If you are thinking about buying a 12v Digital tv for your caravan or canper go to Comet and look for the tvs that comes with a power pack.
Most of the smaller one have a power pack ,With 240v in and 12v 3amp out. By not useing the power pack you can plug strait into you 12v socket in your van and it will work fine.
You will need to buy a plug the same as the one that is on the power pack that plugs in to the tv,and make up a lead . You can get these from Maplins .
I have just bought a 15in TV with a bult in DVD from Comet for £139
and it works fine on 12volt and of cors i can use it on the mains as well.
Slight problem with this. Your "12 volt" battery is actually more than 12 volts, potentially 13.8 volts when fully charged. Your new LCD TV will work nicely on this, but not for very long I am afraid. Quite a few TVs have failed prematurely due to overvoltage. You can get 12 volt stabilisers, or even build your own with a little electrical knowledge.
Dave have a look at my recent post "Bargain TV for caravan", I picked up a 19" true 16:9 LCD in comet for £129, thats deffo a 12v TV which will accept a bit over 12v as they even sell a lead for it for car use.
Hope your happy with your new purchase :)
P.S, it you want to make sure you can get a little 12v voltage reg from maplin, with a little bit of electrical knowledge you can put one inside a cig/clipsal 12v plug, 3 pins to wire up, Power in, ground power out, that will guarentee no more than 12v get to the set. I might even do a how to on here with pictures, so everyone can follow step by step and they need not worry about their tv's :)
almost all Zig and other makes of M/home and Caravan chargers when EHU only charge at 12 Volts,so there should not be a problem.
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Dave have a look at my recent post "Bargain TV for caravan", I picked up a 19" true 16:9 LCD in comet for £129, thats deffo a 12v TV which will accept a bit over 12v as they even sell a lead for it for car use.
Hope your happy with your new purchase :)
P.S, it you want to make sure you can get a little 12v voltage reg from maplin, with a little bit of electrical knowledge you can put one inside a cig/clipsal 12v plug, 3 pins to wire up, Power in, ground power out, that will guarentee no more than 12v get to the set. I might even do a how to on here with pictures, so everyone can follow step by step and they need not worry about their tv's :)
You need to make sure the voltage regulator you get can cope with the current. I made the mistake of using one that was too small. The TV goes into standby when the power is connected but when you turn it on, the screen flickers and then goes back into standby as the regulator cannot cope with the current. Looking on the Maplin website, I cannot find one that can handle 12 volts at 3 amps. RS components list one.
I expect 3 a is sufficient for most LCD tvs. I actually built one for my TV using the 3a one after but never got round to testing it. You could get around it by connecting more than one in parallel I guess.
A 12v to 12v converter is stupid money when you consider the cost of the components.
Any reputable dealer in TV specifically for motorhomers/caravanners will supply a regulator with any TV over 17" as these are the ones most prone to voltage fluctuations.
All our 19" 12v/240 come with a regulator included and 12v leads are supplied with all TV's
We have had no problems with the 15".
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I picked up a TEAC 19" from Dixons on line (picture is excellent, vertical viewing angle pretty good, sound is a bit tinny - ok very tinny) that has a 240v to 12v brick. Worried that the 13.2 - 13.8 that you might see from the battery would kill the set quickly, I added a 6A rectifier diode in line with the + line and 2 more on a switched bypass. The junction voltage drop on the Diodes is enough to attenuate the caravan supply down to the normal level input voltage that the regulated brick produces. That way I can have all diodes in when on EHU or just one when not.
Its not elegant, but very effective, very simple and very cheap.
The diodes are 79p each from Maplins. Just be aware that a 19" with DVD will draw about 4 to 5 amps at 12v. This will generate some (significant) heat in the diodes (or in ANY DC-DC regulator circuit), but it does mean I dont need the brick at all, EHU or not...
Now just need some 12v external speakers to rectify the sound issue!
We would like to get a 12v tv for our van, could anyone tell me what to get if I were to buy the one that DaleR recommends? You all make it sound so complicated!!! Is there a thing I can buy that I plug it into and I can use it without fear of over powering it? But not in nerd speak of course!!!
Quote: Originally posted by pete1946 on 08/5/2009
almost all Zig and other makes of M/home and Caravan chargers when EHU only charge at 12 Volts,so there should not be a problem.
sorry pete your wrong ,put a volt meter across the output and you will see a charging voltage of nearly 14 volts ,a battery charger has to charge at a higher voltage than the nominal battery voltage.
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Topic: 12v TVs
