Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

[rvnoice]

I am planning to buy a LCD TV with 12VDC/115VAC input. I want to run the TV on the RV's battery. Can someone tell me what is the best way to do it?

I heard recommendations from several friends and they recommended either using an inverter or a voltage stabilizer; but they cannot tell me why one is better than the other.

Any ideas?

Where can I find a good inverter or voltage stabilizer? How much do they cost in general?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Guest]

RE: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

If u have a 12 volt setup already on the tv ,, then i would just plug it into a spare cig lighter plug,,, also what type of rv do u have???
some have installed 12volt cig type plug ins ,, inside the rv, u just have to get a really long cord to plug in,,,
Does u'r rv have an inverter??? If it does then u can run the tv on 110 volt...(even though u are on the coach batteries)
Post us back on some info and i'm sure all of us here can help ..
Bty welcome to the forum,,, these people are great ,,, I do rv repairs ,, and even i run into probs,, i just post here ,, and i get GREAT suggestions ,, u know what they say 2 minds are better than one

 

[hertig]

Re: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

As the previous post said, if you have a 12v option on the TV, you can plug it into a 12 volt socket and there you are. On my trailer, it had a 12v outlet, an antenna jack and a 120 volt outlet right next to each other above the shelf where the TV was supposed to go. I chose the 12v option, as I could watch TV whether or not I was plugged in, and there was no 'waste' of power as there would have been with an inverter. And the 12v outlet was powered by the converter when the trailer was plugged in. so there was never a need for the 120v power option.

The coach has an inverter, and no 12v outlets except on the dashboard, and the TVs are already built in and 120v only, so I don't have any choice in the matter. I do plan to sprinkle some 12v outlets around some day, cause they do come in handy.

Adding an inverter is handy for powering small things which require 120v. Just be aware that many of them, particularly the small, cheap ones, produce very dirty power, which can bother or even damage some devices. And that there is some amount of power loss inherant in all of them, so your batteries won't last as long as you might think.

A 'voltage stabilizer' is not relavant to this discussion.

 

[The Swift]

Re: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

Hey There

I had the exact same problem as you a few months when touring Europe, as you have mentioned the majority of LCD’s on the market are the power friendly 12vDC, so the simple non-thinking punt would be to hack off the 240v/12v (in your case 110v/12v) transformer and hard wire the screen the screen to your RV’s 12v supply, before doing this, I decided to ask a few colleagues who I knew had powered them before and that’s were the fun started. One commercial fitter had blown up 2x LCD’s by using this method and others had experienced snowey problems and even green martian like faces, so I done some investigating on-line and found that . . . . .LCD/TFT are very susceptible to higher voltages than 12 volts and voltages of 13.8 volts and above cause damage to the thousands of TFT’s that make up the picture. The problem manifests itself in the loss of picture quality due to the loss of pixels on the screen that over a period becomes very noticeable. The voltage within vehicles and vary between 10-15 volts depending upon the electrical load of the 12 volt circuits and whether the batteries are being charged or not at the time, and with some further investigation I found a company called Amperor Inc who specialise in PSU’s and they have a device that supplies a constant 12 volt DC when the voltage is fluctuating anywhere in the range between 10-28 volts, always worth checking before you blow your prize possession (no pun intended)

P.S Hertig, I couldn’t disagree with a word you said as I myself are trying to steer away from the inverter avenue for all my relatively low powered DC equipment

Hope this can be of some use

:

 

[routabit]

RE: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

I'm not sure if this helps, but this is what we do when we dry camp. We can live with battery powered latern or two for inside lighting. But after dinner and before bed, we enjoy watching a DVD. I'm not rude enough to run my generator after dark while people may be out watching a campfire or something quiet.

I have a 15"LCD TV that will run on either 12VDC or 115V. I bought this TV for less weight, less heat, low power needs and higher resolution than most CRT's of similar size. My shelf space wouldn't take the weight of a 15"CRT and is only large enough for a 12"CRT. We also have a 5-disc DVD/CD /Surround/Receiver system that runs on 115V when I have shore power.

I have a high quality 12V inverter ($50/400W?) to run the TV on 115V, but running the 5-disc surround receiver just takes too much power shortening battery life so we couldn't complete a movie. So we bought a cheapo ($40) DVD because of the low power need that we use for dry camping and we now have enough battery to watch a full movie on the 15" LCD and still have 3 lights left on the monitor so we have lights when getting ready for bed. We used to end up 1 light after a two-hour movie, so last year I built a two battery box and added second battery in series and haven't had a problem since.

 

[hertig]

Re: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

They do have 12V DVD players. In my old trailer, I had a RCA TV/VCR which worked off 120 or 12 volts. Next to it I had a small DVD player which only worked on 120. But in the bedroom, I had a LCD TV and DVD player, both 12 volt only.

 

[routabit]

Re: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

I felt that there could be a problem with running an LCD on 12V batteries where the voltage levels can drop below the design parameters while watching a 2-hr movie w/o shore power. Insteadm I chose to run them on the 115V inverter to gaurantee a clean, stabile A/C output or just it shuts down before harming the equipment.

 

[rvnoice]

RE: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

Thank you very much for all your help. My "rv" has both 12vdc outlets and 115vac (via an inverter). I wired them myself to save a few $$. Yesterday,my electrical engineer friend offered to take a look at the inverter output with an oscilloscope. The output surprised me; it was not a sine wave, more like a square wave. This is probably the cause of "snowey problems and even green martian like faces" that The Swift referred to. I wonder if this would cause problems down the road.

My current inclination is to use the 12vdc power supply and find a way to stabilize its output.

 

[The Swift]

Re: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV



Reason for the square wave is primary due the fact that the inverter is a modified sine wave (cheaper option), but there some good ones out there, if you looking for an inverter to produce an almost perfect sine wave form just like a the mains in your house, you will probably need a Pure Sine Wave Inverter but as for these the price tends to rise quire considerably
If hook-up is not available to you, and you are relying on battery power my preference is to always run small power consuming appliances directly off the 12 volts as it is more efficient, going down the inverter avenue means you are going from 12 VDC to 230Vac then back down to 12VDC with thanks to the LCD’s supplied mains adapter, possibly resulting in using twice as much energy being consumed . . . . .not very PC these days as everything is going green
If you intent on direct 12 volts I would give the Amperor Inc boys a whirl as they seem to have the tailor made product

 

[The MeerKat]

Re: Hooking up a 17" LCD TV

The Swift - 10/2/2007 10:06 AM



Reason for the square wave is primary due the fact that the inverter is a modified sine wave (cheaper option), but there some good ones out there, if you looking for an inverter to produce an almost perfect sine wave form just like a the mains in your house, you will probably need a Pure Sine Wave Inverter but as for these the price tends to rise quire considerably
If hook-up is not available to you, and you are relying on battery power my preference is to always run small power consuming appliances directly off the 12 volts as it is more efficient, going down the inverter avenue means you are going from 12 VDC to 230Vac then back down to 12VDC with thanks to the LCD’s supplied mains adapter, possibly resulting in using twice as much energy being consumed . . . . .not very PC these days as everything is going green
If you intent on direct 12 volts I would give the Amperor Inc boys a whirl as they seem to have the tailor made product

MK

Many Thanks Swift

I ended up purchasing the 2 Amperor Voltage Stabilisers, one for my LCD and the other for my SkyBox, could have went doen the inverter road but the Swift managed to swat me - May I add that it was top service from Amperor as I had the stabiliser within two working days