Hi all,

I have a late 80's vintage Hitachi CT5081K rear projection that over the
years has very gradually developed a convergence problem. The picture is
still fantastic (when properly aligned) and I'd really like to keep ot
going for a few more years until all this HDTV bruhaha settles down and
becomes affordable. For many years I was able to compensate by tweaking
the many pots on the convergence board, but now several are at their
extremes and I can not achieve convergence at the extreme left and right
sides (red has run out of horizontal size adjustement and pincusion
adjustment). These are not extreme misalignments, but still enough to
produce annoying ghosting effects. Are replacement convergence boards
available? This one is trivial to remove from the front of the TV. If
not, would repairs require replacement of the IC chips or some of the many
capacitors or both? Finally, what would one expect to pay a qualified
technician to repair this unit? One final symptom it just recently
developed is the vertical size is very small (about half, all colors) when
first turned on, but grows back to normal after warming up a few minutes.

Any advice is greatly appreciated,
Bryan (drop the X if you e-mail me)

Due to the age certainly multiple high esr capacitors. To have the
set properly repaired, $300-$400 average repair simply due to the
multiple parts needed. While it is not a Mitz RPTV set, the late
1980's Hitachi sets are now having multiple capacitor problem failures
requiring a similar approach to the repair.
David

wrote in message ...
Hi all,

I have a late 80's vintage Hitachi CT5081K rear projection that over the
years has very gradually developed a convergence problem. The picture is
still fantastic (when properly aligned) and I'd really like to keep ot
going for a few more years until all this HDTV bruhaha settles down and
becomes affordable. For many years I was able to compensate by tweaking
the many pots on the convergence board, but now several are at their
extremes and I can not achieve convergence at the extreme left and right
sides (red has run out of horizontal size adjustement and pincusion
adjustment). These are not extreme misalignments, but still enough to
produce annoying ghosting effects. Are replacement convergence boards
available? This one is trivial to remove from the front of the TV. If
not, would repairs require replacement of the IC chips or some of the many
capacitors or both? Finally, what would one expect to pay a qualified
technician to repair this unit? One final symptom it just recently
developed is the vertical size is very small (about half, all colors) when
first turned on, but grows back to normal after warming up a few minutes.

Any advice is greatly appreciated,
Bryan (drop the X if you e-mail me)