Mary was out of town this weekend and I ended up working on tons of projects. One of them being finally re-converged my old Sony RPTV after almost a year of needing to (I lived on Sony's Flash Focus button which did an ok job). While I was at it I also disassembled and cleaned each CRT lens, following info found on KeohiTV.

What an amazing difference. I've only completed converging 1080i mode and need to revisit 480p (since that's the mode that's used when I watch 4:3).

Another significant improvement recently was purchasing the iScan HD scalar. While quite expensive (almost $1k), it killed many birds with one stone:

• Bypasses the internal upscaler in the Sony, which is decent but nothing compared to the iScan, especially for TV content
• Upscales DVDs to 1080i (or 540p), noticably better quality than standard DVD 480p, the Sony was bypassed for this anyway
• All devices use single HDTV input, auto-switch, and always output the highest quality, upsampled signal
• Built in lip-sync audio correction to deal w/ video processing delays
• Extended any need to purchase a replacement TV by at least a year or two (I'm supposed to be downsizing anyway ;)

Comcast is coming on Tuesday to install HDTV alonst with their new HDTV PVR box based on Microsoft media technology. Has dual HDTV tuners which should be great for dealing w/ those times I always had conflicts w/ TiVo. Another bonus is no more monthly fees to TiVo. This will be the first device to bypass the iScan (for at least the HDTV feeds), I might not have bought the iScan at the time had I known Comcast was coming out w/ a reasonable solution (just was released in Seattle only this weekend). Regardless it still improves DVD movies, race videos, video games, etc.