Summary

Toshiba's very first flat CRT model released in North America, in 2000. Originally manufactured in Japan.

Manuals

• User Manual
• Service Manual (photographs)
• Sound & Vision Magazine Review (Dec. 2000)

Notes

This set has VM that you cannot turn off in the standard menu. Thankfully, if you open the set up, you can just yank a white jumper from the neckboard to disable it.

480p and 1080i signals over component look splendid. No lag for those signals, too. However, 240p/480i are upscaled to 480p and have bilinear filtering.

This set was the first TV in North America to use Toshiba's new Microfilter tube technology.

The chassis on these sets are kind of unreliable. Lots of boards inside and plenty of failure potential places for things to go wrong. Even the service manual has errors in it.

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.