Voltage Converter for US to European for US electronics

tallaghtoutlaws

Got myself a US appliance and am looking for a step down converter that allows my item us the 200 - 240 irish voltage from the 100 - 180 Voltage. Don't know if this is the right forum if not can someone point me in the right direction or if they know where I can buy such converter help me.

Cheers

John

Ruu_Old

I *think* what you need is a step down transformer, you can get them in Peats.

tallaghtoutlaws

Cheers Ruu

ircoha

AFAIK: depending on the item it may not be enough just to drop the voltage from 220 to 110 but u may also need to up the cycles per sec to 60 from 50, otherwise u will damage the item or it wont work properly.

mossym

true..however most electronics will work on 50 or 60..but it's worth contacting the manufacturer to make sure...it's easy do, i just moved back from 6 years in the states..have a 48" hdtv, amplifiers, powered subwoofers, dvd players, and everything else ( battery chardger for my drills, cameras) running on transformers. Nothing had a problem with the freq difference.

ircoha

mossym wrote:

true..however most electronics will work on 50 or 60..but it's worth contacting the manufacturer to make sure...it's easy do, i just moved back from 6 years in the states..have a 48" hdtv, amplifiers, powered subwoofers, dvd players, and everything else ( battery chardger for my drills, cameras) running on transformers. Nothing had a problem with the freq difference.

thanks mossym, i didnt see the ref to consumer electronics:o

mossym

ircoha wrote:

thanks mossym, i didnt see the ref to consumer electronics:o

yeah..it's worth pointing out that anything with a motor will probably have problems..it'll run, just not at the right speed. Also much older tv's used the freq as a clock, so they might be troublesome as well

tallaghtoutlaws

I have a Xbox 360 and HDTV

wotan

did you bring your HDTV with you from the states, ie was it NTSC designed, are there any difficulties working this on a PAL system. i understand the power issues are easily overcome with a transformer. obviously there are great price savings in the states on these TV's.

are your receiving your tv source by satelite box or standard co-axial cable. if so can the tuner in the tv reognise these signals or do you need to route it through some other soure for eg vcr??

cheers

mossym

sorry for the delay. I was living in the states for 6 years, so my tv was bought over there about 3 years ago. It's not an lcd or a plasma, it a Hi-def RPTV (picture will beat any reasonably prices plasma or lcd, downside it is huge). It's also 48", so very big. if you want to look it up, its a mitsubishi ws48311. Shipped it home when i took a position in ireland within my company. power is no problem, transformer will do that for you, ahve my whole surround system (denon AVR3803, HSU STF3 Subwoofer, XBox, dvd player and TV) all running of one 4Kw transformer

two problems arose though, 1, my tv will not take a pal signal, it cannot lock onto it.
2, no dvi, HDMI or vga inputs. Component, svideo and composite only. It does have 4 component inputs that will all take a 1080i signal though. So i have a sky subscription. I built a pc running Mediaportal, got a hauppauge pvr150 pal version that takes in a pal signal, then got a graphics card that could d.o 1080i out over component. you can set teh graphics card to pal or ntsc, so my pc is doing the conversion for me. It's also a pvr, and will play any audio or video files i give it.

picture is incredible as i can apply any post filtering i want.


it's even easier if the tv you are looking at has a dvi, hdmi or vga input, then your choice of graphics card gets much easier. fire away with any questions you might have

wotan

being a technical layman when it comes to the signal conversion you talked about, what i was really trying to find out is:

can you by a LCD/PLASMA in the states and use it in europe (ireland) using a sky box, or VCR to tune the signal? Voltage can be easily overcome.

wouldnt be as up to speed with the technical side of things you discussed in your previuos post.

SeanW

ircoha wrote:

AFAIK: depending on the item it may not be enough just to drop the voltage from 220 to 110 but u may also need to up the cycles per sec to 60 from 50, otherwise u will damage the item or it wont work properly.

Slightly OT, but how, if at all, can you increase the power frequency?

mossym

wotan wrote:

being a technical layman when it comes to the signal conversion you talked about, what i was really trying to find out is:

can you by a LCD/PLASMA in the states and use it in europe (ireland) using a sky box, or VCR to tune the signal? Voltage can be easily overcome.

wouldnt be as up to speed with the technical side of things you discussed in your previuos post.

if you can't follow my pervious post, then the simple answer is no, you can't. it's doable, but not easy...so the simple answer is that you can't. A vcr will not do anything for you, an d an american tv will not be able to use a sky box

mossym

SeanW wrote:

Slightly OT, but how, if at all, can you increase the power frequency?

you can't...not any way easily anyway