Summary

A rather unassuming but surprisingly decent set by Apex. Originally manufactured by Changhong Electric in China.

Manuals

• Service Manual
• Owner's Manual

Notes

Chassis is rather cheaply designed with questionable solder quality and capacitor health. Servicing this model may be necessary.

This set uses a rare Toshiba Microfilter tube model made in Japan, model A80LTM350X.

Despite the fact that the tube has two focus pins, the flyback that comes with this set is single focus. The schematics for this set are misleading to suggest a second focus adjustment is accessible somewhere, because I didn't see one. I'd say this set would have really benefited with a dynamic focus adjustment, (or just a higher quality flyback) as the corners can be very soft. However, this may not be noticeable during regular gameplay.

By default, the raster is very zoomed-in/overscanned. (See grid photos.) Going into the service menu and adjusting the horizontal and vertical raster size can fix this right up.

This set looks quite good once adjusted. The handling of component is clean and looks lovely after you turn sharpness and VM off in the menu. The only processing this set employs is some annoying red push, but that can be dialed back by lowering color saturation and/or performing a white balance in the service menu.

Entering Service Menu

The service manual's description of how to enter the service menu is inaccurate. The correct way is as follows:

1. Receive no input
2. Volume to zero
3. Press and hold mute on remote
4. Simultaneously press menu on tv

Toshiba Microfilter Technology

This CRT uses Microfilter, a technology innovation by Toshiba that aimed to optimize both brightness and contrast without darkening the glass with tint.

Conventionally, most tubes have a dark tint layer in the glass to reduce the amount of light reflection or absorption of the glass, thereby increasing contrast performance - a trade that costs an average 30% loss of overall brightness in all ambient light conditions (including near-darkness). In comparison, clear glass on a tube has the advantage of maximum brightness emission - but at a huge loss of contrast in normal ambient light conditions due to increased reflection. Typically you'll only find clear glass on professional broadcast monitors (aka BVM) that are intended to be used in near-darkness where ambient light is not an concern.

Microfilter aimed to be the best of both worlds by achieving the necessary amount of ambient light filtering at a per-phosphor (micro) level without sacrificing brightness, while still providing the vivid contrast you could typically only expect from a dark-tinted lower-brightness tube. On a Microfilter tube, the glass itself remains clear for maximum light transmission, while still taking a darkened grey-purple appearance from a combination of both the AR coatings and Microfilter over the phosphors.

You can learn more about Microfilter in our full article.