Hello Beoworld!

I've read through just about everything in the workbench on the Avant 32 and I haven't yet been able to answer my question.

I purchased a package of B&O gear including the Avant 32 RF DVD and was warned that the picture was not perfect.

There seem to be 2 main problems:

1.  None of the 3 picture formats fill the screen to the edges.  I get narrow (4:3), middle, and nearly 16:9 but still a couple cm of black down the sides.  I've read the Avant T8320 (8300 series) picture width (Ham) setting thread.  Are there other likely possiblities?

2.  The picture is ghosting green.  It's still a colour image, but almost has a pale 3-d effect with offset pale green edges.

The Official B&O repair centre (3rd party contractor) in Sydney says that the tube has "flashed" and that may have effected components on the chassis.  The recommendation is an exchange chassis and a new tube (about $3k AUD).

I've got a Grundig Xedance with a 32" flat tube and I'm wondering if the W78ERF042X044 tube from that one will work.  I haven't picked up the Avant from the B&O repairer yet to check the number on that tube.  I wonder if anyone has an comments on whether this swap is worth considering?  Does the tube number have to be an exact match for it to work?

I've been talking with a Grundig repairer who has suggested that he has never replaced a whole chassis in his career and is willing to bet that the chassis can be repaired at a component level.

I joined as a gold member in January and look forward to learning as much as I can.  Thank you for the informative posts and answers.

Best regards,

Trevor.

Trevor,

Welcome to Beoworld, and sorry that no one has replied to your post. I am sure that someone can help you.

The tube will be a Philips and used in other sets, but I believe a B&O spare comes complete with delflection coils already fitted and aligned.

The "chassis" change is now B&O policy when any fault develops, to speed up the repair and it takes less skill, but of course is extremely expensive. As a result, no service information is available to fault find at component level.

Perhaps you could ask a good tv service engineer to have a look at your Avant and advise you, it may be possible to find a cost effective solution.

Best wishes,

Neil.

Thanks for the reply, Neil.

The Avant 32 tube is LG/Philips W76ERF041X044.  Does anyone know if there is a way to look up which other TVs used this tube?

I've got a Grundig Xedance with a W78ERF042X044.  I don't know about the LG/Philips tube numbering system.  Is there a way of checking whether or not these tubes might be interchangeable?

I've got a Grundig TV service person (recommended by my local high-end audio shop) who will undertake the component-level repair to try to save me the trouble of the "exchange chassis" policy.  If he identifies faulty components that he can't source, I will be making an appeal to the forum for them!  But that's mute if I can't source the tube reasonably.

I googled the W76ERF041X044 and Video Display Corp (vdc.mybisi.com) in the USA came up.  Has anyone dealt with them before?

Best regards,

Trevor.

Hi Trevor, i recently had an Avant with a W76ERF042X44 tube, which is a RF32 VTR Avant.

The tube in your Grundig should be too big (W78 instead of W76).

Overhere in NL i know a guy who has replacement tubes nos avaiable for 100,- but although technically fine the pic quality is not as good as the original.

On itself with what you describe i don't think there's anything wrong with the chassis, but probably with the tube (only, bad enough already).

So far with 'glowing and tapping' i managed to fix already about 5 tv's, i don't know if you're ok with working on tv's and tubes since this is a very cheap fix (don't know how long it'll last but spending 100's of dollars is no option anyway imho).

I think i posted something about this somewhere here (was away for a month) but otherwise if you want to know you can pm me.

As for the width: did you chose the correct way ?, chosing 'format' and than 1 or 2 or 3 (i think 3 = 16:9) should fill the screen, and in 1 or 2 you can 'cycle trough' with the arrows on the beo4 between 4:3, 14:9 and 15:9 so not full screen (in other words: if this is your case this is correct, when looking at a 4:3 source signal).

When a true 16:9 signal is fed to the tv is should automatically change to full 16:9 screen.