I have a Sony 21" Multiscan E540 (Trinitron) that hasn't been looking quite right lately.
1. It has a hazy, gray, low-contrast cast over it that's very noticeable right after it's been turned on, and even after warming up for 15-20 minutes (probably longer than any modern crt should take?), the haziness never entirely goes away.
The contrast is turned all the way up to 100, and the color temperature setting is correct -- the default. I usually have brightness turned all the way down to zero for this monitor.
2. There are a series of pencil-thin, bright, slightly wavy diagonal lines (maybe 15 degrees from the horizontal, ~1.5 inches apart, 8 or 9 in total, roughly parallel to each other) that cut across the otherwise hazy screen, that are always there. They probably move around ever so slightly, and do dance around when I degauss the monitor, but otherwise don't really move.
3. Maybe most damning is that when I push brightness up to 100, the screen actually goes BLACK. It does get progressively brighter and whiter as I push it up, but somewhere around 60 it kind of shuts down to black. And, going back down in the other direction to zero, it's actually not until around 25 that the image pops back from black (instead of around 60) -- a delayed effect for the image to pop back from black. This makes me think there's some component that's taxed or damaged. (This isn't normal behavior for a brightness control, right?)
It's not that old a monitor, about 5 years. It was holding up well until around when we had a bunch of nasty power interruptions in quick succession, each time zapping the monitor off and on, off and on again, before I guess some components inside could react. I'm suspecting this is the cause, but does that make any sense?
Also, is the screen going black with brightness at 100 a dead giveaway that something's damaged, as opposed to general age?
Many thanks! Any help appreciated.
1. It has a hazy, gray, low-contrast cast over it that's very noticeable right after it's been turned on, and even after warming up for 15-20 minutes (probably longer than any modern crt should take?), the haziness never entirely goes away.
The contrast is turned all the way up to 100, and the color temperature setting is correct -- the default. I usually have brightness turned all the way down to zero for this monitor.
2. There are a series of pencil-thin, bright, slightly wavy diagonal lines (maybe 15 degrees from the horizontal, ~1.5 inches apart, 8 or 9 in total, roughly parallel to each other) that cut across the otherwise hazy screen, that are always there. They probably move around ever so slightly, and do dance around when I degauss the monitor, but otherwise don't really move.
3. Maybe most damning is that when I push brightness up to 100, the screen actually goes BLACK. It does get progressively brighter and whiter as I push it up, but somewhere around 60 it kind of shuts down to black. And, going back down in the other direction to zero, it's actually not until around 25 that the image pops back from black (instead of around 60) -- a delayed effect for the image to pop back from black. This makes me think there's some component that's taxed or damaged. (This isn't normal behavior for a brightness control, right?)
It's not that old a monitor, about 5 years. It was holding up well until around when we had a bunch of nasty power interruptions in quick succession, each time zapping the monitor off and on, off and on again, before I guess some components inside could react. I'm suspecting this is the cause, but does that make any sense?
Also, is the screen going black with brightness at 100 a dead giveaway that something's damaged, as opposed to general age?
Many thanks! Any help appreciated.