Guest Mel E Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 We're all switching to LCD TVs in our motorhomes because they're much less bulky (so why do even brand new motorhome designs still have slide-out TV cupboards?) If you're in the market, I recommend you see what you're buying in operation before your buy. The LCD panels are made by very few companies in very few factories, so there is unlikely to be much difference here. (It was the same with TV tubes - only one UK factory supplied almost all assembers until it closed last year). The big difference is in the electronic circuit boards that receive and process the signal. Here there are very significant differences and a poor (often cheap) set can be almost unwatchable. The differences between good and bad are much more extreme with LCD than with tube TVs. Some cheap sets can be excellent and expensive ones awful. Price is not necessarily a guide. So try before you buy! Or buy from somewhere that offers a no-quibble return policy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mike Chapman Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 Hello Mel, Thanks for the advice especially as I am just starting to look at LCD TV,s. I have found a good start point is to look at the multiple displays of working TV,s in such stores as John Lewis, Comet, Sainsbury's etc. This gives a good start point comparison of the capabilities of the various models. Do you have any specific recommendation? Regards, Mike Chapman. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mel E Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 1. First choose your screen size. 8inch or less is only any good if you're a very occasional TV watcher. 2. Do you need 12 volt or will 240 volt via an inverter (see posts below about inverters) do? If 12 volt essential, you'll probably have to buy from a supplier to the camping/mobile business. 3. Do you need to be able to receive TV abroad? If so you need a multi-standard set (PAL/SECAM at least). 4. That eliminates lots of sets. 5. The alternative is to use a laptop with a DVD drive and buy a plu-in tuner. But most such tuners are of very poor quality and only suitable for the news, etc. Again, try before you buy. 6. I do the latter at present, with a 15.1 inch widescreen laptop. Great quality on DVDs. Poor TV, but I am about to investigate alternatives. Unless someone out there has done so? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pete walker Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 just bought a 15 inch tft(sanyo)nicam stereo with fast text, works well in the house, fantastic picture quality (sharp and bright)sounds good too.not tried it in the van yet as we park outside the house in a busy street, so i don't want to advertise to all who pass. we also bought an inverter (150 watt) from aldi for £14.99, the t v was £149.95 (£100 off) from powerhouse. pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PeteC Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 Well we have two LCD TV's in our household 1 In the home 12" (or equivalent metric) 2 Also 12" in the van Both came from a High Street store ( different ones) both run off 240V via a charger, but could run off 12V if I could find a suitable connecter (could buy an extra acharger & cut off the power pack - or just cut the lead from the power pack & fit suitable connecters to allow powwer pack or 12V supply to be connected in ) Both are multi stanard We dont have a satelite dish in the van so we get local TV - we have played "Price is right" in Portugese (We can work out the €uro prices from the pictures - and we learned their numbering system and a game called "Lingo" in Holland but didnt understand the meanings of the words they made up - but did learn the "sounds" of the letters & how to pronounce those words that we could read) Going to the shop (we could have saved from the shops web sales) meant that we could see the sets working You can also take measurements to see that they will fit in Both sets take about 0.5A Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mike Chapman Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 Hello Mel, Thank you for the information it will form a good check list for one whose knowledge of TV's is to say the least restricted. Regards, Mike Chapman. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Clive Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 OK Mel, Don't talk around the subject, get to the point! What did you buy? Regards, hope all is well. Clive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mickt Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 Just bought a 15inch LCD from Argos£169.99, multistandard 12volt/240volt. A good picture plus text, varios imputs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dave Newell Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 Mel I have the AVERMEDIA digital tv tuner PCMCIA card which is a little cracker as it does FM radio, analogue TV and Digital terrestrial TV. Action Replay do this card for just short of £100 but you can find it cheaper from Maplins or webstores such as Ebuyer.com. the most important detail is a decent aerial, in my experience the Status omnidirectional (mushroom on the roof) is cr*p and the directional unit is much better (although I have seen two of these DOA so suspect quality control in the factory is a bit hit and miss). A decent 10 element wideband household aerial is available for £10 to £15 and this, although a bit fiddlier to erect and setup will perform a lot better than any built in unit I've seen. peteC I would advise caution in using your LCD TV directly from your 'vans 12 volt system. Most of these type TVs are VERY sensitive to voltage and the power supply that came with it will give a regulated 12 volt output. If it only takes 0.5 amps then a 12 volt regulator is available at sensible cost from Maplins which will do the job nicely. Regards Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Neal Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 Mel Just this morning I was looking at an ALBA 15" LCD TV in Tesco. It was £179.99, had the necessary VESO (is that right?) fixing points, and a SCART socket. Picture quality looked good. I don't need European reception (we have satellite) and I don't need 12Vdc operation. Does this seem like a good price? Regards Neal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PeteC Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 Thanks Dave - the reason that I havent cut the wires or pressed hard to find a connecter For info Belkin do a Power surge/failure connecter Besides covering surges it had an emergency supply to let you shut down before loosing any thing Wish I had had one of these last Sept when the power gave a momentary glitch just as I was changeing programs Lost ALL items off the HD The change in power Cluttered up the HD completely & had to return the PC to factory condition Not fatal but extreemly seriously ill Some of these continental suppies are a bit hit & miss so I am getting one to use in the van We have a PCM1A card & also take our WiFi card with us lots of sites seem to be getting WiFi now & some at reasonable rates Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mel E Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 Clive, I posted a reply yesterday that said exactly what I've done to date but it seems to have disappeared! I use my laptop with a 15.1 inch widescreen and built-in DVD reader.writer which is fine for movies, etc. I have a (rather poor) runer that came with it as part of the package. Hence Dave's solution is of interest and I will try it out asap (somewhat occupied the next couple of weeks!!) As a cheap tip to anyone worried about suffering Pete C's problem, buy a second hard disk for your computer. I've had two on mine for the last 5 years, one with the system and programs and the other with my data. I back up each to the other regularly with old backup and new backup on each. It's saved me twice when the system has crashed and I've lost everything on the main drive. You can get both internal and external (USB) drives for next to nothing these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest gary Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 Dave,you mention a supply regulator from Maplins, do you know there part number please Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dave Newell Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Gary L17AR is a 1 ampere regulated power supply built into a cigar lighter type plug and covers 1.5, 3, 4.5, 6, 9 and 12 volt output voltages listed in the spring/summer catalogue on page 386 for £7.99 inc VAT. It also has a range of the most popular "power tips" (the connection to your equipment) to cover most if not all equipment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dave Newell Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Gary I've just checked the Maplins website and the L17AR regulator unit is now £8.99. Sorry for previous inaccuracy. Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest martin Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 TFT - LCD - Plasma What's it all about? Does it matter? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dave Newell Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Martin, TFT stands for thin film transistor and is a means of displaying information on a thin flat screen. LCD stands for liquid crystal display and is another version of the above. Plasma is a totally different technology but the end result is the same, to enable the display of visual info on a thin flat screen. The advantage of all three technologies is they take up less space and, genrally speaking, give a brighter, sharper display that is also totally flat. LCD/TFT screens are of interest to motorcaravanners because they: 1/ take up less space. 2/ have virtually no warm up time. 3/ consume less power than equivalent sized CRT displays. 4/ are often, if not always, DC powered and frequently 12 volt at that, so would appear ideally suited to motorcaravan use. By the way the CRT in point 3 stands for cathode ray tube and is the technology used to project a picture onto the phosphorescent coating on the inside face of a conventional television screen in order to produce the tv picture, it consumes significantly more power and takes up much more space. That's what it's all about and it matters to those who wish to use tv sets in their motorhomes. Personally, despite owning the technology to watch digital TV, DVD, VCD, SVCD, hard drive video recordings in MPEG1,2,and 4 in our 'van we rarely bother. We tend to do most of our camping with groups of friends (AKA like minded lunatics) and spend our evenings socializing, eating out, drinking out and generally making fools of ourselves but having funn all the same. Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest John Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Dave Newell mentioned using the “AVERMEDIA” PCMCIA card digital TV tuner with his laptop. I am interested if any of you have specific experience of the Freecom DVB-T USB Stick; a similar device but used via one of the laptops USB’s ports. I would love to try before I buy but can’t fathom a way to do that. · What is the performance like relative to analogue reception, assuming use of a good external aerial? · How successfully is the combination as a TV recorder [PVR]; recording whilst away when set up on the timer? · Have you played with using it to record films from the TV, and then burn to DVDs, so being able to watch them at leisure without cluttering the laptops HD? They are now down to £41.35 if pre-ordered online from PCWorld Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dave NEwell Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 Mel and anyone else who is interested, Maplins now have the AVERMEDIA HYBRID PCMCIA digital tv card for £59.99 their code number is A74FL. Sorry john, no experience of the Freecom unit but see no real reason why it shouldn't work just as well as the Avermedia unit. Your laptop will need to be a fairly modern spec to cope with the datastream and you will need a large hard drive for recording. Mine worked fine for recording from the digital reception but the processor isn't fast enough to convert analogue for recording in MPEG2. Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chris Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 My first post here but thanks to all for your comments. I have read v.g reports of the Avermedia PCMCIA card but has any body found a USB based tuner? Is it possible to get a PCMCIA tto USB converter? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest John Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Chris, I am looking at going the Avermedia route but wanting USB2. This is to be able to use the device at home on the desktop to make DVD recordings of TV programs for use on the laptop later on when away, as well as using it on the laptop itself. However in discussion with Avermedia UK, their Jon Rainford Business Development Executive informed me "in February the Hybrid + FM USB 2.0 will be released and I feel this may meet you needs better". This might interest you; I will wait to see its pricing. John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chris Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 1. Thanks John - I will try them again in Feb! 2. Using 12 volt supply. Some earlier posts were talking about using 12V supply for LCD & laptops. I have been advised that although the leisure (or other vehicle) battery may be nominally 12v they are often 14v plus. Apparently this higher voltage does not do the screens etc any good and the suggested route was to use a mains hook up (or 12v -240v inverter) to power the kit through the adapter lead supplied as that regulated and "smooths" the supply. Hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dave Newell Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 Chris, If you read my earlier postings in this thread on this issue there are 12vdc-15,16,18,20,24vdc selectable output units available that solve this issue completely for laptops without resorting to inverters to run the laptops own power supply. As for the 12VCD LCD screens, again I posted this point earlier in this thread and reccomend the use of a voltage regulator if one is available. Larger screens take more current (15in typically takes 2 Amps plus but 12 in screens often only require 1-1.5 amps). Maplins do a 1 Amp 12volt regulator and a 1.5 Amp regulator for under a tenner each. dave@davenewell.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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