Quote:
Originally Posted by
sigs21 
Does the 111fd benefit at all from clean power..
I need to get a new surge any way to hook up the Tv just was wonder for any suggestions..
It all depends on what you mean by "clean power".
This is not to brag but to explain the basis for my comments - in the last 15 years, I have professionally reviewed about 90 power-related products - power conditioners, UPS systems, voltage regulators... you name it. I am also an engineer with training in power supply design and agency compliance (to see products around the world, you have to test them for any RF and EMI emissions through the air and through the power cord and if any frequency exceeds the allowed limits by any government agency, you have to eliminate the problem or not sell your product there).
My first comment is that any power product with an uninterruptible power supply (battery backup) is absolutely worthless in a home theater system with any display except a projection system with a lamp. When there is a lamp, it's worthwhile to have a battery backup for a couple of minutes so you can turn off the display and let the cooling fans remove the heat from the lamp area. LCD and plasma displays are TOTALLY unaffected by the power going off - as long as you protect the display from surges or spikes or brown-outs while the power is going off or trying to come back on. That's where the surge/spike protection and over/under voltage protection come in - along with protection from bad things like lightning strikes that cause very large spikes.
If something compells you to add a UPS system, understand that you WILL have to replace the battery periodically. And also understand that there are 2 types of UPS... those that produce terrible AC quality (square wave, triangle wave or sawtooth wave) instead of nice smooth sine waves. These are unacceptable for many home theater components that can actually be damaged by those high frequency transitions in the square/triangle/sawtooth waveforms. The only UPS products that are acceptable for home theater systems are those that produce "sine wave output" or "pure sine wave output" or something like that. Even then, these products typically have 2 large spikes for each AC cycle and I'm not crazy about subjecting home theater components to those spikes (I've measured these at the output of the UPS - clearly the "spike protection" in the UPS did not remove those spikes). Those issues are why I never recommend UPS systems with battery backup power for home theater systems... unless there is a projection lamp in the system. Then a sine-wave UPS for the projection product alone is appropriate - but all other products connect to a non-UPS power conditioner.
What you do want in a power conditioner for a home theater is:
- surge protection (the more joules, the better)
- spike protection
- power line noise reduction/filtering
- Overvoltage protection - power is removed from connected components if the AC power line exceeds 130-140 VAC.
- Undervoltage protection - power is removed from connected components if the AC power line voltage goes below about 90 VAC
- If you have any components in your system connected to a telephone line, there should be a telephone surge/spike protection connection'
- If you have an antenna, cable or satellite coax connected to your system there should be a coax surge/spike protection for each type of coax connected to your system
- If you have ethernet connected to your system, the power conditioner should have an ethernet surge/spike protection connection
That sort of product will protect your system.
If you were intending your original question to ask if there was any benefit to image quality from using a power conditioner with a video display... I can say without reservation, that I've never seen ANY change of any kind in image quality on a digitital video display being driven by HDMI sources whether the display was plugged into a wall or into a $6000+ power conditioning system (including balanced power). Absolutely ZERO change in image quality on these displays (LCD, plasma, DLP, LCoS, DILA). In the days of CRT and analog source components... yes, power conditioners could and would improve image quality. In the days when panel displays first began appearing but had to support analog source components... in THOSE cases you could reap some image quality benefits from power conditioning. But in the last 4 years +/-, I've never seen a digital display that was improved in any way by connecting it to a power conditioner. That said, there may be a few exceptions - I've spent little time with lower-cost brands or smaller screen-sizes, so my comments really apply to 50" and larger displays made by "big name" manufacturers.
But - there is clearly value in protecting system components. One of the power products I reviewed not too long ago does everything in the list above for a fairly good price (not cheap though) - look for the Ultrapower products - well made, warranty covers damage to connected components if they are damaged in spite of being hooked up to the Ultrapower unit, they have both over-voltage and under-voltage protection (as long as you spend enough on the model you select for those features to be included). There are some power conditioners being sold with over-voltage protection but no under-voltage protection and some have neither, even though the prices are similar to the Ultrapower prices. Figure $300-$500 for a product like this.
Also consider that if you are using a plasma display in North America, the outlet you connect the plasma to needs to be able to deliver enough power for your plasma - for a 50" or larger plasma, that means 400-500 watts continuous rating (you'll probably use 250-390 watts most of the time, newer models are promising lower power consumption but I haven't seen enough to know if that's really true under real operating conditions). If the outlet is rated for 250 watts or 300 watts - that's too little power and you'll either damage the circuit connected to that outlet or the power conditioner will limit the current so much you get degraded performance from the display.
) However, there's no mention of what kind of power it can deliver to the attached components and, as I mentioned above, the Ultralink Ultrapower units Doug talked about also don't have power ratings on their website. Seeing as how this is an important spec, I'm surprised so few manufacturers give a figure.
