Now that sounds appealing. I knew about the antennae, and figured it would require the converter box, but I'm not even going to go there. I have downloaded copies of many TV series and about 500+ movies in Divx, Xvid and H264 formats on the PC. My idea was to eventually set up my small toaster sized Shuttle PC out in the van with a wireless network connection, hooked up to a nice flat panel wide screen format 15" 1080i screen that runs on 12VDC. I've seen a few out there that are reasonable, and they should all have the standard footprint most all LCD panels do for mounting purposes. I'm not sure if I have the fiberglass roof or not?

Second battery for sure, marine battery I was thinking. I've had a second battery in a car before to power the power amp that was driving my 12's. I used a boat battery enclosure which worked well. Understood about moving the converter closer to the battery. Actually thinking about just installing the second battery and tying the inverter into the second battery and running some A/C to that area near the TV under the carpet. The TV I currently have is CRT and runs on 12VDC, but again, want to ultimately upgrade. Just trying to get it working for now. Thanks for the tips all!!!

 

For future reference, this is the FCC website that calculates via zipcode what stations you should be getting anywhere in the country: http://www.dtv.gov/stationlist.htm

Just type in your zipcode and go. For increased troubleshooting- you can access the google earth option on that site, and get you location and the antenna broadcast towers- with a line connecting the two, and work out the line of site difficulties as to why your getting a bad signal where it predicts you should be getting a good one. The DTV suffers from fading just like satellites do- too many trees can block a signal that the older analog would compensate for, etc. We had a poor woman living near the train station- everytime the train went by, her tv went blank.... the correlations to the road with it's traffic is obvious there- so be wise where you park. As of July, there was NO DTV converter box designed to be plugged into a car lighter- perhaps later on, but not now.

As always, know you can use a directional antennas to block or compensate for a signal- and the old rules for UHF and VHF antennas still apply- the only thing that changed was the box itself, not the antenna.

And yes- more often than not, you will have to rescan even the new DTV compatible TVs made after march 2007- the date of the industry wide national change over for all US tvs. Here is the kicker- most VCRs are not digital ready, even if your TV is, and if you want to record on your VCR- you'll need 99 percent of the time a converter box for the VCR.

If you see someone struggling at a campground with this, let them know.

 

Most Marine batteries are glorified starting batteries. Some claim they are just a marketing scam. They use a Marine Cranking Amps rating which I think is tested at 32 degrees and will read higher than a CCA rating tested at 0 degs f.

A true deep cycle battery will last much longer, calender wise, than a Marine/RV/trolling/dual purpose battery would in the same application and recharging treatment. Most true deep cycle batteries do not post a CCA/CA/ or MCA rating.

Now true deep cycle batteries cost more, so the difference could be having to buy a 70 dollar battery every 2-3 years, or a more expensive 110$ true deep cycle every 4-6 years.

Battery longevity is largely determined by how deep it is discharged, and how long it remains below 90 percent charge. The worst thing you can do to a battery is run it down till the appliances shut off and then leave it discharged for any amount of time.

I know the "12 volt side of life" is a long read, but it will help you greatly in the short and long run.

If you are going to use your PC, They make Car adapters which convert 12.8 volts DC up to 19.5 volts DC.+/- 2 volts

If you plan on plugging the Laptop into the inverter, you are inverting 12.8 volts DC to 120 volts AC, then the power brick is then converting 120 AC back to DC @ ~19 volts. Functional but not very effecient.

My car adapter uses 20 to 35 % less amperage than my inverter and power brick.

If your laptop draws less than a 80 watts, a univeral adapter is inexpensive(20 to 30$), however mine melted because my laptop will draw over a hundred doing some energy hungry tasks, like watching DVDs. I had to buy one rated for 120 watts for 65$. So look at your power brick and multiply the output amps times the voltage that will give you the wattage draw.

I'd like to see the 12 volt 15 inch 1080i TV's you've found.

My 7 inch LCD flat panel TV has a headphone plug, and I ran an extension to my Sony dashboard stereo. The sound quality is very good but not quite on Par with a home surround sound system.

Also consider in wiring a dedicated plug in wall smart charger. Get one the goes to at least 25 amps.

 

This is a 12 volt DC converter box, though it does not have a Ciggy plug, but one could easily be attached to it.



http://www.tvconverterboxstore.com/s...ter-box/Detail

 

Here's one, but I'm not finding the ones I was looking at before for some reason:

http://cgi.ebay.com/12v-15-Digital-L...3286.m63.l1177

 

Here's more what I was talking about, found it in my history:

http://cgi.ebay.com/15-AC-DC-1080i-A...d=p3286.c0.m14

http://cgi.ebay.com/13-3-AC-DC-Digit...d=p3286.c0.m14

 

For you converter you should get 750W black decker from walmart, hard wire the unit onto battery it cost around $65 for the converter, you can run up to 6.5A from that thing.If you have 90A alternator in your van upgrade to 136A at least depends on what you gona be running maybe higher.I m running 5A on AC side, DC is about 46A or 500Watts with this setup with no problem regular battery also from walmart 750CCA.I m only running this when my van is on and it works fine.Make sure on your wires to use only copper wire.

 

Thanks for posting those links.

I don't see too much advantage of using those TV's over a laptop. They both use around 5 amps at 12 volts. My 6 year old Laptop with a 15.5 screen running a DVD uses around 6, 6.5 amps. You can get an ATSC tuner for your laptop.

That one TV which claims 1080i is not, if you look at the resolution listed. It will receive and play 1080i broadcasts, but not in that resolution.

Zanko79, how loud is the Fan on that B&D inverter you listed? I hardwired in a 400 watt B&D for a guy. It was loud.

And not that it is important, nut in the RV/ solar world, a Converter turns 120 volts AC into 12 volts DC. An Inverter turns 12 volts DC into 120 volts AC.

 

You are right my bad i didnt even realize that they were talking about converters.
It is somewhat loud but it really doesnt bother me not that bad.

 

Not going to use a laptop at all. I plan on using a small form factor PC with a larger hard disk for the purpose. That being the case, I may not go with an all in one TV such as this at all, but a wide screen LCD that runs on DC power of some kind. Just ideas. The all in one TV is nice, due to the fact it has a built in DVD player and would run without PC, so as to take it in stages. My Shuttle PC has bad USB ports and a bad PCI slot, so I can't get any kind of wireless networking working on it, therefore I would need to replace my Shuttle box, and my budget for such things is pretty limited for a while.

Actually going to just live with the CRT screen I have for now for a while, but want to make sure to get proper power in place before doing anything. Thanks for the tips on the deep cycle battery as well as the higher amperage alternator, that would be the best idea to start with anyway, and my main battery needs replacing along with battery cables. Gotta start somewhere though and wanted to know, from experience, the best way to approach it. Thanks for all the great tips guys!