Sorry, but since I spend more time on this forum than the rest I thought I would put this here. Im Moving to the Azores next year. Off base is 220/50 and on base is 110/50. I wont be able to land base housing right away so Ill be stuck off for a few months. Supposedly, they have "frequent" blackouts too. What do you guys recommend since Ill be bringing the Xbox, ps3, 61 in sammy dlp , 42 in sammy ldc, onkyo 705 ect ect ect... Power conditioners, surge protectors and all that. What do you all recommend? Thanks!

alright, thanks for the help fellas

If the power there is unstable, surge protector would be good to have. Since PS3 and X360 writes to hard drive, power outage in the middle of the writing to hard drive can cause corruption. So, if the power outage is common, an UPS would be useful.

Most likely your electronics are designed for 110v power, you will need to find out which components will accept the 220v power and which will not. THose that will not will require some sort of transformer to bring the voltage down. If you plug your electronics in to a 220v that cannot accept it, they will fry pretty quick. I would try to find a power conditioner or UPS system (with a real pure sine wave not the simulated stuff) that can accept up to the 220v power, but will output at 110v.

I owuld have to agree with ENiGmA1987.
My experince with world travelling has led to lots of fried equipment if you just get the jack changers.

Get a proper power conditioner or UPS system that will keep your gear at the right american powers. Otherwise most of all your great gear will likely be friend very quickly.

Start by pulling out (if you can find them) all the user manuals for your gear. If you can't find the manuals, check on-line for the specs. Pay attention to the power requirements. Many of todays electronics are fine with 50/60 cycle (hertz) power. For these, you'll need step down transformers. Having served with the Air Force in Germany (all 220/50) most of my electronics survived just fine with step down transformers that I bought second-hand from other service members that were leaving and needed to get rid of their transformers cheap.

Where you'll have problems is with gear that (1) has a transformer-based power supply and (2) is not rated for 50 hertz. These items will last for a while before the power supply transformers over heat due to the 50 hertz frequency of the incoming power and the transformer eventually breaks down and shorts internally. Of course, YMMV. And....I am not a professional....just another consumer/gamer/ex-GI.

Sorry, but since I spend more time on this forum than the rest I thought I would put this here. Im Moving to the Azores next year. Off base is 220/50 and on base is 110/50. I wont be able to land base housing right away so Ill be stuck off for a few months. Supposedly, they have "frequent" blackouts too. What do you guys recommend since Ill be bringing the Xbox, ps3, 61 in sammy dlp , 42 in sammy ldc, onkyo 705 ect ect ect... Power conditioners, surge protectors and all that. What do you all recommend? Thanks!

My actual questions is this. Will the signal be PAL or NTSC for your NTSC displays

THats a good point, here we have different screen resolutions. But I dont think it will matter that much. Connecting an XBox to his TV will remain the same resolution, it is just TV that is different. And the TV should be abel to use its internal scaler to get a working resolution.

DVDs however will not play in your DVD player unless it is region free, which unless you specifically bought a region free player it is most likely locked to the US. DVDs bought where you move to will not play. You will need a new DVD player to play new DVDs, and those DVDs will not work when you bring them back to the US unless you play them in your new DVD player you bought over there. Sucks doesnt it... If you do not have a region free player, I would suggest buying one off Ebay so that you dont have to worry about where you purchased a DVD in the world.

Thanks guys, yea its PAL. The base provides access to AFN which is NTSC but if I want local channels im SOL. I figure, as long as I buy movies and games from stateside, everything will work. Either that or spend a fortune on a dual compatible TV which probably wont happen ha ha.

Have fun in the islands! Heard they are gorgeous and I'll visit one day when I go to my Portugal one day

I used a single 500watt power converter just for my NTSC 360 in a PAL region (Italy, should be same as Azores). I'm guessing you'll need a lil more though if you really want to use everything in the 220v area and it depends how long you will be there too. Don't bother with the standard small power converters cuz they will burn out instantly since they aren't rated for high current draw that the 360/PS3/receiver/TVs will do. I picked my 500watt power converter from a local shop for around $65US. Note also that if you don't use the TVs you are bringing, and use whatever is provided to you in Azores is digital you'll have issues because of the NTSC vs PAL thing for analog. I ended up getting a 22" LG PC monitor that had speakers built in (needed one any ways and it was on sale) since the TV in the apartment was an older analog one.

In between the power converter and wall, get an EU based surge protector and just cross your fingers the power doesn't go out on you when the 360 is saving.

Oh, one thing about the 360 I encountered, you can't buy anything on LIVE nor use EU based MS points for LIVE. Granted I wasn't connected to LIVE all 8 months but MS reps all told me the same story, if I want something from LIVE like a game or addon content, buy it in US before making the trip. Another thing, if you are on a different 360 that had DLC registered to another one, make sure you transfer the license. I couldn't load up my Forza 2 game without starting from scratch because of not having transferred my DLC licenses for the game to my Elite since I had originally downloaded content on my original Pro

Hey Jason, I'm stationed in Hawaii. I'll be on the road for awhile now though.

There has been some incorrect information given to you. As a power guy, the best solution for you would be the largest UPS you could comfortably afford. You'll have to do a little research, but basically the larger the UPS, the longer the batteries can keep your equipment powered up. If you're worried about losing power while the PS3/360 is accessing the HDD, you'll need a good sized UPS because you'll need the tv to be powered up, so you can see what you're doing to power down the 360 (unless you have the button presses memorized).

You won't find a UPS that will provide a true sine wave because the only way to do that is to spin motor. You'll find that when you hook up an oscilloscope to any UPS, you'll find that it isn't an exact sine wave (especially if it's doing by PCM). Many people will hook up a multimeter to a UPS and see a sine wave but only oscilloscope samples enough (usually in the millions per second) to really see the real output of a UPS (or any power supply).

The good news is that the power supplies for your 360 and PS3 won't care because they're going to rectify it and use DC. The bad news is a UPS that would be big enough to run your tv and 360 for a few minutes is going to be pretty heavy and cost some dough.

A surge arrestor may or may not be what you need. They're designed to shunt voltage above a certain level to ground. If you get the UPS, you can check and see if comes with one built in. A surge arrestor does not help with frequent power outages unless there's a significant increase in voltage everytime the power comes back on. I would be willing to bet that any decent UPS will probably have one built in. A power conditioner probably won't be necessary either. Again because your video games rectify the AC to DC, they won't care too much as long the right number (amps) of electrons have the correct amount force, they'll generally be able to handle it.

Unfortunately there's not much you can do for research as far as being proactive unless you have had a power quality analysis done on the power in the area you are going to. You may need a voltage regulator in addition to a UPS if there are sags and swells in the voltage. I doubt you'll need a power filter unless you know there are lots of harmonics in your lines. Aside from measuring alot of current in your neutral (which could also be caused by imbalanced phases on your incoming) you would also need a pqa done on the lines beforehand to determine this. I know this may not be what you want to hear but I don't want you to waste your money on devices that will have little effect for what you need them for.