Summary

Produced in 2000, this was among the last 27" CRT Televisions manufactured by Toshiba. Beginning in 2001, all of their curved screen TVs 27" and smaller were outsourced to Orion.

The 27A50 has a full set of inputs with composite, S-Video, and component video. Picture quality with component video is very clean.

Literature

• User Manual
• Service Manual
• Toshiba Product Page

Notes

Component video on these TVs is labeled "Color Stream", and shares its Y jack with the 2nd composite video input.

The jungle chip used in this TV has an extra set of RGB input pins, and mods for other TVs with the same chip have been documented. As such, it's likely that this model can also be modified for RGB input.

This TV uses an RCA/Thomson tube with a bonded yoke. It is very similar to the tubes used in the 27" JVD TVs (including the popular "D Series").

Unlike the Toshiba-branded Orion models, the 27A50 has menu and input select buttons on the front panel, and all functions can be accessed without having to use the remote.

Composite 240p Performance

by Eli Krause

For composite decoding this set uses a Toshiba TC90A49P, a 3-line digital comb filter. Depending on the console/revision, dot artifacting ranges from slight to severe, and blending effects may be broken. If the set has a component YPbPr input on, then using a good external notch filter to decode composite instead (such as the one in a RetroTink 2X, 5X, etc.) and sending that to the component input would blend all dithering patterns and remove nearly all dot artifacts. A recommended no lag HDMI to component converter is available here (select the bypass version).