered why that was there was a little plastic cover there because that's not a usable accessible Thing to get that out. You have to disassemble the unit, right? Yeah So like why is there a little cover there? Well, and the fact that and if it's not there and if it wasn't there When you opened it and if it looked like it wasn't there It might have been something where the guys were assembling it in the factory They're like this part's stupid and they just popped it off because it maybe it got in the way of assembly But you never know yeah, maybe so But god man open I just freaking love the I can't believe this sub look for now here too. That looks that's crazy. This looks it's just Just a beautifully engineered Chassis in there like the whole thing is just awesome. I love the look of that everything about it is is unreal and the I think a lot of people in When I noticed this going live to shows this last weekend when bob and I had these crt's like wide open like this And especially the hugely complex ones. We had these little bvms and you know a nine inch d9 And then at 1405 we had them open up working on them And there's so many boards in there people just stop and are like what the heck is Like some people were coming over asking if it was like a whole computer As I know that's just a monitor That's it. Yep These are like amazing compared to the anything in the united states. I try to tell people that This is there you'll not This this is like the same level you'll see inside of like the nec p line and xm line of professional kind of monitors It's super well built somebody said they're nice, but just philip philips rebrands But I think that just applies to the tube The tube as we mentioned earlier is indeed lg philips, but you know, they make great tubes I wouldn't have expected b and o given their low volume numbers to be able to support Their own crt factory back in the day, right? Like like there's no way in heck they were gonna make the crt's themselves Uh, but I think they did make all the other components because it's all bespoke stuff Although I do wonder you notice the plastic housing there. We were just complaining about the plastic stuff, right? Did you notice how like all these tv's have that same smooth gray plastic used to hold these components in? It makes me wonder if there's some manufacturer out there that just like specialized in making crt circuit board cages out of that smooth gray plastic Yeah Because it's all the same even in like the pvms and the bvms and Well, not so much the the bvms. They use crazier stuff But like I I see that plastic in every one of these freaking monitors. It feels like Well, all yes, and well either pvms even have a plastic tray and every single one of them That's the same. It's like you do. Yeah, and and actually a couple of them for the power supply too But you just go back to that phillips thing Uh, let's take it from bno's perspective You're not going to make your own tube that's going to be better than these other companies that have been doing I mean these companies have been doing it for 60 years at this point, you know phillips All them your choice is then to go to the only other thing they may have done would have been Go to sony and try to get them to put in a trinitron And maybe it just couldn't work out like that and they had a better option here closer to them Working with phillips. So Yeah, I think my guess is that phillips was one of the biggest crt manufacturers in the world Yeah, and they're right next door country wise And they were less they weren't competing to the same level as sony on this kind of audio equipment stuff Like i'm not sure that they could have forged a good deal with sony that would have worked in their favor You know because I feel like sony would not have been too excited about providing Affordable tubes to a such a competition for the premium market Could could you imagine though if they would have had it and there would have been like a playstation one in a team with rgp You know, that's right. That's the way it could have been. I guess if it would have been Oh god, dude, imagine that right like this was a cdi But if they had done like a freaking playstation instead like how much how incredible that would have been How crazy would have been if you would have been the kid in europe with like a In 2000 with a playstation built into your tv you would have been the coolest kid like I'm actually i'm curious about how the cdi hardware is connected to this thing Based on the cables I I theorize that it might just have like a plug going directly from the cdi circuit board up to the neck board If you're just like getting that direct raw connection right i don't know I would feel like with this tv the way i've seen him designed before there's a main It looks like the other one just a little bit more complex that I worked on So I'd be interested to see he didn't get the guy didn't have any documentation with it. Did he ah dang Did he oh wait did this guy? Yeah Yeah, yeah, so oh that's even the best part the guy hands us a little beggy with like this leather wrapped A manual booklet you open it up and it's got all the manuals and books inside still they look brand new Well, I would definitely say in there how it's built So I'll need to look I'll need to look around in there and see what I can find but So, yeah, this thing is freaking interesting and now I wish I had one of these myself But I'm just gonna hold on to audis until we can get it. Yeah, I hear you But they're really they're they're not that easy to find these av 5 Yeah, specifically how long how long did you guys like find out about this tv and had been looking for it They've shown up Occasionally over the years, but it's pretty uncommon and they were usually really far away So we didn't want to do it but being that that he was here just this time and it was relatively close Uh, I figured like this is the time to do it. Yeah, but if you actually look around You'll mostly just find the mx series of uh, bno's which are like the cheapest one Like the mx whatever right like that's like that's the entry level bno tv And then you step up to the higher levels from there and this is definitely one of the higher levels, I would say The only downside to bno is like after You know early 2000s when they started to get into the widescreen models and the larger avant series They switched to 100 hertz So there's like a certain model. You're a certain threshold where after you pass that threshold They kind of suck because they're just 100 hertz tv's. Yeah To stay away from them If you want more details on that check out Have you have you seen a rgb rob by the way youtube channel rgb rob? Sure the I mean he's old school, right? Australia I've been doing this for like He's been doing it for longer than I had funny enough like I used to watch his videos before me years Yeah, I love I love rob's channel. It's amazing if he catches this to say Like oh, thank you for doing it for so long dude because I love it But he actually one of his videos he did open up one of those avants and take a look at it and as suspected It is the typical 100 hertz nonsense. They're like guns Uh, you know, it scales up 240p to 480i It's not the best. Yeah Yeah, lois keeps running into ones that are the 100 hertz models and I keep telling him don't even why are you even talking about it? It's just trying to find the nine ones Uh, would you get a super chat 100 hertz go ahead? Oh good. I was gonna say I believe On some of them it might be possible. I know it is with the louis Yeah, but on some of those you can actually get like 480p input So then it's 480p 60 So there's specific 100 hertz models where if you get the right one it actually will accept hd input Uh, and those can be useful for those, you know, if you're if you're looking for 480p stuff Then that might actually make sense. But yeah Yeah, okay. Yeah, there was a super chat from tony eskibar a little bit ago He said awesome dialogue on an intriguing crt. My brother-in-law is from holland And loves the cdi Great interview steve and john's a gifted storyteller. Thank you. Well, thank you tony. Oh Thanks, tony Yeah, there's uh, recognize you there's uh there's a lot of Questions, I don't you know, because this is stuff all that ended up more in europe than anywhere around me, which is always fascinating That's the bummer, right? Like, you know, I grew up in the u.s. And I remember Oogling all the top and crt's but I feel like they didn't Really not many companies made these like luxury style crt's in the u.s. Yeah, the high-end sonys, which are awesome But like this kind of luxury almost art piece design for a crt with this kind of crazy sound and stuff Like I did they even exist really over there? I feel like I don't recall them at all, but they're a huge here No, and and I remember so I remember growing up and it was um We didn't have we weren't like well off. So we had always low-end crt's and nearly everybody did or it was a console tv and then The only thing I remember was my like my grandparents were well off and they had When it was new those four by three Like I think it was a Mitsubishi box TVs with an early projector and it was awful awful and Just that was more of the fascination was trying to get it bigger Than like a luxury thing. I felt like Actually, that's an interesting point because over here obviously, you know living space is a little tighter than in the u.s. I suppose And yeah So crt's were generally smaller though I mean they they did still sell big ones, but It wasn't so much focused on size and stuff like rear projection was really rare over here I think they were not popular For good reason I would say because they're not I I don't like using rear projection sets by and large are pretty horrible Yeah, I just remember that my grandmother now and this is my grandmother She was the first person I ever saw play nintendo the same grandmother And and she made us I went I remember being a kid going and visiting her house for Christmas and she had Mario on the nintendo and we had never seen it before and she was sitting there playing and she made us watch her play for Like an hour until she got tired of it. I mean she finally passed it to us let us But the first thing I wanted to do was go hook it up to that big tv And she would never let me she was always like no that'll mess up that big tv And oh, yeah, so I never got to enjoy it on that terrible So what I understand the the reason rear projection burnt in is because they use there's three small crt's But they to get it bright enough to see it They had to run them at like an insanely high luminance level Which of course crt's can burn in but when you're running the brightness so high Yeah, they burn in way faster, and I think they were like three White crt or like monochrome crt's with color filters, right? Right a lot of them were like that they were they would just have lenses over top of the two Yeah, like a color lens So I'm not sure if that even you know would eventually warp from heating and coloring I'm sure it did eventually on those older ones. Yeah, exactly. So that stuff was tricky Although I do remember It's not I wouldn't say it's quite luxury like this but it was pretty high end is when I grew up my cousins had I think it was the 40 inch Mitsubishi Direct view crt So not rear projection, but it was in a large wooden case designed like a rear projection tv But it was an actual 40 inch tube. Oh my gosh. She mentioned that. Hey, it was the Wade I remember playing uh sega genesis over there like playing sonic and just oh my goodness We had like a 27 tv at home. Yeah, which I thought was big enough But then I go there and I'm just like My god, this is like it's so big like sonics as big as my head now It was unbelievable at the time and I always loved that tv, but they're Obviously very heavy on wheels at least but good luck getting them upstairs. Yeah, right Exactly a wood a solid wood chassis with speakers and a 40 inch tube Good lord Oh, yeah Well, uh, john, I'm not sure how you're doing on a time. We're ahead about an hour. We can uh We can start to start to wind down. Yeah, let's well, uh, we'll probably switch gears give it a couple more minutes And then we'll let john go and um Enjoy the rest of his evening there and I'll get back to work here in the shop in the united states time, but um Definitely thanks for coming on to talking about this awesome tv and these b and o things Um, you know a lot of the things that I would just add to the conversation Have been things that I've already mostly published if anybody else was to go check out on it um Anything else I've done on my basically channel the last couple weeks so they can find that without having to regurgitate it here but I do think it's awesome The only thing I'll mention is that b and o tried with the one that I worked on to come into the united states in The late 80s and for some reason that just didn't work at all And I don't know if it was the fact that like we said America was not ready for a luxury television at that time I'm not sure but Uh, that one didn't work and they just left the marketplace. So that's that was a quick hit and then they're gone So b and o is in the u.s. Though, right? Like yeah, they have they used to have uh, because I talked to some people in the convention I never um, I'm not from the northeast Traditionally, I don't know that area growing up as much Um, I go as far as basically virginia where I'm at now But when I go up in the northeast at these conventions and talk to people they'll bring up that when they were younger They would have b and o stores in the mall and they were mostly audio stuff, right? So there's also like b and o Stereos are still probably used in in certain vehicles and things I think they sell a lot of different headphones and soundbars and things like that. I see I got a pair of b you know in-ear Headphones that are pretty solid. I would say Yeah, um, what do they have on televisions? Oh, yeah, they're doing those really weird looking, uh, OLED TVs with like strange chassis and such Are currently you mean? Yeah Here, let me let me send you this link here Okay You can show people what they're doing now Yeah It's basically about looks about integrating speaker systems into um Into an OLED You see that? From what I've seen though, like that first one there I I feel like that might be the case of where like the speakers and stuff would actually move when you turn it on possibly But like it's focused on like sound quality and tv together and they're still doing these like this is so awesome Stand They have I mean wait They still have one here a $25,000 television 77 inch OLED Oak wood Scroll down. Let's see what else what else do they have any videos of this? Oh, yeah, there we go. Oh my gosh Yeah, look at that Oh It like it covers itself. That's right The wood actually serves as like a tv screen covered then it rises up and you got speakers back there I'm just mesmer. Yeah, look at folds open You have to we have to admit I when I you know back looking at what we that's pretty cool Yeah, looking at what we've seen so far I get like I get the totally I feel like the origination of these designs came directly from Like 2000 what a space odyssey the monoliths and it does stand It feels like that's what I get feeling especially going from the early till like now It's just a progression of that. And I mean, I For doing this stuff though because like tv's today are just now like a black rectangle, right? Yes, there's basically no defining visual characteristic So like by trying to do something like this which is completely off the wall They literally talk about choreographed movement in a tv. Yep. Look at that stuff Oh, there you go So don't complain about the remote control being cheap or expensive on the old sets because it's 375 on the new ones It's as big as ever look at it. Oh, yeah, it's still it's still look at that. Oh look you could even choose your little slab I still got the screen at the top. I love it, man God, it's expensive as heck a four if you get the bronze toad. It's 450 for a remote So, yeah, they're they're still out there gents I mean, and I'm sure that if you want to If you want to you can buy it as an american now. I'm sure probably Yeah, so that to be you know av5 crt. We were just talking about I believe the original list price was like 3500 euro back went in like the early 2000s Which would have been around the time when the euro became a thing as well So I don't know what it would have been in like deutschmark, but with inflation. I think it comes to around $8,000 So, you know, it was an eight grand tv And now as you can see well, they sell a 20 grand I mean they're yeah, right there their Base models started about eight grand. It's a 48 inch for almost $8,000 Wow, and it probably is an lg panel in there, but So what like that's you know, they make great panels, but it's not just about the panel, right? What is this? I mean, but this is this is way too rich for my blood. Oh, yeah Oh, you can like customize all kinds of stuff on here It's basically like buying an automobile these days. Are you choosing all the materials for the dashboard and such? Right, and you still get they still got the great stand You still got the stands. I would still go with the floor stand Expert, I mean it looks freaking cool. I gotta say I gotta say that too I would I mean this would be one of the best modern television factories to go check out right I would love to see what they're doing aside from anything even but they have an awesome like Museum or you know like a corporate museum. I that has I would love to see it. Yeah Well, that's a lot of fun and uh, I think that's probably an awesome point here. We could jump off Wait, somebody just noted rgs in the chat says the crt of vaughn was released in the us around late 2000 So it seems like bno brought out at least one other Model the advice for the I see that's interesting So I guess they did a few others then but it was pretty rare overall. Yeah Yeah, I I mean that's just only when I had ever found I didn't I don't know Exactly what the whole reasoning they left why they didn't bring more or what happened to all the ones that were over here And if any more made it Although man when I you know the bno stuff is pretty pricey But I remember when I bought my recent av receiver and there's a huge av store downtown Yeah, that specializes in everything from entry level to like the highest of the high end and like they're like special speaker room Has like we're talking speakers that are like a hundred grand in there And I've never seen anything like it. Yeah designs are so off the low. I saw gigantic like what even is this I saw one of them at a tech show that was a um It was it called like a nautilus speaker or something? It was a hundred grand and it was like a nautilus shell huge. Yeah on a special stand Yeah, way there's a bunch of speakers in that category and they all cost like that And I saw them all in a room together and I'm just like I walked in and pretty much just walked back out and said I guess I will not be shopping in this room Yeah, I mean just even like this little home speaker from them down there Ferrari pack powerful Rory bass and sound from this little cylinder and it's 5500 bucks So it's not nothing's really cheap from them. Oh, I bet it sounds good though. I bet it does too what I've heard I mean, I would look if I if I saw this in a place. I wouldn't even know what the heck it was Like till you turned it on right? I I'm 100 because it has a Ferrari logo on it And it looks like again a traffic cone looks like the fanciest traffic cone in the world Yeah, man. So, yeah, welcome to the world of this weird premium stuff where you're just like, yeah, that's uh It's a little outside of my range. Yeah, we can all dream right one day That's what you do if you buy if you win the lottery by the b&o All right, well, is that all right? Let's uh, yeah, if that's all right, let's close it down Thank you everybody for joining today if you came in Recently and want to go back and watch the rest of show you can go back to the beginning Please drop us a like and as always go follow john on twitter and I'm sure everybody here knows about digital foundry But in case you somebody who's been under a rock and found a crt stream today and want to know more Go check out digital foundry and uh all over the internet and thank you again john for being here I really appreciate it I had a great time always happy to jump on excellent. Well, then we'll have to have him come back for sure You heard it. All right. All right guys. See you later