The Sony PROFEEL everybody remembers. With good reason : it is one of the best CRT tubes ever ever made. Also it had magnificent looks directly inherited from the TA-N7B V-FET masterpiece :)

I was too young to professionally use the original KX-20PS1 and KX-27PS1 (KX-27HF2 and KX-20HF2 in Japan) PROFEEL monitors in the 1980s as I was twelve in 1980. But I used at length, and professionally, the "black profeel" in the late 1990s. Just as the KX-27PS1 in the 1980s, there was not a single production company that didn't have at least one of the black PROFEEL PRO next to the AVID station for checking, viewing and editing ! By the time Apple's Final Cut Pro started to eat up AVID's market shares, a lot of these black beauties were naturally getting really tired and not in their prime anymore - tubes age, especially when used 20/7 for fifteen years !

PROFEEL is the marketing tag for consumer and semi-pro versions btw : the fully professional versions are named PVM (P for Pro Video Monitor) while Sony's broadcast monitors are named BVM (B for Broadcast Video Monitor). The Profeel all had 500 lines of resolution (VHS had 240 in theory, Laserdisc had 400 at best) ; the late 1990s BVM got that to 700 and the current BVM-A has... 900 lines and accepts all types interlaced/progressive formats and even HD 4:4:4 digital sources !

Naturally, many versions of the "black beauty" were produced throughout its lifetime as a bestselling product - later ones had Y/C inputs, separate RVB on BNC terminals, 4-color with TTL sync etc... They all had those unbelievably practical backlit pads on the sides and very handy handles to carry it around for, yes : video monitors are to be carried around a lot. Covering all of them would be almost impossible and completely useless anyway because CRTs are a thing of the past anyway. Or are they ?

Sony indeed closed its last BVM factory in Japan in 2007 and converted it into assembly lines for those things called LCD displays - a typical Sony silliness to shut down something popular with which the brand has a worldwide 70% market share since just about almost forever. However... however... the professionals weren't happy about this, they really were not. And given the reactions, Sony was forced to reopen two assy' lines in that factory : two lines solely dedicated to the ultimate 20" BVM-A monitor and the tiny portable 14" BVM that everybody uses on location shooting.

Yep - no serious film or video professional wants to use those crappy LCDs, no matter how big, no matter how slim, no matter what. LCDs have only two advantages : they don't take much room and, being lighter, they are less expensive to ship. But they have all the serious illnesses : they are nearly impossible to calibrate, they age extremely rapidly (thus bringing to zero the supposed advantage that they are more ecological), they suffer from remanence and narrow viewing angles. Go work with that ! I won't even mention the "Plasma" things which are beyond any kind of possible redemption. Did you really think that feature films are color-corrected and monitored on a super-duper 200" Plasma loaded with all sorts of cool filters to "better" the image ? No go, baby : no go.

Of course, Sony didn't reopen the entire factory for BVM CRT production - only two lines. But the reaction to that strikingly stupid decision perhaps made a couple of exec' at Sony realize :
a) how important some of their products are and,
b) you really can't fool professionals with the mumble-jumble blah-blah that sadly fooled 90% of the consumers.

And, of course, Sony will NOT make a lesson out of that and will continue its self-inflicted sabotage elsewhere within its lineups... Sony as usual.

But if there is still more than one intelligent person at Sony's Product Planning and advance marketing depts., Sony should know that the only next valid step after the Trinitron CRT is S.E.D.: it works exactly like a Trintron CRT, and is just as good, but allows huge sizes, is flat, doesn't age as fast as LCDs and does not suffer from remanence, narrow angles or black levels that look like 60% grey. Perfect plan : Sony would keep its Trinitron quality which is a worldwide standard accepted by all for the past thirty years. Sony would also keep -if not increase- its market-share AND would again make money instead of peddling somebody else's low-end products in hope of measly low-end sales margins. A plan that isn't too far fetched either.

But when you think Sony wasn't even in on SED and now merely acts as sub-seller for Samsung... it really makes you wonder if Ibuka and Morita ever existed.

The back buttons are :
- speakers on/off
- RGB level
- H center
- V hold
- "New Dynamic Colour"
- notch
- degauss
- wireless/wired RC.

The speakers are APM-X5A and the optional tuner is a VT-X5R.