[Scuddie]

Well, I've had this 32" Zenith for about seven years now.  As far back as I can remember, there has been a problem with image quality, and general layout of the TV.  I just thought it was a limitation of standard tube televisions to have the picture cropped on the outsides, and having the reds bleed far over to the right and green/blue bleed far over to the left during high contrast images.

However, I went to my cousin's house one day to play some PS2 goodness, except on his econo-box ($79?) 19" RCA TV.  I was ofcourse not impressed with the size of his television, and even less with the quality of the speakers.  But when the thing lit up, I was literally in awe of the brilliant clarity of it.  I could actually read the small text on that TV!  Color was bright, but unintrusive to the neighboring pixels, etc.

And then I got thinking.  His TV is just under four years old, and it was a generic 19", but the quality was FAR superior to my own.  I even turned up his TV's contrast, color, and brightness to the max, and proceeded to play Burnout 3.  There was no color bleeding ANYWHERE!

So do I have a bad TV?

[StratComm]

In a word, yes.  Unless your TV is projection to his CRT, in which case you might just be looking at the effects of a projected image, you shouldn't be getting any bleeding.  And projection TVs, especially those pre-HD, were a bit notorious for their color and clarity problems.  But you shouldn't be seeing a lot of color bleeding under practically any circumstances.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, any CRT made in the last several years should have a relatively good picture.  The only ones I've ever seen with bleeding colors/distorted images had dying tubes in them; sounds like that's your problem.

[Clave]

Have you tried de-gaussing?  You might also check for stray magnetic fields from speakers and the like.  But if it's 7 years old, it could be time to replace it anyway..

Oh, and for picture sharpness, small screen > large screen it's just physics.