Paging Mena661

One has to be careful with those ambient light sensors.

Our residential big screen has that option in it's setup menu and I learned early-on to keep it turned off. The picture quality was degraded a lot with this "feature" turned on - the images were too dark most of the time.

Images being (maybe too) dark is how wattage is kept low and one may not like too-dark images. However regarding myself, I spent way too many hours calibrating screen images to reference standards and most likely got too caught up in perfection when good enough was probably good enough.

The high resolution widescreen laptop that doubles for watching movies in our motorhome has it's picture brightness force-set to maximum for good image quality due to it's particular screen characteristics. It's 12V brick sucks around 3 amps to do this, however. I also leave the laptop's ambient light sensing function off when we use it in the motorhome. I switched to a 12V brick for the widescreen laptop to reduce drain on the motorhome's batteries when drycamping versus using the laptop's stock 120V AC brick that came with it that had to be powered by the motorhome's inverter. I figure that the single level DC to DC up-conversion from 12 volts up to 18 volts (from the RV's batteries up to the laptop's internal DC voltage) is more energy efficient than the up/down-conversions and DC/AC/DC transformations required when using the RV battery to power the inverter to power the laptop's stock brick.

But ... your results may vary.

msiminoff wrote:
As another data point; I have a 23" Samsung LCD TV (also from Costco). The current draw on my house battery is 1.4A when powered directly from the battery and 3.8A when running from its power brick via the inverter.
-Mark

Was your brick 14V and now you run it on 12v off the battery? Any issues with the voltage drop and running it on 12V?

SCVJeff wrote:

NinerBikes wrote:

mena661 wrote:
Very nice Niner, we can put that TV on the low power "list".

Hard to tell for sure, but it's a far cry from the 40 watts from the last unit. I am sure that the heat from the brick and the heat from the inverter, if I cut out the conversion from 12V to 120V then back to 14 or 12, what ever the out put of the brick... pretty sure I can do better with less load on the battery if I do a 12V direct battery to the TV and bypass the brick/converter.

Does your fancy supply have enough range to bench test that?

I got about 2.85 amps on the positive cable with the TV/ converter and brick on, and about .25 amp with all the power supply and TV off, with 12.4V sitting in the battery. Will have to see what happens with 12v direct and re measure at the positive cable again with the DC clamp meter. At this point, spending $7 for a 12V plug and cigarette plug too, doesn't make good financial sense for the miniscule amps savings... More interested in cleaning up all the wiring behind the TV with something more clean and direct. Too much hanging around out of that silly 12V outlet jack.

Noticed that no matter what, that 12v brick sucks the amps, TV on or off.

NinerBikes wrote:

mena661 wrote:
Very nice Niner, we can put that TV on the low power "list".

Hard to tell for sure, but it's a far cry from the 40 watts from the last unit. I am sure that the heat from the brick and the heat from the inverter, if I cut out the conversion from 12V to 120V then back to 14 or 12, what ever the out put of the brick... pretty sure I can do better with less load on the battery if I do a 12V direct battery to the TV and bypass the brick/converter.

Does your fancy supply have enough range to bench test that?

Displays are a whole different problem. I recall that there weren't even 1080 monitors for sale at the time, and marquis displays were a million $$ for a 20x30' monitor.. We priced one.. :(
They built the entire network out as 720, not just the sports trucks. Running an up-converter isn't a big deal, but nothing of the day could deal with the data, even if the Skycam could have been carried. Nobody in their right mind would base that kind if an investment on one Skycam. For what they do, it just made sense at the time.

You're right about 1080p, but there is not sufficient OTA bandwidth to transmit that format. Its now obsolete anyway as everyone is now pushing 4K, and as soon as they saturate the market, 8K is coming right behind it, but with current technology you owned see either over the air.. It may come, but current gen encoders simply cannot compress that far... This week

It's a good thing CBS had the 2004 Super Bowl. Us TV guys would have had a much harder time making full zoomed in Janet Jackson posters out of a 720 frame.. :)

mena661 wrote:
Very nice Niner, we can put that TV on the low power "list".

Hard to tell for sure, but it's a far cry from the 40 watts from the last unit. I am sure that the heat from the brick and the heat from the inverter, if I cut out the conversion from 12V to 120V then back to 14 or 12, what ever the out put of the brick... pretty sure I can do better with less load on the battery if I do a 12V direct battery to the TV and bypass the brick/converter.

Very nice Niner, we can put that TV on the low power "list".

19.0 to 20.8 watts for 661 Mena

SCVJeff wrote:

NinerBikes wrote:

JiminDenver wrote:
Not the OTA channels here. They may not be 1080p all the time but the major networks are especially for sports.

Major league teams in all the big cities get the 1080p camera's and 60 frames per second, me thinks. SCVjeff is the guru on that stuff, he would know for certain, he's the guy that puts the airwaves in the air.

Depends on the network...
ABC (and all of their sports holdings) & Fox went 720 vs. 1080 because they were very early adopters, and at the time the gear of the day couldn't build a picture fast enough to chase a NASCAR driver or flying football across the field without the picture completely breaking down. It's not the problem it once used to be as processors have gotten faster and faster, and the new encoders are simply magic. But off-air you can often see the difference the reduction in data has by looking at maybe a CBS station (1080) up against Fox or any of the ABC stations (both 720). If you can see them on the same band, in the same location (Apples to Apples), AND get out to where both are equally weak, the 720 transmitter will always outperform the higher data (CBS) simply because the TV is having to deal with 1/2 the data payload to create a picture. It's very easy to demo this in Los Angeles where everyone is grouped together on the same mountain. Back to motion.. On a smaller monitor it's very difficult to see the difference of the two formats with moving video, and impossible on most non-fast motion programs. Watching any reasonably strong station not sitting at threshold is getting more and more difficult to pick between what's 720 or 1080.

Back to the previously scheduled thread...

NB- It's entirely possible that plugging the Samsung into a 12V source vs. the 14v brick on AC could yield either the same or more current over running it on AC because the current draw of the TV could increase as the voltage goes down, depending on what voltage the internal regulator is providing. Only one way to tell...

ABC and Fox went 720P, because that was the format they could get in the then state of the art DLP/Texas Instrument chipped camera's they mounted all over the football field on guy wires. Those cameras cost a fortune back then, only larger sports markets could afford them, but they were absolutely magic in skilled teams hands on the football field. Quantum light years ahead of old analog and 480i format.

I remember a sports director I bumped into up at Mammoth Lakes in a coffee shop from Fox Sports. I complemented him and the organization for the quality of the camera's and the camera work over CBS and NBC. It was very, very noticeable then in 2006. At the time, we had Time Warner and Cable card ready Toshiba. The Scientific Altantic cable cards sucked, the Motorola card system was much, much better. Being early adopters, it was just amazing, seeing sweat fly off of football players on hits, or blades of grass fly up and flutter from divots from the players cleats. The camera's caught it all. They also seemed to have a much better depth of field than older cameras. Another great show was National Geographic, as well as some very high quality hi def stuff shot by KCET, nature stuff. Of course, Time Warner over subscribed for the bandwidth they had for cable as more and more customers came on board, and pixelated work over cable and freezing, due to packets of data that carried encrypted digital codes to protect digital owners rights being missing caused all kinds of audio and visual freezing problems. We had to tell TWC to stick it where the sun don't shine when they foisted a crappy cable box on us that chintzed on the quality of picture and saved bandwidth. Time for a simple OTA antenna then.

720p in OTA is fine and dandy... but if you watch blu ray with DVD's shot in 1080p cameras and have 1080p with good hdmi cables... then it can be a noticeable improvement, not so much 1080i.

SCVJeff wrote:

NinerBikes wrote:
For a little Samsung 24" class TV, it's a very, very nice picture. Whether it's money well spent to save amp hours is kind of a moot point... it makes the travel trailer feel more like home with the quality... I am actually kind of looking forward to going out to the ManCave trailer for some beer, chips and dip and football this weekend. Kind of wish I was there tonight to see Peyton Manning and Denver play San Diego on the little unit... :-(

is that the man cave down the street from mine?

I'd call it a dry camping man cave, but the IPA sitting in the doors ajar on the fridge that's not turned on... well, that ain't really dry camping. IPA's keep very well without refrigeration. Being Dutch, I have no problem drinking a good IPA at temps the Brits consider normal. I even fake myself out sometimes putting a warm bottle in a beer koozie. Must be psychological.