TV Question

Some LED TV's use a "power brick" that plugs into the wall and converts the electric to 12 volts. If you can find one like that, you can wire it directly to 12 volts. I have a small, cheap, 13" set that works that way. Unfortunately, those kinds of TV's are few and far between.
Using an inverter to power up both the TV and satellite system is an option. You just have to make sure the inverter is rated for the maximum load, and based on the size of the inverter, you have enough batteries to last a reasonable amount of time.
I have heard that it is not too expensive to take a Direct TV receiver from home to use in the trailer, and depending on the receivers you have, there is probably a portable dish that will work - get the make and model number of the receiver you want to use, then check out the dishes you like.
We use a stand alone Dish TV system that uses a Wingard Pathway X@ dish and a 211 series receiver - works great, but have to have shore power .....

We have a pathway X2 and a 211 receiver and a 45" sony tv in the main room. All run off our inverter without problems.

In the bedroom, we have a 211 receiver and a 32" sony tv and run it off our portable inverter (through a 'car plug' rather than direct wired) with no problems. The inverter is a 300W pure sine and the 211 and TV only pull about 80W combined. We use this to save battery as we have other stuff connected to the house inverter. We need to conserve the batteries at night to make coffee in the morning...

We only have to use the generator to watch TV if our batteries are less than 50%, which never happens because we have solar.

I have had to camp near people who believe they need a generator to watch TV. In both cases, they had a 5K open frame construction generator. They ran it for HOURS just to power 300W worth of tv.

I replaced my older TV with Vizio 28" LED TV. According to Vizio it consumes 20 watts. It takes 120 volts, no power brick. I power the TV and DVD player through a local 150 watt Samlex pure sine wave inverter. The overall battery drain is very low-

If there is no power brick in the cord, it's inside the TV. They are all running on DC...not always 12V though.

You do however need to regulate the 12V so that it is 12V and not 14.6 when in boost mode. Easy to do with a PWM unit, I have a digital that is very stable.

Thanks for the replies!
This is what I have in the power compartment, it's an Iota DLS-30
I only have one battery on the trailer, it's a deep cycle
It has a Onan Ultraquiet 4000 Genset

Hoping the battery and inverter can run the tv/sat

I was recently at Best Buy and looked at all the TVs there. There are no TVs over 32 inch that work on 12 V wall warts. Some larger TVs used wall warts, bricks, but they were 19 V. You need to look at the brick itself to see what voltage it is outputting. They offered a 12v, 32 inch TV with a built in DVD player for $179.

I can run my 32" TV and sat system on a 100W MSW inverter for hours on a single group 27 marine type battery.

Steve92004 wrote:
Thanks for the replies!
This is what I have in the power compartment, it's an Iota DLS-30
I only have one battery on the trailer, it's a deep cycle
It has a Onan Ultraquiet 4000 Genset

Hoping the battery and inverter can run the tv/sat

The DLS-30 is a converter/charger not an inverter. The DLS-30 charges your battery and supplies 12 volt DC to your RV.

Best Buy sells Insignia brand TVs which is their store brand. They have some models up to 32" that run on 12 volts. When looking at TVs, view the picture from an angle to see if the picture quality drops off.

Since you are planning also to use a satellite receiver which will need 120 volt AC, you might as well buy an inverter. I have used cheap MSW(Modified Sine Wave) inverters in the past with no problems. You can pay more for a PSW(Pure Sine Wave) inverter if you want to be 100% sure of having no problems. A 300 watt inverter would be more than enough to power your TV and sat receiver. It would be best to hard wire the inverter as close to your battery as possible. The cigarette lighter socket is a very poor power connector. Most inverters have a fan and some can be very annoying. The fan on my inverter only comes on when the temperature rises to a certain level. It only comes on when under heavy load.

I used to be hell bent on running 12v, but as TVs got bigger, 12v were harder to find .Now, and for many years I run a cheap 150 watt inverter for Sat and TV, and never a problem, and I don't notice any difference in power consumption.