# TV start?



## Nimrod (Jun 8, 2010)

I have the camper set up on my new piece of land with no electricity. It has it's own deep cycle battery that runs the furnace and a few lights. I got tired of watching my 5 inch black and white TV while I am there so I bought a 175 watt inverter in the hopes of using my 9 inch or 20 inch TV.

I tried the 9 inch and it doesn't work. The label says it uses .75 amps at 120 volts which is 90 watts. The inverter should put out plenty of power. I fired up the generator and the TV came right on. Then I immediatly moved the TV to the inverter and it came on and worked. 

I tried it on the truck's cig lighter power port and it does the same thing. 

Does a TV have an initial start up surge like an electric motor?


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

It's your inverter. You have a cheap one that doesn't put out pure AC.....it's a modified form of DC. 

Lot of electronics ( and often things with motors, like fridge compressors ) are sensitive to "less than power line quality" electricity......whereas things that heat, like a simple coffee maker, or non-complex motors, like a circular saw, are not, and work with cheapy inverters.

Bite the bullet and look for a "pure sine wave" inverter.


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## 12vman (Feb 17, 2004)

For the price of a sine wave inverter, you could buy a nice 12 v.d.c. TV with a DVD player. Then ya don't need an inverter. That's all I use here..

http://www.truckers-store.com/12-volt-flat-screen-tv-with-dvd/?gclid=CJbH_4r887cCFaVFMgodoD4AWA


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## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

Those cheapy inverters are just "A can of smoke just waiting to be released"

Ya get what ya pay for


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## idahodave (Jan 20, 2005)

If it's an old CRT set, then yes there is a start up current surge. 

Most of these sets had a degaussing coil around the edges of the tube. They used a thermister to switch off the coil after a few seconds. 

Sounds like you heated up the thermister on the generator and then switched over to the inverter without it cooling down.


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## Fire-Man (Apr 30, 2005)

Nimrod said:


> I have the camper set up on my new piece of land with no electricity. It has it's own deep cycle battery that runs the furnace and a few lights. I got tired of watching my 5 inch black and white TV while I am there so I bought a 175 watt inverter in the hopes of using my 9 inch or 20 inch TV.
> 
> I tried the 9 inch and it doesn't work. The label says it uses .75 amps at 120 volts which is 90 watts. The inverter should put out plenty of power. I fired up the generator and the TV came right on. Then I immediatly moved the TV to the inverter and it came on and worked.
> 
> ...


Your inverter is to small to start your tv. I run a colored 13" tv/vcr combo for Years(every night for several hours) on a modified sine wave with no problem. Also have one of the same tv's in the motor home running on a 700 watt Mod/sine and I been using it for years when we go camping. Those cheap/small inverters just do not "cut" it.


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## Nimrod (Jun 8, 2010)

Thanks Dave,

It's a CRT analog TV. I thought it acted like it has a start up surge. I'll get a bigger inverter. Any idea how much the TV draws on startup? The wiring is 12 guage and about 6 feet long with a 20 amp fuse because I originally ran it just for a light. This pretty much limits me to a 240 volt inverter. I will give one a try.

There is still one station broadcasting in analog. It's the FOX station out of Duluth but it's being rebroadcast from a transmitter a lot closer than that. Right now I just watch the news but this fall the FOX network carries the Vikings football and I want to watch it on something bigger than my 5 inch B&W. The only problem is I don't know what the station does when there is a conflict with a Pachyderms game. lol


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## idahodave (Jan 20, 2005)

I'd guess several amps for 5-10 seconds...

If you're brave, open up the set and look for a multi-turn coil around the largest part of the CRT find the connections (2) and cut one of the wires. The set will work without the coil.

The coil is used to assure purity in the colors, if you were to look at a totally green screen there could be blue or red showing if there's residual magnetism.


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## Nimrod (Jun 8, 2010)

An update. I tried a 400 watt inverter even though the wireing and fuse are not big enough to handle that much. Same results. The 20 amp fuse didn't blow. 

I hate to simply junk my CRT NTSC TVs but it does seem that by the time I buy a big enough pure sine wave inverter I will have spent as much as a new digital LED TV/DVD. Another consideration is that as of Sept 1, 2015 all analog broadcast will cease. 
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/dtv-transition-and-lptv-class-translator-stations
I would have to buy a digital to analog converter box that ran on 12 volt DC to keep using my old analog TVs.

It looks like I will buy a digital LED TV/DVD when I have the funds. I did discover that they make ones with both an ATSC and an NTSC tuner built in. This means that I can watch the analog signal from the translator until they stop broadcasting in analog. I hope they continue to broadcast the translator station in digital after that.

Thanks for the help.


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