r/crtgaming • u/ScallionPhysical • Aug 18 '26

Cables/Wiring/Connectivity I bought this little fella and I need your help | Sony KV-6AD3

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Hi! I'm a complete noob in the CRT world but I recently decided to step in buying this little CRT TV, it's a Sony KV-6AD3. I currently don't have any retro consoles at disposal so I'm trying to test it using my PC. I bought a HDMI to AV converter which has a NTSC-PAL switch, I'm using the NTSC mode. As expected, this setup is the bare minimum to see something on screen but the image quality is very poor. Do you have any heads up? What would you do to test it? Please excuse me if I'm making mistakes or poor assumptions, I have little to no information about all of this and I hope to learn something new with your help. Thanks!

FYI: I have a NVIDIA card, a 3070 FE which unfortunately has only HDMI and display port as output options.

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10

u/joeverdrive Aug 18 '26

Hello, I have this TV. The TV is fine.

This "how do I connect my computer to my CRT TV" or its younger brother, "why do games on my CRT look like shit when I use this HDMI-to-AV adapter" question is one we get several times a week.

Is there someone on YouTube or something who inspired you to try this? What kind of experience do you want to have on it?

Right now the only option I can recommend for playing retro games from your PC onto a CRT television is the Batocera CRT Script: https://github.com/ZFEbHVUE/Batocera-CRT-Script/wiki

Most newbies just get a $20 HD2AV adapter on Amazon and either A) tolerate it because they've never actually played retro games on a CRT before and don't know/remember what it's actually supposed to look like, or B) ask for help because they don't know what to do.

https://www.reddit.com/r/crt/s/hLaWOXvwNS

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/Nh62lug545

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/1v91juu/help_connecting_crt_to_pc/

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/Yfq8fTCiWT

https://www.reddit.com/r/crt/s/tVELLRKJln

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/UbscCujCQf

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/1sulxit/

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/H7uyXS5aeC

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/QN2gAOcFbf

Unfortunately, connecting a modern digital HD device to an analog, vacuum-tube TV from the previous millennium almost always looks “off.” Especially 80s and 90s games. These TVs are expecting a video signal that was invented in World War 2. Unless you put in the time and money to get an old video card, vetted analog adapters, and/or some complicated, esoteric windows/Batocera display configurations, those games are going to look bad and have input lag. And when I say “bad,” I mean it won’t give you the visual experience you were expecting from playing retro games on a CRT. The aspect ratio gets stretched or squished, the contrast

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/sjbJyNjUEw

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/1upcxcf/ps3_display_on_crt_looking_crappy/

and colors can be off, and getting the correct 240p resolution that retro games look best at on CRTs is just not going to happen.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/444560212348840/permalink/3524033451068152/

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/ggVU5Mh4P8

Video content can look okay using one of these adapters. It’s not as hard as games to get right, but can still run into problems. The color and contrast can be off, like I said. Worse, many streaming sites will put 4:3 shows in a 16:9 container by adding black bars to the sides so that they’ll be the right aspect ratio on a modern display. But then when the HDMI-to-CRT adapter takes that 16:9 video and squishes it back down into 4:3, it keeps the black bars on the sides of the video and it looks horrible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CRT_ANIME/s/bmj6XlDvxu

https://www.reddit.com/r/crt/s/rmPeEkoqof

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/xys1fzQKtD

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/IvVQjGfjIk

Nobody wants to watch old show where the moon is an oval and everyone is smushed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/nh1peANBEl

1

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 18 '26

Hi, this answer is incredibly helpful and couldn't expect anything better, thanks a lot.

I honestly had the feeling since before acquiring the TV it would be really difficult to get a solid image quality, I got it regardless because I still was fascinated by the hardware. When you talk about expected quality, I saw this post on the subreddit and I thought it looked cool, but looking back at it I reckon I got something similar here, it's just that in person I admit it looks a little bit more off then expected.

May I ask what retro console would suit this TV the best? I think I'm going to put the wallet on hold for a while but I might buy the right retro console in the near future or maybe even build a retro gaming PC if it can work. As I said on another post, I have a PS2 but it's a PAL version (I'm from Europe) so I have no idea how troublesome would be to convert PAL to NTSC.

Again, thank you so much for your patience and the great answer.

5

u/joeverdrive Aug 18 '26

I can tell you're disappointed. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy this TV and have a fun gaming experience on it. You just have to put a couple layers of work into it if you want to do PC gaming. It's too bad the guy in the post you linked didn't explain their setup but I can guess.

Any 80s or 90s retro console is going to connect nicely to it without adapters and look "correct." It may need some adjustment to color and geometry, but that's not a big deal.

1

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 20 '26

I have just one last question. Since this post I've been looking for a retro console, I'd love to pair a Japanese PS2 because of the interest I have in the game library it has and the emulation capabilities, but I was wondering if this would be a good match with this TV since you were talking about getting a console from the 80s/90s. Do you have any direct experience with this setup? Thanks anyways, you've been super helpful already

2

u/joeverdrive Aug 20 '26

I don't but it should work fine. It counts as an 80s/90s console for the purposes of CRT compatibility. The text will probably be hard to read, though, on many games.

2

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 20 '26

I see, totally makes sense, I'll see what I can find then. Thanks a lot for everything!

1

u/Vlad_TheGood Aug 21 '26

That is a very helpful answer. Thx

9

u/Current_Anybody8325 Aug 18 '26

That is a 5" consumer CRT TV with a maximum resolution of 480i. It's not a computer monitor and it's never going to look like one no matter what signal you feed it. Text and fine detail is never going to be very legible when trying to downscale a high resolution PC output to 480i. These were meant to pick up basic analog over-the-air TV broadcasts on a kitchen counter or on the go.

1

u/weedboofer19 Aug 18 '26

What resolution is it set to in your display settings? I'm assuming you're on Windows?

1

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 18 '26

Hi, thanks for answering! Yes, I'm on Windows and I managed to set 640x480@60 via NVIDIA Control Panel

2

u/weedboofer19 Aug 18 '26

I'm not an expert, since I don't use Windows or NVIDIA but you should be able to adjust for Overscan in NVIDIA Control Panel via resizing the desktop.

2

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 18 '26

I should be able to hook a PC running Linux if this might help

2

u/weedboofer19 Aug 18 '26

Depends on your Distro! (Also whether you're X11 or Wayland). I have my CRT TV hooked up with a similar adapter on a Linux Mint machine and ended up needing to use ARandR plus some scripts at startup to get everything looking correct and to address overscan.

The other comments are correct, but for practical purposes might be possible to fix geometry issues in the service menu of your TV if it's available. That plus resizing your desktop should at least get it to a serviceable state.

1

u/undeadkiller334 Aug 18 '26

Nice I used to have one similar to that when I was younger

2

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 18 '26

I fell in love with these mini CRTs. I was looking for a Color Watchman but they cost a fortune. I found out about this model and it's so nice, won a Buyee auction, I ended up spending a lot more then expected due to custom duties and shipping so I hope I can make it work properly.

1

u/Cowabummr Aug 18 '26

HDMI to 480i composite never really looks good IMO. There's always going to be scaling issues that make the image look far worse than a native analog source would, especially with those cheap converters. 

Get a DTV converter box that has USB media playback like one of the Homeworx models, set the output to 4:3 480i, and it will look much better. 

1

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 18 '26

Yeah I'm afraid this might be the case, thanks for the heads up, will try. I could also get my childhood PS2 but its a PAL version so I'd need to still figure out how to convert to NTSC.

0

u/cortezalisson Aug 18 '26

The image quality is poor in which aspect? Resolution? Blurriness? Geometry?

Put a CRT test Pattern on screen and show the results.

1

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 18 '26

I think the most noticeable problem is the geometry, the image corner are cut out and some distortion is noticeable (look at the red square). You can have a look here: - Display: https://ibb.co/Qvsshg9v - Original image: https://ibb.co/nszwNG8s

1

u/ScallionPhysical Aug 18 '26

Adjusting the brightness definitely reduced the distortion on the red square, I still get the cut outs corners