Summary

A cheaply-made but still quite good set by Insignia. Sold at Best Buy in the mid 2000's, this set was originally manufactured by Xiamen Prima Technology in China. It is a rebadge of the Prima Q2016. It features composite, s-video and even component inputs. Having such high-quality inputs is a rare sight to see on North American CRTs with a 20" curved tube.

Literature

• User Manual
• Service Manual

Notes

Sets using this chassis tend to have colors intermittently dropping out or not being displayed onscreen altogether. (Usually the color blue.) The culprit is bad solder joints on the neckboard, so reflow them to fix the issue.

This set uses a Philips jungle IC and it handles component quite well. I recommend turning sharpness all the way down. I also advise to set the color a little below the midpoint, as it looks a bit too saturated by default. The picture processing has a mild "luma shadow" that extends for a pixel to the left of the contours of objects onscreen, but it is very faint and hardly detrimental.

Once dialed in, this set has a very nice picture that reminds me of a 19" arcade monitor, but with a slightly finer dot pitch and pointed corners. In my opinion, it jives best with 8-bit and 16-bit titles that are 256 pixels wide.

This set doesn't remember what input it was on last when it is turned off. So if you primarily use the component input, you have to cycle through all the other inputs to get to component every time you turn it on.

Service Menu

On the remote, press the “MENU” button, followed by 6,4,8, and 3. To show you have entered the service menu, “Test” will appear on screen. The service menu is compartmentalized into separate "menus". MENU1-4 can be selected by pressing buttons 1-4 on the remote. To enter MENU0, 5-9, you must press the "CHILD LOCK" button on the remote followed by 0, 5-9. To navigate the service menu, press “CH+” and “CH-” to select and “V+” and “V-”to adjust. Press “STANDBY” on the remote to exit.