Commodore 64 on Sony PVM 14M1J Monitor

Look what the cat dragged in...
After I confirmed in my last post that the video output of my C64 is actually working fine, I was ready to look for a more permanent video display solution. Since any the original Commodore monitors is hard to come by these days, and even more so in Japan, I had to look for something else.

Being in Japan, though, helped me out for a change. In the retro computing community it is well known that the professional line of Sony monitors, originally used in TV broadcasting and medical applications, are the best option for scanline hunters and retro gamers like me.


I was lucky enough to snag a 14 inch PVM from Yahoo Auction for only ¥6000 plus ¥1400 shipping, while an equal model probably costs you something like 200 bucks anywhere overseas before shipping.

Unfortunately, despite the careful packing job, it didn't quite like the transport and the plastic front bezel got cracked. Nothing a little Duct Tape can't fix and it has no influence on its functionality and picture quality, but it definitely lost all it's resell value.



The PVM 14M1J model has 4 inputs in the back. Two of which are composite, one for s-video and one RGB with sync switchable either as external c-sync or as sync-on-green.

It has 600 TV lines, automatically detects and handles both PAL and NTSC sources, plus has a slew of options to tweak via the on screen display.

More details on Sony's official PVM-14M1J page in Japanese.

All I needed now was a relatively cheap Commodore 64 S-Video cable. I got the one to the left off of Ebay for about 14 bucks. There's always several listings with different connectors (e.g. 1 or 2 audio connectors  although the C64 only outputs mono, s-video and/or composite connectors). No use to go with the lower quality of composite video when the PVM takes s-video, so the choice for me was clear.



And now I have the perfect display option that's arguably even better quality than what I had back in the 80s when I owned an original Commodore monitor.