Sunday Yard Sale: CRT and other knick-knacks

Good evening, my little crows.

I went to a yard sale on my street this Palm Sunday (13 April 2025) after church because I like checking out what kind of clothes and electronics people are readily giving up.

I got the following (pictured below):

1. Patrick toy that launches his torso up via spring

2. Tinkerbell picture frame

3. Travel book to keep IDs and documents

4. "8 Great Games for Girls" PC DVD-ROM

5. Banana pouch with lettered tiles for Bananagrams

6. Owl backpack and

7. Orion CRT TV/DVD-player combo.

The CRT's DVD player initially would not Eject, so I had to open it up. The fourth image is a picture I took before leaving to the dog park briefly—it shows the insides of the CRT and various sticky notes I placed indicating which screw was for which section. I spent about 8 hours disassembling the CRT and testing it because the manufacturers did NOT make it easy to access the DVD player immediately.

When I finally accessed the DVD player, I had to turn the gear manually to "reboot" it to be able to Eject on its own again. I also cleaned the black rubber belt that handles the Ejection and cleaned the lens that reads discs with a Q-Tip. Subsequently, the DVD player worked as intended; however, it is only able to play music tracks at the moment (The Carpenters, Imagine Dragons, Bastille, and Green Day were the artists I had on-hand). Any movie DVD I try to play is presented with an "Incorrect Disc" display after a few seconds of Reading.

Hence, the PS2 in the screenshots (thank goodness the PS2 can play different types of DVD formats besides PS2 games). It couldn't read some of my other DVD-Rs though, just the official DVDs we bought in stores as opposed to the ones my dad burned how ever many years ago. I tested out Spider-Man (2002), Air Buddies, and Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew for a few seconds. It also couldn't play the same audio CDs that the CRT's built-in DVD player could.

Additionally, I did further testing and found that my PS3's disc player works better than my PS2's in reading various disc formats (with the exception of reading PS2 games but PSX games works (at least, Digimon: Rumble Arena)!). So, I ordered and am currently waiting for an HDMI-to-AV converter to arrive to see how the quality looks and sounds on the CRT!

Lastly, I just cleaned the CRT's surface as much as I could. The previous owner left old stickers on it, so I'm thinking of adding my own flair in the form of stickers as well! I'm always scared to personalize my things because I readily believe in the disposal and replacement of them so I never try to decorate too much.

14 April 2025 (9:52 PM)