I haven't seen this since I was a kid. My mom gave me hers when my tv broke and I had to use it for like a year. That was in the 90s. So cool to see it again. The memory's man.
before i heard the voice i thought it indeed is technology connections, thats really really good, i wish this guy to be also recognised as himself in the future
Just picked up two of these Indextrons because they were just so adorable, and since they didnt work the guy gave them to me for free! I wanted to try to fix them and came across your video, I had no idea they were so rare! I can't wait to get them up and running again. Thanks for the info!
They still make the best stuff. But they don’t use the money they made into reinvesting into the future. OLED manufacturing is none and bought all from the Koreans. The key to surviving is to innovate. Apple only surviving so long now cause they are more of a fashion item than an innovative one. The only reason why people still IPhones because the competition sux at their design and concept. So Apple’s it just works beat them down. B
I do recap jobs on Sony Handycams quite often. It's cathartic. Once you do a few its like second nature. Glad to be keeping these rad electronics rocking in the real world.
You don’t have to drill the case to add connectors. You could sneak a pigtail out of one of the vents or various holes. You could also replace the antenna with a pigtail for RGB in a 100 percent reversible way.
Came here with recommendation and i love this video. Quality is awesome. I liked the video and subscribed the channel. And going to watch your other videos. Keep it going, good work!
I actually had one of these and man it was a great little TV. I believe I purchased mine from Montgomery Wards because it was on sale at a ridiculously low price. Which, I at that time I found that places like Circuit City, Montgomery Wards, etc would put electronics that didn't sell well on sale at blow out prices from time to time. You just had to be in these places in the right time -- and that's how I found my WatchCube. Aside from my 27 inch Sony Trinitron -- the WatchCube got the most use. This is because back in the day -- I worked in the IT field often had to work from home. The WatchCube was right by my computer workstation so I could easily watch TV as I worked. I also took it to work and used it in my office because it was so compact. But alas after years of hard use -- my WatchCube died -- screen would just display white. It was an incredible piece of tech which I will never forget...
Fantastic production quality for such a small channel. Keep this short, sweet, and to the point style up and and I bet you'll grow quickly. Its great to see a new video on this little guy and has definitely inspired me to get back to work on my own (white model) that I picked up about 5 years ago from a local thrift shop. Is that the only board that I need to worry about for basic functionality? I've replaced quite a few caps in this thing already and I am still getting no power at all. And advice or resources you can point me to?
Hey sorry for the delayed reply. First make sure the power input or fuse isn't blown, Sony used those stupid reverse polarity power bricks but I've seen a lot of fried devices as it's so natural to use a regular 12V Barrel with centre positive. So yeah just probe the power input stage and make sure you have all the boards powered. Then depending on how bad your capacitor leaked, also check continuity on tracks that look eaten by acid, a good IPA cleanup is always a good step. Finally, the best source of information I found when I first got the set was this site : visions4netjournal.com/indextron/ The guy seems to be THE subject matter expert. I think I tried to contact him but never got a reply, not sure if he's still active. Nonetheless his blog posts are worth a reading, you'll find multiple articles about this WatchCube, and some of his repair steps.
a fabulous backwards glance at stuff of another age - redolent of chicken tikka massala and disco's down the nurses residence - oh yes... I done got the WM-D6 so I'm still part of it yes and New Order !
The industrial design of the case is top-notch Sony clock-radio! Did I miss it having FM and AM tuners, or did Sony miss the opportunity? 🤔 It’s kind of a shame that Indextron has such low contrast, it doesn’t compete in those respects against early LCDs. Still impressive before then, but I can see how they’ve become rare since.
That is super cool! Thanks for sharing it. Too bad they are so rare, it'd be neat to have in the oddity collection. If anything it needs a cooling mod. 3D printed top fan housing.
Interesting... I have a weird unit that has a CRT of that size, portable with embedded battery, that has a full diag program and realtime viewer for satellite signals, with keypad on the side, a mystery tool that maybe rings a bell to you?
I know from when I was a kid, I used to have an old CRT baby monitor, which had composite in, so I used to play PS1 on it. I’d say it’s about the same size as this one
The first thing that came to my mind was pairing this with a Nintendo GameCube for the cutest and "cubiest" gaming system ever. XD PS: Instant subscribe! Greetings from Brazil ^^
And I thought my 6" PVMs were small. But seriously, its interesting that SONY used the same approach of the fold-out PCBs similar to their PVM line. Makes them a breeze to work on.
I fixed many a Toshiba with no troubleshooting. Replace all the little red electrolytics. They always eventually failed. It could be these caps were used because Toshiba knew that they would fail, so people would get new sets.
Index CRT''s have no need for drive controls, which compensate for the emission failings of older 3 separate RGB electron guns. The color tracking will always be perfect, with one electron gun. The color would fade to black and white with a very weak tube, because of the loss of beam focus.
This would of been such a popular product if they didn't have such a fatal flaw. Who would want an FM Clock Radio when you could have a TV Clock on your nightstand xD
Hey man, I was linked to your channel from my brother in-law. We were the guys who took that big Sony TV off your hands. It was a struggle for sure, but we managed to get the job done without braking the TV or our bodies! Anyway, I like your content so you've earned a sub. I'm an electronics engineer myself. Moved here from the states last October, then COVID-19 hit. Any pointers for networking with other electrical engineers in the area?
Weird. I will add a USB C on mines for convenience. Also a passthrough. That's because it will be paired with 2 more 1In indextrons from RCA. (No, RCA never made indextron TVs, but I turned two CKC021 viewfinders into monitors by mounting 2 AV jacks - in+passthrough and USB C 12V PD boards in them.
Here’s a video that explains the tech: czcams.com/video/_b7omGhw7wc/video.html And here’s my TLDR version: instead of three separate electron guns, one for each color and a shadow mask to ensure each electron beam only hits phosphors of the correct color, a single gun index tube adds light sensors that detect when the beam is at the start of a phosphor triplet (i.e. a physical pixel). This enables it to correctly vary the intensity of the beam as it sweeps across the three phosphors in the triplet, to ensure the correct color is reproduced. That’s also why you get a black and white image if the sensor isn’t working - the beam intensity can’t be adjusted for color since the sensor can’t see anything, so it falls back to working like a monochrome CRT.
So sad that the color indexsystem never became a thing commercially, because it’s a pretty unique system wich finally did saw it’s light of day after 30 years of research and attempts by different companys in a few applications including this portible tv set, and it’s picture quality is more then acceptible😁
This TV produced in 1989-90, which really made it obsolete at the time. Especially given that Casio and Citizen were already making low-cost colour LCD TVs in similar sizes.
@@michaelturner4457 similar sizes, but the color LCDs of that era (late 80s) were passive types... not active matrix, no on-substrate transistors. So they looked terrible, with extremely poor contrast and narrow viewing angles. Small CRTs like this would have remained the premium technology until at least the mid 90s.
@@KanalFrump Well Analog Thinker did comment that the contrast ratio of this TV was "quite poor", and reminded him of Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx passive screens. So it sounds like the Sony Indextron CRT wasn't much better than those Casio and Citizen pocket TVs, except for viewing angle probably.
I'd like to see you wave a magnet in front of it, as I understand it would behave differently from any other color CRT. The image should temporarily distort like it would on a B&W tube but the colors should remain accurate within that distortion - and there should be no lasting color displacement once the magnet is removed, so no need to degauss. I'd just like to see it happen with my own eyes :)
Check out cathode ray dude on youtube, he has a video called a tiny unlikely crt where he takes a indextron crt from a video camera and puts a magnet near it. The whole video is pretty good and id recommend watching it if you are interested in the technology behind it
True, sorry I should have explained better. I hope people will still catch the difference from my poor English haha! The neck part of this tube is designed more like a B/W CRT.
Ufff yo tengo uno de estos en reparación , es la versión blanca , pero que pinche TV para ser tan complicado de reparar es una tecnología muy compleja pero hay lo llevo.
I haven't seen this since I was a kid. My mom gave me hers when my tv broke and I had to use it for like a year. That was in the 90s. So cool to see it again. The memory's man.
Hahaha you guys must be rich to be able to get these. They easily in the few thousands in the 90s.
Very cool. I was always very intrigued by mini portable TV's when I was young, but they were always expensive.
Man I'm shocked you haven't got larger sub counts I just got recommended and you are well on par with Technology connections.
Well, that is some serious compliment, ! Means a lot, Thanks!
This channel will take off very quickly, so keep it up! Just subscribed
Ikr? So underrated
Even better, I'd say. TC was good until he started overdo the jokes.
before i heard the voice i thought it indeed is technology connections, thats really really good, i wish this guy to be also recognised as himself in the future
Just picked up two of these Indextrons because they were just so adorable, and since they didnt work the guy gave them to me for free! I wanted to try to fix them and came across your video, I had no idea they were so rare! I can't wait to get them up and running again. Thanks for the info!
Can you sell the one
More people want to have one too you know?
Excellent score.
Probably atleast needs a recap, wash the boards like Techmoan did with his Mac and recap the board. Big chance it will work again afterwards
Did you get them working again?
I almost bought one of these in 1991. It was $800 Canadian when I saw it. I wanted to use it as a desk top tv.
Should have, coulda made your money back today if it was in good shape. These are so neat.. I’d pay a lot for a working one
I'm a huge fan of Sony products, and I have to say "Wow!" - Sony always is designing and manufacturing the highest quality of electronics!
Tottenham Court Road in London had several shops who sold such gear in the 80s and 90s,A fascinating road to browse the Electronic shops back then.
Lololol
Sony is a master of electronics, specialiy the professional stuff
@@Kabodanki , Strongly argee!
They still make the best stuff. But they don’t use the money they made into reinvesting into the future. OLED manufacturing is none and bought all from the Koreans. The key to surviving is to innovate. Apple only surviving so long now cause they are more of a fashion item than an innovative one. The only reason why people still IPhones because the competition sux at their design and concept. So Apple’s it just works beat them down. B
The summit of creativity from Sony, I hope to see more
The Quality and originality of their components and pcb is amazing ,
I do recap jobs on Sony Handycams quite often. It's cathartic. Once you do a few its like second nature. Glad to be keeping these rad electronics rocking in the real world.
Such a cute little machine. CRT's have such a nice charm to them, especially for retro games.
amazing content, and great that you instantly replaced the bad caps.
you got a new subscriber!
You don’t have to drill the case to add connectors. You could sneak a pigtail out of one of the vents or various holes. You could also replace the antenna with a pigtail for RGB in a 100 percent reversible way.
Then do it >:)
Never even heard of this type of CRT... So cool!!!
Cool video. Never knew they made CRT TVs this small for consumer use. I know some camcorders had even smaller CRT displays.
Yea I have two 5" Sony TVs called the Sony Color Watchman that still work. A white one for the kitchen and a black one for retro gaming.
Came here with recommendation and i love this video. Quality is awesome. I liked the video and subscribed the channel. And going to watch your other videos. Keep it going, good work!
Wow the internals are so compact, that's pretty cool to see
what a hidden gem of a channel I have found, thank you for the video :)
This is so cool and you did such a great job with this video.
Thanks for sharing, never seen one before. What a lovely little device!
Great video. Old technologies are incredible.
i thought this was something made these days for people to enjoy what looking at a CRT was like. Truly amazing
that intro was soo a e s t h e t i c ~
Thanks, tried my best :p
Well, I guess I just found a new channel to binge!
That is ONE SWEET TV!!
Nice and informative video. Thank you for your great work!
I would have loved one of these for my desk back in the day
A beautiful unit, I'd love to keep one in my collection.
Me too
Great video - came here via the CRT collective ;o)
Thanks for the support ^^
Me too, and just subscribed to the channel.
I remember my dad had one when I was young. Thought it was the coolest thing ever!
so apparently i got a old camcorder viewfinder with this tech and its pretty neat!
I wish someone starts making CRT’s , even if they started making it from this size.
I actually had one of these and man it was a great little TV. I believe I purchased mine from Montgomery Wards because it was on sale at a ridiculously low price. Which, I at that time I found that places like Circuit City, Montgomery Wards, etc would put electronics that didn't sell well on sale at blow out prices from time to time. You just had to be in these places in the right time -- and that's how I found my WatchCube. Aside from my 27 inch Sony Trinitron -- the WatchCube got the most use. This is because back in the day -- I worked in the IT field often had to work from home. The WatchCube was right by my computer workstation so I could easily watch TV as I worked. I also took it to work and used it in my office because it was so compact. But alas after years of hard use -- my WatchCube died -- screen would just display white. It was an incredible piece of tech which I will never forget...
Fascinating and well done. Thanks.
Fantastic production quality for such a small channel. Keep this short, sweet, and to the point style up and and I bet you'll grow quickly. Its great to see a new video on this little guy and has definitely inspired me to get back to work on my own (white model) that I picked up about 5 years ago from a local thrift shop. Is that the only board that I need to worry about for basic functionality? I've replaced quite a few caps in this thing already and I am still getting no power at all. And advice or resources you can point me to?
Hey sorry for the delayed reply. First make sure the power input or fuse isn't blown, Sony used those stupid reverse polarity power bricks but I've seen a lot of fried devices as it's so natural to use a regular 12V Barrel with centre positive. So yeah just probe the power input stage and make sure you have all the boards powered. Then depending on how bad your capacitor leaked, also check continuity on tracks that look eaten by acid, a good IPA cleanup is always a good step. Finally, the best source of information I found when I first got the set was this site : visions4netjournal.com/indextron/ The guy seems to be THE subject matter expert. I think I tried to contact him but never got a reply, not sure if he's still active. Nonetheless his blog posts are worth a reading, you'll find multiple articles about this WatchCube, and some of his repair steps.
Damn, too bad because he’s still just got 3.5k subs a year later. Looks like quality content doesn’t necessarily mean growth
@@m0m065 I think it has to have a lot to do with post rate and consistency. The algorithm loves this.
@@m0m065 yea he hasn't posted regularly.
These days, I had a Sony Digi Cube. It was white, and looked quite similar like this TV in the white version. It featured a Radio, with a vfd clock.
Great video! I'd never even heard of these Indextron tubes, what a cool and unique technology. 👍
Your content And The Way you speak is really relaxing
and Is Close or on par With Clint (LGR)
Wow that’s some powerful compliment! He sure has a voice I could listen to for hours, thanks for the support!
I thought this was some sort of lcd/crt hybrid, this thing is sick!
Thank you
Greets from Germany 🤙
a fabulous backwards glance at stuff of another age - redolent of chicken tikka massala and disco's down the nurses residence - oh yes... I done got the WM-D6 so I'm still part of it yes and New Order !
I'm still part of it too with several Sony Watchman 👍
The engineering just crazy
Still have mine from when I was a kid. Not as bright as it once was but picture is still good!
Sweet set. in my collection, i've got one of those color travelvision sets, and that RCA Color beam index viewfinder.
Hah I would love one, I probably passed on one of them without even knowing what they were! Good on you :p
@@AnalogThinker the travelvision is the CT-101. And unlike your lovely sony set, its 1.5 inch crt has 3 electron guns and a shadowmask.
Awww look at that little baby, wittle lil cutesy baby tv
Cube shaped tech is always the best
Was about to hit the button to sub, but turns out I already was! Awesome video! As an EE and CRT enthusiast, I love these videos.
Don't turn it on; Take it apart!! You know how to please us Aussie viewers.
Hehe thanks, first one to catch it :p
Heard you take the same approach with your women
@@lubaniskie lol
The industrial design of the case is top-notch Sony clock-radio! Did I miss it having FM and AM tuners, or did Sony miss the opportunity? 🤔
It’s kind of a shame that Indextron has such low contrast, it doesn’t compete in those respects against early LCDs. Still impressive before then, but I can see how they’ve become rare since.
That is super cool! Thanks for sharing it. Too bad they are so rare, it'd be neat to have in the oddity collection.
If anything it needs a cooling mod. 3D printed top fan housing.
Better yet, convert crt viewfinders inti this with a printed case!
L'électronique est tellement bien compacté à l'intérieur 😮
Would have loved having that as a kid. Imagine being able to play your PS1/n64 on a road trip.
Duuuude so cool!! I want that on top of my BVM-20F1U next to my PVM-6041Q!
Really good editing and cool TV . . . Hope you arr good, analog
Awesome channel bro why youtube alg is now just recommending this to me...
Thanks, I love waking up to great feedback, I try to put efforts in these stupid videos, glad some like it :)
I remember seeing this late 30s with dish satellite technicians, I think it was meant for professional use, neat video anywa
Interesting... I have a weird unit that has a CRT of that size, portable with embedded battery, that has a full diag program and realtime viewer for satellite signals, with keypad on the side, a mystery tool that maybe rings a bell to you?
It's very cute and a well engineered little CRT, but the picture seems a touch dim.
Not thaaat dim but sure lacks contrast, it’s on par with the original game gear LCD
I know from when I was a kid, I used to have an old CRT baby monitor, which had composite in, so I used to play PS1 on it. I’d say it’s about the same size as this one
The first thing that came to my mind was pairing this with a Nintendo GameCube for the cutest and "cubiest" gaming system ever. XD
PS: Instant subscribe!
Greetings from Brazil ^^
There is something very cool about Sony products. I wish they would make cars
And I thought my 6" PVMs were small.
But seriously, its interesting that SONY used the same approach of the fold-out PCBs similar to their PVM line.
Makes them a breeze to work on.
I fixed many a Toshiba with no troubleshooting. Replace all the little red electrolytics. They always eventually failed. It could be these caps were used because Toshiba knew that they would fail, so people would get new sets.
If society all falls apart lets hope you got a friend like Analog Thinker
A 4" CRT would be perfect for a system with integrated NES or Sega Master System. Anything newer, and it will be an eye strain.
Index CRT''s have no need for drive controls, which compensate for the emission failings of older 3 separate RGB electron guns. The color tracking will always be perfect, with one electron gun. The color would fade to black and white with a very weak tube, because of the loss of beam focus.
Reminds me of an old 5 inch tv I had that was a blue cube about the same size as this one, but the display filled the width and height of the box.
Sony was originally in Japan but I see the sticker says Korea on one of the boards! (and that was 30+ years ago)
amazing video i just found
This would of been such a popular product if they didn't have such a fatal flaw. Who would want an FM Clock Radio when you could have a TV Clock on your nightstand xD
Hey man, I was linked to your channel from my brother in-law. We were the guys who took that big Sony TV off your hands. It was a struggle for sure, but we managed to get the job done without braking the TV or our bodies!
Anyway, I like your content so you've earned a sub.
I'm an electronics engineer myself. Moved here from the states last October, then COVID-19 hit. Any pointers for networking with other electrical engineers in the area?
Haha what a beast, glad you managed to move it! Sure thing, send me a mail, contact in the About section of the channel :)
that's why sony is my favorite brand
Wonderful TV. You're right, no need to modify for RGB with something like thie.
Weird. I will add a USB C on mines for convenience. Also a passthrough. That's because it will be paired with 2 more 1In indextrons from RCA. (No, RCA never made indextron TVs, but I turned two CKC021 viewfinders into monitors by mounting 2 AV jacks - in+passthrough and USB C 12V PD boards in them.
Let me know if you will sell it one day. I'm a Sony collector 😀
I wonder if Sony made something like this slightly bigger, like 6", with a true Trinitron.
👍 🍀 Very interesting video and channel. I really don't understand why you have so less subscribers. You should have thousand times more at least.
Here’s a video that explains the tech: czcams.com/video/_b7omGhw7wc/video.html
And here’s my TLDR version: instead of three separate electron guns, one for each color and a shadow mask to ensure each electron beam only hits phosphors of the correct color, a single gun index tube adds light sensors that detect when the beam is at the start of a phosphor triplet (i.e. a physical pixel). This enables it to correctly vary the intensity of the beam as it sweeps across the three phosphors in the triplet, to ensure the correct color is reproduced. That’s also why you get a black and white image if the sensor isn’t working - the beam intensity can’t be adjusted for color since the sensor can’t see anything, so it falls back to working like a monochrome CRT.
Cute lil cube
why was it recalled?
4:04
thanks@@famus801
WatchCube, perfect TV for GameCube
So sad that the color indexsystem never became a thing commercially, because it’s a pretty unique system wich finally did saw it’s light of day after 30 years of research and attempts by different companys in a few applications including this portible tv set, and it’s picture quality is more then acceptible😁
This TV produced in 1989-90, which really made it obsolete at the time. Especially given that Casio and Citizen were already making low-cost colour LCD TVs in similar sizes.
@@michaelturner4457 similar sizes, but the color LCDs of that era (late 80s) were passive types... not active matrix, no on-substrate transistors. So they looked terrible, with extremely poor contrast and narrow viewing angles. Small CRTs like this would have remained the premium technology until at least the mid 90s.
@@KanalFrump Well Analog Thinker did comment that the contrast ratio of this TV was "quite poor", and reminded him of Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx passive screens. So it sounds like the Sony Indextron CRT wasn't much better than those Casio and Citizen pocket TVs, except for viewing angle probably.
That was AWESOME!!! 😎👍
Subbing to the excellent channel right away! 😁
I'd like to see you wave a magnet in front of it, as I understand it would behave differently from any other color CRT. The image should temporarily distort like it would on a B&W tube but the colors should remain accurate within that distortion - and there should be no lasting color displacement once the magnet is removed, so no need to degauss. I'd just like to see it happen with my own eyes :)
Check out cathode ray dude on youtube, he has a video called a tiny unlikely crt where he takes a indextron crt from a video camera and puts a magnet near it. The whole video is pretty good and id recommend watching it if you are interested in the technology behind it
There's one at auction currently at Sargent Auction Service in Granbury, Texas. Current bid $10. Ends next Saturday at iCollector.
I would love to have 1.
Fantastic, thanks
amazing technology
Technology has been rapidly advancing since the 1947 Roswell UFO crash!
Shame on CZcams, brilliant video and creater but only 1k subs? Seriously wtf..
Only 3 on ebay right now, all $1000 and all "untested" .. even though they are all out of the box. Too bad, I'd love to have one of these
Классный телевизорчик...
You've earned a subscriber!!!
As far as i know Trinitrons have a single electron gun too, it's just that the gun has three cathodes.
True, sorry I should have explained better. I hope people will still catch the difference from my poor English haha! The neck part of this tube is designed more like a B/W CRT.
Best channel on youtube
That’s the mini TV from the anime Death Note😮
it reminds me of those little stickman city cube things
Ufff yo tengo uno de estos en reparación , es la versión blanca , pero que pinche TV para ser tan complicado de reparar es una tecnología muy compleja pero hay lo llevo.
i wish it wasnt so rare 😔 i want one so bad ngl
20 dislikes. It seems that there are people not understanding art.
OLED dweebz ;^)
WOW 👑 SONY GOD FOREVER#1 ✌️ 👑
lovely
Wow! Awesome 🙂