12 Volt TV. Advice Needed.

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Jim@sea

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I am thinking of buying a 12v TV Will I have to get an ordinary TV Aerial like at home. I notice that Caravan Dealers have these round things that swivel round on top of the caravan to catch a signal, but if I wanted Sattelite and buy a set with Freeview would I need a Satellite Dish. All replies gratefully received,
 
Before you buy one I'd establish how good or otherwise the signal is where you intend to use it. Do others in the same place use TVs & if so what they use for aerials will inform your choice....
 
Aerial wise, there's a number of direction free types, for the caravan as well as the marine market, that is what you need. Definitely not a satellite dish, you'd struggle to get that to work in a marina berth, no hope at anchor. Superyachts have a few thousand quids worth of gear to pull that off.
 
Are we missing something? We don't watch TV much but what we watch we watch on an iPad, mine is a pro - so bigger screen. But its the same iPad we use as a repeater with WiFi for navigation/radar, its takes the usual photos, email etc etc - multifunctional - whereas a TV is just, well, a TV. We obviously need an internet signal - but if we do not have a signal we would definitely have no TV reception.

We used to watch on a 'real' TV with a multi-directional aerial - but reception was always poor and variable in quality.

Jonathan
 
Neeves said:
Are we missing something? We don't watch TV much but what we watch we watch on an iPad, mine is a pro - so bigger screen. But its the same iPad we use as a repeater with WiFi for navigation/radar, its takes the usual photos, email etc etc - multifunctional - whereas a TV is just, well, a TV. We obviously need an internet signal - but if we do not have a signal we would definitely have no TV reception.

We used to watch on a 'real' TV with a multi-directional aerial - but reception was always poor and variable in quality.

Jonathan
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With off line downloading available for a lot of entertainment, that makes a lot of sense to me, it's what we do.
 
dune16 said:
We have 2 x 23" tvs onboard but don't use an aerial at all. We just download a selection of Netflix and prime stuff before we go to the boat on my phone (offline downloads) and just screen share the phone to the salon or main cabin tv.
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We are considering that, particularly as our plotter has HDMI out, so the TV would make an 'always on' repeater. At the moment just iPads though.
 
Another vote for digital TV. We have 'dumb' TV's and buy a ROKU device for £30-50 (depends if you want 4K or not...) and connect using an onboard WiFi router with 4G sim card (makes the boat double as a flaoting WFH office ;) ). We can also connect using our phones.
We do download movies to a tablet for days when we are may not have a connection (not found one round the UK coast yet) or if we want to watch something that isn't on TV, but the ROKU is great as it's a streaming device so we can get live TV on all the channels, plus Amazon, Netflix, Disney, Apple is available too.
 
We struggled with a conventional tv antenna but it really didn't work satisfactorily at all. I fitted a Glomex omnidirectional antenna on top of the mast that has a very effective pre-amp (down below) and we can now pick up all the French open-to-air channels as well as half a dozen Catalan channels from Catalunya 70-90 miles away down the coast!
 
Another thumbs up for Cello, UK built also. I managed to blow my power supply but they were able to supply a spare circuit board, when is the last time you managed to fix a TV. Top tip is to get a 12V regulated supply, they don't like it when the alternator is putting out 14V+, I think that what killed my power supply board.
 
Tv antenna is a complicated subject. Typical home antenna is calld a yagi and works a bit like a radar dish to focus the signal reception in one direction and in doing so tends to magnify the signal. Very difficult on boats and perhaps also caravans in that it must be pointed at the station. So no good on a swing mooring. Omni directional antenna do not need to be directed but are less efficient. They often have an amplifier built into the antenna to improve signal strength. This is also desirable becuase a long cable at UHF frequencies will lose a lot of signal. The higher the antenna the better signal pick up. This seems to be the answer for most people for off air viewing. But no guarantees of a picture in all locations. ol'will
 
yotter said:
Another thumbs up for Cello, UK built also. I managed to blow my power supply but they were able to supply a spare circuit board, when is the last time you managed to fix a TV. Top tip is to get a 12V regulated supply, they don't like it when the alternator is putting out 14V+, I think that what killed my power supply board.
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One has to wonder what the "power supply" they fit does if not regulate voltage. A 12V-12V is about £20 at retail so I'd expect one to be fitted in the device, given the target market of said device is vehicle installation.
 
lustyd said:
One has to wonder what the "power supply" they fit does if not regulate voltage. A 12V-12V is about £20 at retail so I'd expect one to be fitted in the device, given the target market of said device is vehicle installation.
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It may not have been overvoltage thet blew it, just a theory, but my main point was their excellent UK based customer and spare parts service, this was a few years ago (about 5?).
 
I'm sure they are very good at support, my point was that ideally they shouldn't get much practice at supporting customers!
 
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