Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater surge protector

The only part I want the battery for is if equipment is on and power is lost. The TV lamp fan needs to run for 4 minutes to cool things down properly. If a storm is coming, I'll likely turn everything off first anyway if I am using it, so it might not be much of an issue. I'm leaning towards the Belkin linked earlier in this thread at this point. I'm not a fan of their KVM switches though, so I am hoping power is more their thing if I go that route.

I have only my cable box and HDTV plugged into the Belkin Battery Backup. It is only my TV that might be adversely affected by not powering it down properly. The rest of my equipment I have plugged into a Belkin Pure AV PF60, which, like the battery backup can be found for considerably less than MSRP. However, an acceptably effective surge protector by Belkin, or others, can be had for less.

[quote}I'm estimating 80Watts for that (if someone has a better guess, let me know).

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Most new PC's have 300+ Watt power supplies. 500 is common. That's peak of course. I would budget 300 minimum for the PC. For one thing when you use an "all on" function on a universal remote you'll peak your power. Personally, I think a good surge protector is fine. You're not trying to protect data, just buying a relatively cheap piece of hardware whose job it is to commit suicide to save your expensive gear.

LJ

I did some research on battery backup for my projector, receiver, etc and found that there are a couple things desired in a UPS system that don't come cheap.

1) A pure sine wave output, not square wave or "near" sine.

2) A "double-conversion" or "online" UPS as opposed to "line interactive". This means that the UPS is always feeding the equipment a voltage that is first converted from AC to DC and then back to AC. You are always running off of batteries and protected. This means the voltage is always very stable and doesn't fluctuate to the equipment. There is also no transfer time. Line-interactive UPS units will just feed line voltage as it is to the equipment, and switch to batteries only when power is lost or the change is extreme.

I recently purched a Tripplite SU2200XL because it had these features. I was also looking for something that had enough of a power rating to handle my receiver which is rated on the back at 1300 Watts. I have my doubts that it really uses near this much at moderate listening levels however.

I think the cheaper UPS units will work fine in most cases. I have used them before for my DVD, TiVo, and PC without issue. I stepped up to this price point because of the wattage rating I needed, and chose the Tripplite over the APC 2200 unit because of the online/double-conversion type.

YMMV, as Jack stated, it is what it is worth to you.

I guess if I am only concerned about the TV, I could just get the minuteman one I mentioned earlier and have everything else in a regular power strip like it is now. That would be the cheapest route with some battery backup for the TV available. I don't want to go nuts with this, I'm just looking for the most cost effective option that will let the TV stay on at least 4 minutes after a power outage. I have all of the other stuff in a regular strip now, and that has been working fine for me. My place is only 6 years old, so the power is pretty good here.

Just read something on AVS that the 4 minute fan cooldown is so you don't turn it back on again while the bulb is still hot. This makes sense to me that cooldown is fine without the fan, it will just take longer before it is cool, which means longer before it should turn on again.

I think I am going to hold off on the power strip upgrade for now. I can always change my mind after I play with the TV for a week or so. Thanks for all the advice.

I'm amazed that TrippLite hasn't been sued by APC over that name. The products are well nigh identical...

Yeah Jason, I'm not familiar with the AVS discussion that you referred to, but it may be similar to an explanation by a service manager for an electronics company(citing manufacturer techs)that I read a couple of years ago. The point does appear to be that it would be very harmful to restart the bulb in a projection TV while it's still hot, so there're temperature sensors in the sets to prevent this. The fan speeds up the cooling process greatly, but the slower cool-down without the fan if there's a power failure doesn't harm the bulb; it doesn't get hotter, it just takes longer to cool.

A related point he discussed was that the high voltage used on start-up in the TV application was the most stressful period for the bulb and that restarts should be minimized to help extend bulb life. He suggested that strictly from that standpoint, projection TVs shouldn't be turned off for less than about an hour, since the start-up would do more to shorten the bulb life than would the extra hour of normal operation.