Smallest Widescreen CRT TV?

[Henenen]

What was the smallest widescreen CRT TV?

Was it Sony’s 16” KV-16WT1U?

I’m sure I saw one (probably Sony) around 99/2000 but without the speakers each side like the KV-16WT1U has.

[Richard_FM]

I remember when I was looking for a new set for my bedroom in 2001, I couldn't find any widescreen sets that wouldn't dominate the room, not to mention being expensive.

I think 28" was the smallest I could find.

In the end I bought a Philips 21" 4:3 screen CRT, which were becoming rare by then.

[Maarten]

Both Grundig and Philips did 24" wide screen sets, as did Sony. I think the Sony 16" is the smallest, though.

[Lloyd 1985]

I’ve got one of the Sony widescreen portable sets, good performer, but it has some odd features! You would think that the 2 speakers would mean it had Nicam stereo, or at least stereo through the SCART or AV inputs, nope! Mine is just a mono set! Maybe there was a stereo version, but why bother making it look like it is?!

Regards
Lloyd

[Welsh Anorak]

Outside of broadcast monitors I'd agree the Sony was the smallest widescreen I've seen.
Most 24" sets (Hitachi for example) had the infamous W56ESF tube. Philips managed the double whammy of combining that with the Painter chip...

[John123]

Indeed, it was a shame about the Philips as it had a very understated, sleek design and definitely stood out in the showroom. I can remember considering buying one to go with my Matchline VCR..but at almost £500 it was way out of my (student) budget at the time! Glad I didn't, knowing the problems!

I still have the Sony's bigger brother, the KV-20WS1U, which I bought second-hand to use primarily for video games. It has a built-in subwoofer so the sound is pretty nice, although picture-wise the geometry is a little hit 'n' miss (tube magnets, grr!), and took some adjusting in the service menu.

[Maarten]

Geometry is always a bit tricky on Trinitron tubes, especially on the first series of any new generation tube. You can use additional magnets or permalloy assemblies (the plastic sticks with a piece of material stuck at the end) to correct errors that only occur in a single quadrant of the picture.

[John123]

I actually found two of the magnets had fallen off and had stuck themselves to the heatsinks! Luckily they were spotted and returned to their respective positions prior to making the adjustments. Hopefully they won't decide to elope, again!

[Welsh Anorak]

The 24" Philips tubes - when they worked - gave one of the very best pictures, even against the Sony.

[Henenen]

That’s both interesting and baffling that the Sony KV-16WT1U is a mono set. For the day and age, and especially given it was widescreen which wasn’t so common then you’d expect stereo of some sort.

Could it be easily modded to give stereo output, I wonder?

[Maarten]

It used the BE-4 portable chassis so I don't think there's any provision for a second output stage and a decoder.

The only easy mod that I've found on such chassis is that versions without teletext can sometimes be persuaded to decode and display teletext by flipping an option bit in the TT mode. Apparently the processor without teletext was out of stock at some point.

[mark pirate]

I’ve got one of the Sony widescreen portable sets, good performer, but it has some odd features! You would think that the 2 speakers would mean it had Nicam stereo, or at least stereo through the SCART or AV inputs, nope! Mine is just a mono set! Maybe there was a stereo version, but why bother making it look like it is?!

I too have the 16" Sony widescreen, never realised it did not have stereo sound
I think this was the smallest widescreen CRT set ever produced, I paid a whopping £5 for mine about 6 years ago, the seller told me it cost around £250 when new!

I have only seen one other of these sets, so I guess they did not sell too well?
Mine has seen very little use and has an excellent picture, it is very heavy for it's size, no doubt due to the thickness of the CRT glass.

Does anyone know the production date for these? I am guessing late 90's.

Mark

[Maarten]

Late 1990's sounds about right. Large part of the weight is in the aperture grill, or rather its support frame.

[John123]

Yes I remember seeing it as one of the prizes on 'Bruce's Price Is Right', which must've been around 1997/98. Happy days!

[Lloyd 1985]

Just dug mine out for a photo shoot looks to me like if there was a stereo sound model, then it would have needed a completely different chassis, there is no way the PCB fitted could have had stereo sound, for a start, the speaker socket on the PCB, although it has separate pins for the 2 speakers, they are wired in parallel by the PCB tracks, also the front AV sockets are one for video and one for audio, there isn’t any space on the PCB for another audio connector.

Whilst inside it I found a sticker with a date on it! 21/03/98, I was still at school then, I remember eyeing one of these sets up in the Grattan catalogue that my Mum used to get... I had (well, still have!) a Daewoo 14” portable 4:3 set that probably came from Grattan a year or two earlier!

The Sony in my opinion is a bit crap, it looks promising, picture is as good as any other portable of the time, but the lack of stereo sound, lets it down, especially for the price they were charging for them! But then again I suppose widescreen was in its infancy at the time this was released, and the set was a bit of a novelty at the time!

Regards
Lloyd

[Lloyd 1985]

A couple more shots, if you are wondering why all the red wire bodged into the connectors, it’s because someone had nicked all the internal wiring before I got the set! It was an eBay purchase sometime ago, from a seller that I think was a WEEE disposal company, no idea why anyone would remove just the connecting leads from the inside?! So that’s why it’s got the red wire... best I could think of at the time, as I don’t know what type of connectors they are, or where to get them!

Regards
Lloyd

[mark pirate]

Does anyone know the production date for these? I am guessing late 90's.

Hi Lloyd, judging by the date in your set, it appears my guess was correct
Interesting to see the insides, I have never needed to open mine.
I think it was a poor show that Sony did not go to the trouble of making it stereo, even just via the AV inputs.

Still an interesting little set though!

Mark

[Red to black]

TBF I don't know why Sony couldn't have made that chassis even base band stereo, there would have been room for a NICAM daughter board as well.
I suspect that chassis was for a given market/spec and Sony would not want to cannibalise sales from other higher end products in their range, it may have also put it outside of the price bracket of the market that they intended to sell into.

[Maarten]

It stll doesn't really make sense. The chassis is a general portable chassis, so it having mono sound makes sense at least. It can be stuffed for multiple reception standards but I don't think it can be stuffed for stereo.

I don't think this set would caniballise sales from higher end products as those would be 20" or larger and would be preferred by people who have room for it.

It could have something to do with the price bracket, but for a niche product that may not be the most important, and it was already relatively expensive, I think (that could also explain why they didn't want to make it even more expensive by putting in another chassis).

That last remark about putting in another chassis, made me think again, though. Would a stereo chassis from that era, have fitted the smallish cabinet? On the one hand, it might have since the cabinet was at least reasonably wide, but on the other hand the relevant chassis might have been higher or deeper. I'm thinking along the lines of one of the BE-3 chassis variants, maybe the BE-3B, but that would need a bit more research.

[John123]

I agree, as with most things it was probably down to cost. Most likely those dinky little 16" tubes may have been expensive in the first place, thus placing it outside of the acceptable/ affordable consumer price bracket. It's possible, even, that Sony had experience with similar models in the Japanese market, and didn't want a repeat of any mistakes.

Other than that, I don't see any practical reason why it could not have featured something similar to, or even the actual BE5 chassis of its bigger brother, as that had full stereo/ NICAM support - even an S-Video input.

Perhaps if you can find a scrap chassis, you can shoehorn one into the case!