 When studying CRTs, you may come to notice that most of the gold standard CRT displays for analog video are from Sony. Sony dominated the CRT landscape with their legendary Trinitron sets. Some of the best Trinitrons are the professional video monitors or PVMs that Sony manufactured in the 1990s. Today we are featuring one of these Sony PVMs, the 504-1Q. This unique CRT was one of Sony's smallest PVMs ever made. It has a 5-inch full color screen, but also supports RGB and component video in addition to composite video. However, one of the biggest features of this monitor is its portability. It can easily be moved from one place to another since it only weighs about 12 pounds. There are several ways to power this monitor. It can run on AC current, DC current, and even has a bay for a proprietary battery that was rechargeable. The inputs on this PVM are in the form of B and C. You can input composite video and output that signal. The PVM is self-terminating, so you won't need any terminators. The PVM will automatically detect and display NTSC, HAL, and even CCAM color video for ZEZ. The PVM does support the superior video signals of RGB and component YPBPR. It also will handle almost any sync you can throw at it. I paid $210 for this one, but I had to take a risk if it worked or not because it was listed as untested. Thankfully, it does work, but it still should be serviced. Let's go through that process. We're in the servicing lab, and this 5041Q has been completely serviced and adjusted. I've got a nice scrolling pattern there from the 240P test suite going, and I'm going to give you some ideas on what you need to do to service this level of a CRT because I always like to service these before I really go into depth on featuring them. To start things off, you always want to inspect inside and clean everything out. That's one of the most important things on these old monitors is just cleaning out all the old dust and debris. Over on this side is the deflection board, and there is a cap kit available for this board. I've already replaced the capacitors in here, which is an important thing to do if you intend to use this for any amount of time and have good adjustments on there because these potentiometers down here, these adjust all your geometry settings, and I'll include some photographs of the cap kit, and I think it's about 19 capacitors and all, so you take out the old caps, install the new caps, and then you can go in and reflow solder on some of the vital areas like these chips, ICs, really anything that would get a lot of heat, and again especially the potentiometers. From the other side of the monitor, we'll look at this block right here. This is actually the power supply for this CRT, and it needs to be removed, and then you can service it. I'll include some photographs of how to do that, but there are three capacitors in there that will go bad, and when they do, they spit out a bunch of juice. Thankfully the ones in this one did not go bad, but I went ahead and replaced those with three fresh capacitors, and then again I reflow the solder on the entire board for this power supply. Now if we step down from the power supply, this is our color processing board, and it is the B board. There is one issue on this board that you do need to consider, and that's these two potentiometers right here where my finger is. Normally, if those are orange, then they should be replaced, so if you open up your monitor and you have orange potentiometers right there, I've replaced my orange ones with these white ones, and I'll include some pictures of that process, but again you need to remove the old potentiometers because those are prone to failure, and when those fail, you will only have a black and white image on composite video for this monitor, so you need to replace them. Then after you replace that, you'll install these two capacitors right here on the back side of it, and I'll include some better photographs of that because I've already insulated it here. The rest of this monitor is normally just cleaned, and unless there's an issue, we're not really going to do any more hardware rebuilding on it. This is one of the more interesting pieces of this monitor, that being the bezel, and if you look underneath, it's all pretty much one plastic piece here, and this can crack, but thankfully this one's in pretty good shape with no cracking, and it's been cleaned up here. I did leave those two posts on the top, and then I removed the side posts right here, which connect into these rack mount pulls, and then I also removed the actual screen coating, which is tinted, if I show you, it's got a tint on it, and this one's in really good shape. It's been cleaned up, and sometimes you'll find these with a lot of scratches or even cracks in them. You can remove that. The screws are nothing more than a hex pattern, so you can remove them and just remove that overlay if you want, but since it's tinted, I actually want to keep that overlay, and it's in such great shape, but this is just a closer look at the bezel, and you have very limited options on the front here just due to spacing mostly. Here's our finished bezel. It's been cleaned now and put all back together, and it's ready to just slip right on the front of the PVM here. Just go right over top of that, slip right over everything, and it can be screwed right back into place. Now that we have the monitor serviced, let's talk about the tube. This PVM uses Sony's A13JZV00X Trinitron CRT. This is a P22 phosphor picture tube with a resolution of 250 TV lines, and it utilizes Sony's patented Trinitron electron gun technology. But how does it look? It is simply stunning. 240p video is sharp and bright. The colors are visually stimulating. Composite also looks surprisingly great, but it does look better in RGB or component. The monitor performs amazingly well, but can you really game on it? Alright, I know exactly what we need to do here. We need to get on the old personal computer and see what Twitter has to say. Alright, let's just fire up the old VIC-20 and see what the internet has to say about the Sony PVM 5041Q. Dear Twitter, who can game on the Sony PVM 5041Q? Now what we need to do is sit back, relax, and wait to see what the internet has to say. Are I Twitter a true place of reason? Who'd have thought the VIC-20 would come through so great on our post? Graphics gear? Cool little picture? No one. Anything less than 8 inches is too small. Anything bigger? And I feel emasculated? The kind of people that try to undo them on a pregnancy test. Just some little guys. Oh, here we go with the little guy's joke. Oh man. Alright, that's enough. Well, surprisingly helpful there, Twitter. Anyways, the question still remains, can you comfortably game on this 5 inch PVM CRT? You can comfortably game on this PVM. Thanks to some of its features, the screen has an anti-glare plastic layer to help improve the picture. This plastic layer also prevents the screen from being damaged while moving the PVM. The CRT includes an amazing kickstand. This can be used to angle the viewing area up to your eye level and as a feature Sony should have kept on the 8 inch PVM models. So if you sit at the correct angle and distance from the PVM, you can comfortably use it to play single player retro video games. Gaming on a CRT this small won't be considered a great experience by many, but it is still plenty enjoyable in short doses. It's a great collector's piece too, since it's so small, it can fit on most desks. It's also a great conversation piece for your normie friends. Originally Sony created these devices as a way to solve a problem. The problem being a lack of good performing and reliable video monitors that were able to be portable, durable, and usable. The PVM 5041Q meets and even exceeds these marks. It is a fun and beautiful piece of antique hardware. Is it worthy to game on? Well, I believe so, but what do you think? Let me know in the comments. Alright everybody, thank you again for joining me today as we went through a deep dive on this Sony PVM 5041Q. I just want to say a special thank you to everybody who supports this channel and all my endeavors on Patreon without you I could not do it. If you did like this video or this kind of content, please make sure you're subscribed to the channel and do hit the like button for me on the video. I also want to let you know that I do have more information on how to service this set available. I'll have a post linked below that I've written for RetroRGB.com on how to specifically service the color boards on here and I'll also include links to a live stream I've done in the past where I did the cap kit on the boards as well as that color board repair so you can see a good example of how to complete that process and there's plenty of pictures in the post for RetroRGB. But that's going to do it for today. Thanks again for watching everybody and I'll see you all next time with some more retro content.