small-LCD-screen flat panel TV, cable ready.

A much better option. The screen is optimized for a TV signal, and
has a much wider viewing angle. Some boat friends of mine went the
laptop TV card route, and were endlessly fighting over whose head got
to occupy the "sweet spot" in terms of viewing angle.

I have a Samsung 150mp and am very happy with it. Very electronically
quiet, doesn't foul up HF reception. Magnetically inert too. The
speakers are kinda tinny sounding, but a $10 set of computer speakers
produces "theater sound." Unlike a laptop there's no power hungry
Intel CPU, hard drives, etc.; it consumes only 35 watts, compared to
80 watts for my laptop. Also doubles as a monitor via a 15 pin cable,
but only 1024x768. Great way to play DVDs though.

It'll run on clean 12.3 volts +-5%, but high voltages will burn out
the flourescent tube system which lights the screen, because there's a
stepup transformer for it which overheats at high voltages. So, you
can get away running it on ship's 12 volts without a voltage
convertor-stabilizer thingie ($150), but not while charging or running
electrical equipment which introduces transients into your DC service
wiring. Best is to run it on AC thru an invertor, if 35watts is in
the high efficiency part of your invertor's power output curve.

Only caveat is small "wide screen" HDTV flat panels are just around
the corner, a normal aspect ratio flat screen TV is going to
obsolesce fairly quickly.

"Mark" wrote in message
om...
small-LCD-screen flat panel TV, cable ready.

It'll run on clean 12.3 volts +-5%, but high voltages will burn out
the flourescent tube system which lights the screen, because there's a
stepup transformer for it which overheats at high voltages.

Indeed. Always use a 'whatever in' to 12V converter. I was involved on a
ship where 12 professional LCD touchscreens were installed. They were rated
for 24V and directly connected to the 24V power system (=batteries). Within
a few weeks, all monitor backlights failed. They couldn't stand the voltage
of a full battery (27-28V).

Meindert

I was concerned about overvoltage when we got ours. The specs
indicate a range of voltages that are accepted with the max up
around 15V. Since this unit is made to be installed in RVs and
vans etc, it is designed to handle varying voltages during charging,
etc. If my battery bank needed equilization, I'd make sure it
was disconnected.

Doug
s/v Callista

"Meindert Sprang" wrote in message
...
"Mark" wrote in message
om...
small-LCD-screen flat panel TV, cable ready.

It'll run on clean 12.3 volts +-5%, but high voltages will burn out
the flourescent tube system which lights the screen, because there's a
stepup transformer for it which overheats at high voltages.

Indeed. Always use a 'whatever in' to 12V converter. I was involved on a
ship where 12 professional LCD touchscreens were installed. They were
rated
for 24V and directly connected to the 24V power system (=batteries).
Within
a few weeks, all monitor backlights failed. They couldn't stand the
voltage
of a full battery (27-28V).

Meindert

"doug dotson" wrote in message
...
I was concerned about overvoltage when we got ours. The specs
indicate a range of voltages that are accepted with the max up
around 15V. Since this unit is made to be installed in RVs and
vans etc, it is designed to handle varying voltages during charging,
etc. If my battery bank needed equilization, I'd make sure it
was disconnected.

If they're spec'd to 15V, there won't be a problem. The ones I referred to
were spec'd at 24V +/- 5% or so.

Meindert

"Karl Denninger" wrote in message
...

In article ,
Mark wrote:
Even USB 2.0 is too slow,

No. USB 2.0 is 480Mbit/s while the FireWire bus,

Well, USB 1.0 is too slow, full screen was kinda blocky and bad sound
sync.

USB 2.0 is not.

I have the Happauge external USB 2.0 box and it works fine. Produces MPEG
video at data rates up to 12Mbps, which is a bit better than DVD specs.
It
can also "data rate match" directly to DVD in three different quality
levels, which is very nice if you want to burn copies of things you record
with it.

The internal MPEG chip in it is not as good as Vegas is as a "software
only" solution but it rocks in terms of CPU overhead - like near zero
during use, so you can record something while doing other things with the
computer.

--
--
I have used a Hauppage USB TV interface on a P3 notebook, with a USB1 port
running XPPro for several years it works just fine