I've been redoing all the audio/video on the inside of Four Suns and thought I would post a little blurb on a small LCD TV comparison. I think Sea Ray got some sort of "special deal" in the early 2000 time frame on the 1990's vintage Panasonic TV/VCR combos that had about a 10 or 12 inch screen. Here's a shot of one in my forward stateroom:
These things don't do digital and so a converter box would will have to be hooked to them or one will have to distribute the video signal over RF from a tuner or something... but the picture is really crappy. I had this same TV on my 2001 380 DB and I can't believe they put two of them on my 2003 480 DB as well (they are in 2 of the 3 staterooms).
So I've been looking at replacements. The new system going on the boat is based on an HD video distribution system by Audio Authority and I'll do a separate write up on that later. Right now, I wanted to post some thoughts on two different models of LCDs I've bought and evaluated to fit into these openings.
First, I will say it is very hard to get something that is "HD" that is that small. Basically you have a 15 1/4" opening to work with so that pretty much limits you to 15" LCD TV's. If you look around, most TVs of this size are 480p and that is not HD. One could say that for a TV that small it doesn't matter... I'll comment on that later.
The first TV I bought for this space was a Toshiba 15DLV77 which has a built in DVD player on the side.
http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/televisions/product.asp?model=15DLV77
It also has component video inputs which was a requirement. The specs on the Toshiba site say it has a resolution of 1024 x 768 but that is not correct. I knew that when I got it and it only has a resolution of 640x480 and can only do 480i or 480p and does not do high def (720p or better). It also has a standard TV aspect ratio of 4:3 so that it is more "square" and fills the stock openings better (top to bottom and side by side). However, you then have have to chose from most newer movies being letter boxed with black bars on the top and bottom or zoomed in and the sides of the movie cut off.
The picture on this TV is very good and can be viewed from very wide angles both up and down and side to side. These TV's are individually being hooked to an external amp tied to a Bose Acoustamass speaker system in each stateroom (don't rag on me for using Bose as that is what was in the salon and master stateroom and I wanted it to match). The issue with the TV though is the DVD access and some of the controls/inputs are on the side. For the port side stateroom, I had to pull the cabinet and it spent some time in my shop this winter being modified such that an articulating TV mount could be installed. The cabinet had to be essentially gutted and redone to house this setup.
and
and from the front there is about a 1/4" gap around the whole frame when the TV is pushed back in the cabinet (can't really see it in this picture though):
However, this TV is just a little too wide and the opening had to be widened for the port stateroom:
and
and
It all turned out very nice for the port side stateroom. For the master stateroom in the front (the picture at the top of this thread), the door was removed and the TV fits perfectly with no opening mods but a back plate has to be installed to mount the TV and arm. I'll show that later. The issue with the articulating arm, however, is that it is not designed to be bouncing around in 6 foot waves on a boat. I had to put a small backing piece across the back of the TV (covered in black melamine) and put velcro on it and the back of the TV so the TV would stay in place. It is not as ghetto as it sounds and works very well... but it would be nice if there was a "designed for the space shuttle" articulating mount but I could not find one.
Another problem with a 480p TV, other than it is not HD, is that it won't display a computer well (unless you like 640x480). Until recently, there just were no HD LCD TVs in this small of size out there. I want to be able to pipe my navigation PC down to the staterooms and so I really have been looking for a 720p TV of this size.
The other day I ran across a 16" Viewsonic HDTV that is fairly new. It is the N1630w and does 720p and has a resolution of 1366 x 768 which would be halfway decent for the navigation PC display as well.
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcdtv/N1630w/
The other nice thing about this TV was that it was about 14.8" wide, compared to the Toshiba's 15.5" width, so that meant it could fit in the port stateroom opening and master opening with NO MODIFICATION other than a back panel to hold it. The original crappy tube TV had a 15" width. It also has no DVD or side controls so an articulating arm would not be required... so I ran out and bought one:
and hooked it up to the AV electronics going in the boat:
My first impression was "WOW!". It had a great picture standing there looking down at it. You can really tell the difference from the 480p Toshiba... Then I was kicking myself for doing all the mods to the port stateroom cabinets... but I thought I could put this in the front master and the starboard staterooms. The aspect ratio was 16:9 so it actually had more screen space being used than the Toshiba LCD because it did not have to letterbox the picture.
Then came the issue... The Viewsonic can NOT be viewed from ANY angle below the TV location and the side to side viewing degrades very rapidly as well. If this TV is mounted at ANY height above eye level, the picture is not going to be viewable. In the boat, most TV locations are above eye level so the thing would have to be dramatically angle down.
This is really too bad... Hopefully more 720p small TVs will come on the market as time goes by but this early model just has a viewing angle issue that makes it not usable as a replacement for those crappy tube 12" Panasonic TV/VCR combos... I'll be sticking with the Toshiba LCD 480p models for each stateroom for now. The salon area got a 26" Panasonic 720p LCD (minimal HD) as I could not find a 1080p product yet that size. The hardest part of this upgrade was redoing the cabinets to go from tube TVs to LCDs and make it look stock and not "modified". (The black iron on melamine and other pieces can be had at partsexpress.com). The addition of a real video distribution system was also the big deal. Swapping "better" LCDs in the future will be easy the way this upgrade went so when the 15" 1080p TVs are out, I can get them.
One of the points here is that you have to be very careful and cautious when buying LCD TVs as the viewing angle issues can really bite you. I bought a small LCD at Target a year ago (it was a great price) to set up on a cabinet in our bathroom and it looked great in the store but when I set it up on the cabinet, it had the same viewing angle issues the Viewsonic here had and was not usable in that location. The Viewsonic was meant to be more of a "computer monitor" instead of a room TV. Buyer beware....
My 2 cents.
These things don't do digital and so a converter box would will have to be hooked to them or one will have to distribute the video signal over RF from a tuner or something... but the picture is really crappy. I had this same TV on my 2001 380 DB and I can't believe they put two of them on my 2003 480 DB as well (they are in 2 of the 3 staterooms).
So I've been looking at replacements. The new system going on the boat is based on an HD video distribution system by Audio Authority and I'll do a separate write up on that later. Right now, I wanted to post some thoughts on two different models of LCDs I've bought and evaluated to fit into these openings.
First, I will say it is very hard to get something that is "HD" that is that small. Basically you have a 15 1/4" opening to work with so that pretty much limits you to 15" LCD TV's. If you look around, most TVs of this size are 480p and that is not HD. One could say that for a TV that small it doesn't matter... I'll comment on that later.
The first TV I bought for this space was a Toshiba 15DLV77 which has a built in DVD player on the side.
http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/televisions/product.asp?model=15DLV77
It also has component video inputs which was a requirement. The specs on the Toshiba site say it has a resolution of 1024 x 768 but that is not correct. I knew that when I got it and it only has a resolution of 640x480 and can only do 480i or 480p and does not do high def (720p or better). It also has a standard TV aspect ratio of 4:3 so that it is more "square" and fills the stock openings better (top to bottom and side by side). However, you then have have to chose from most newer movies being letter boxed with black bars on the top and bottom or zoomed in and the sides of the movie cut off.
The picture on this TV is very good and can be viewed from very wide angles both up and down and side to side. These TV's are individually being hooked to an external amp tied to a Bose Acoustamass speaker system in each stateroom (don't rag on me for using Bose as that is what was in the salon and master stateroom and I wanted it to match). The issue with the TV though is the DVD access and some of the controls/inputs are on the side. For the port side stateroom, I had to pull the cabinet and it spent some time in my shop this winter being modified such that an articulating TV mount could be installed. The cabinet had to be essentially gutted and redone to house this setup.
and
and from the front there is about a 1/4" gap around the whole frame when the TV is pushed back in the cabinet (can't really see it in this picture though):
However, this TV is just a little too wide and the opening had to be widened for the port stateroom:
and
and
It all turned out very nice for the port side stateroom. For the master stateroom in the front (the picture at the top of this thread), the door was removed and the TV fits perfectly with no opening mods but a back plate has to be installed to mount the TV and arm. I'll show that later. The issue with the articulating arm, however, is that it is not designed to be bouncing around in 6 foot waves on a boat. I had to put a small backing piece across the back of the TV (covered in black melamine) and put velcro on it and the back of the TV so the TV would stay in place. It is not as ghetto as it sounds and works very well... but it would be nice if there was a "designed for the space shuttle" articulating mount but I could not find one.
Another problem with a 480p TV, other than it is not HD, is that it won't display a computer well (unless you like 640x480). Until recently, there just were no HD LCD TVs in this small of size out there. I want to be able to pipe my navigation PC down to the staterooms and so I really have been looking for a 720p TV of this size.
The other day I ran across a 16" Viewsonic HDTV that is fairly new. It is the N1630w and does 720p and has a resolution of 1366 x 768 which would be halfway decent for the navigation PC display as well.
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcdtv/N1630w/
The other nice thing about this TV was that it was about 14.8" wide, compared to the Toshiba's 15.5" width, so that meant it could fit in the port stateroom opening and master opening with NO MODIFICATION other than a back panel to hold it. The original crappy tube TV had a 15" width. It also has no DVD or side controls so an articulating arm would not be required... so I ran out and bought one:
and hooked it up to the AV electronics going in the boat:
My first impression was "WOW!". It had a great picture standing there looking down at it. You can really tell the difference from the 480p Toshiba... Then I was kicking myself for doing all the mods to the port stateroom cabinets... but I thought I could put this in the front master and the starboard staterooms. The aspect ratio was 16:9 so it actually had more screen space being used than the Toshiba LCD because it did not have to letterbox the picture.
Then came the issue... The Viewsonic can NOT be viewed from ANY angle below the TV location and the side to side viewing degrades very rapidly as well. If this TV is mounted at ANY height above eye level, the picture is not going to be viewable. In the boat, most TV locations are above eye level so the thing would have to be dramatically angle down.
This is really too bad... Hopefully more 720p small TVs will come on the market as time goes by but this early model just has a viewing angle issue that makes it not usable as a replacement for those crappy tube 12" Panasonic TV/VCR combos... I'll be sticking with the Toshiba LCD 480p models for each stateroom for now. The salon area got a 26" Panasonic 720p LCD (minimal HD) as I could not find a 1080p product yet that size. The hardest part of this upgrade was redoing the cabinets to go from tube TVs to LCDs and make it look stock and not "modified". (The black iron on melamine and other pieces can be had at partsexpress.com). The addition of a real video distribution system was also the big deal. Swapping "better" LCDs in the future will be easy the way this upgrade went so when the 15" 1080p TVs are out, I can get them.
One of the points here is that you have to be very careful and cautious when buying LCD TVs as the viewing angle issues can really bite you. I bought a small LCD at Target a year ago (it was a great price) to set up on a cabinet in our bathroom and it looked great in the store but when I set it up on the cabinet, it had the same viewing angle issues the Viewsonic here had and was not usable in that location. The Viewsonic was meant to be more of a "computer monitor" instead of a room TV. Buyer beware....
My 2 cents.
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