In the process of redoing the front stateroom's TV system, I have been looking at and researching various flat screen TV sets. You may have seen my posts complaining about the 15" high-def flatscreen TV market as the viewing angles on these things are horrible. If you go into Best Buy or any electronics store, they set the smaller TV's down low. If you actually raise the TV up to eye level, the picture fades out and if the TV is above you, the picture disappears. I've seen this on every smaller HD TV I've looked at. I won't go into that here but you can look at my older posts on it.
I actually went and bought an 19" LED 720p TV this past weekend. Instead of having using compact flourescent lighting as the backlight, these new LED TV's use LED's for the backlight. The difference is they draw much less power, are much thinner, and are lighter than a comparable LCD TV. In home use, this may not matter as much but for a boat, I think it's a big selling point.
I'm not real crazy about this brand but this is the unit I picked up from Best Buy:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Insigni...HDTV/9460754.p?skuId=9460754&id=1218108383305
This thing only draws 35 watts of power and has a 12v hookup on the back. There is a small power brick that can mount on the back to plug it into 120v. Here's a shot of the back of mine:
Close up of the specs... note the power consumption:
The nice thing is this thing has a screen that is only about 1/2" thick:
And the screen is 16x9 aspect ratio and has a thin bezel:
The down side to this unit is the speakers are in the back. I'm using an external sound system so it doesn't matter but if you were not, it might be an issue.
The other thing I liked about the back is the mounting geometry. I can build a bracket to mount the bottom of the set to the wall as well as the standard middle location. That'll keep the thing from wobbling (which I really hate).
Just an FYI... Don't know if anyone else has been following the LED vs. LCD push. Between the power draw reduction, lighter weight, thinner design and nice mounting options, this seems like a good TV for the boating market....
I actually went and bought an 19" LED 720p TV this past weekend. Instead of having using compact flourescent lighting as the backlight, these new LED TV's use LED's for the backlight. The difference is they draw much less power, are much thinner, and are lighter than a comparable LCD TV. In home use, this may not matter as much but for a boat, I think it's a big selling point.
I'm not real crazy about this brand but this is the unit I picked up from Best Buy:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Insigni...HDTV/9460754.p?skuId=9460754&id=1218108383305
This thing only draws 35 watts of power and has a 12v hookup on the back. There is a small power brick that can mount on the back to plug it into 120v. Here's a shot of the back of mine:
Close up of the specs... note the power consumption:
The nice thing is this thing has a screen that is only about 1/2" thick:
And the screen is 16x9 aspect ratio and has a thin bezel:
The down side to this unit is the speakers are in the back. I'm using an external sound system so it doesn't matter but if you were not, it might be an issue.
The other thing I liked about the back is the mounting geometry. I can build a bracket to mount the bottom of the set to the wall as well as the standard middle location. That'll keep the thing from wobbling (which I really hate).
Just an FYI... Don't know if anyone else has been following the LED vs. LCD push. Between the power draw reduction, lighter weight, thinner design and nice mounting options, this seems like a good TV for the boating market....