We are going to update our TV above the dash. At present it is the orginal 13".

We are thinking around 19" and could consider a fold down larger unit. Really feel we don't need such though. Have any of you recently explored or done an update of this nature?

Thanks,


Dale

Yesterday I was at Costco and there was a nice 19 inch LCD for a good price. I bought a 17 inch LCD for our Barth and I really like it. I used a pice of burich plywood ffor the TV to attach to.

Dennis, is such a DC/AC unit?

Dale

Dale, we had 2 13" tvs in the bus when we bought it. Bought a 22" Sharp and a 15" Phillips flat screen lcd to replace them with. Both have ac/dc adapters and i thought i would wire them direct to 12 volt so that when we were dry camping we would not take juice from the batteries and run it thru the inverter to change it to 110v and then back thru the adapter to change it back to 12v. Thought it was just a simple 2 wire setup but it turns out there are 5-6 wires involved. Only tried it on one of them and it only cost me $120 to have it fixed. Good idea but beyond my simple electrical skills. Maybe somebody like Ron could figure out how to do it......they might even have an adapter that you could plug direct into a cigarette lighter but i haven't checked into that. Hey!!!.... maybe it was because i didn't think to integrate a m/m cord into the system.!

Shadow, I'm glad you done it not me. But I never thought of using the m/m cord. Hmmm. - good idea.

I think ron went to take a poop and the hogs ate him. Oh ron Oh ron, where are you? Got to love that ron.

Or maybe ron tried to use the cord. You know how it is, you tell somebody not to do something and they say they won't, but.......in the back of their mind they still want to try it just to see for themselves........R.I.P. Ron. Ps. we told ya so.

My LCD TV is 12 Volts DC. I tried running it off the lighter plug-in, but it didn't work. The sat reciever is 120 so I needed that to run the outfit. Those LCD TV's sure have a nice picture. It seems when we are on the road we always tune to the weather channel to see what kind of head winds we will be fighting the next day.

Yes they do have a nice picture, and the sound on the 22" is almost like a movie theater. We also check the weather channel, not for winds but for too hot, too cold, and rain.....try to avoid them all, especially the last two!

quote:

Originally posted by Shadow man:
We also check the weather channel for too hot, too cold, and rain.....try to avoid them all, especially the last two!

Ummmm...........you're in Seattle now?

bill h. give me the scoop on a TV. Ours now say AC/DC so when I go to buy is that what I have to find, or are there ways around such?

Dale

P.S. ron is still ALIVE and I guess so is his MONEY-GO.



[This message has been edited by Smith Brother (edited June 26, 2005).]

quote:

Originally posted by Smith Brother:
bill h. give me the scoop on a TV. Ours now say AC/DC so when I go to buy is that what I have to find, or are there ways around such?

Dale

Sadly, my TV knowledge is not current, and I know very little about LCD, HD and plasma tv. Heck, we use our house tv so little I can barely turn it on. But, generally, if the TV has a wall wart with a 12 volt output, then you can cobble up a cord from a 12 volt outlet like a cigarette lighter to the input of the TV.

It will look suspiciously like a male-male cord, however.

Any television with a two conductor input marked 12 volts will be fine if the wiring is heavy enough. In some situations, a lot of current is needed to get things going, then much less is all it needs to operate. Beyond that, each individual set with more than two wires requires its own set up. You could use a meter to read the output and figure out what goes where. There seem to be several protocols rather than one standard. The newer inverters are pretty efficient if you do end up needing AC to power the tv.

BTW, I have heard some sad stories about plasma tvs at high altitudes.

Ummmmm yes we are in the Seattle area and will probably be here until mid to late Oct. I need to work for a while to build up the traveling/playing fund and for the medical insurance. After having months and months of blue sky it is kind of hard to get used to grey sky again,... hopefully summer will show up one of these days and stick around for awhile. As for the tv thing i think what i tried is what you suggested...bypassing the adapter and wiring it straight to a 12v source. Turned out that there are 5 fuses in my tv and i blew them all when i turned it on. They said they had never seen that happen before....one or two but never all 5 at once. Was not in the mood at the time to tell them how it happened although now i can kind of laugh about it some. My forte' has never been anything electrical so i should know better and leave such things to the experts like Ron. But every now and then i think.... "I can do this, it should work just fine". Oh well a guy has to experiment once in awhile.

When I updated my TV from the silly little Phillips 9 in. to a Sony 13 in. I bit the bullet and went to a well know bus conversion place. They did a beautiful job and even installed an external cable adapter and AB switches to go from that to the roof ant. Cost a few hundred bucks but I thought it was reasonable and it looks beautiful. Especially when you consider how much we watch TV these days.

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Boy do I feel like a cheapskate. I looked at the LCD's and thought, "I'm not paying $700 for the size display I wanted. Plus it would give a thief a reason to break into my camper and steal it. So for $134.00 I bought a Toshiba 13" with built-in DVD on sale at Best Buy. Perfectly fit in place of the original 13".

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Larry and Heidi from CA