LCD TV protection

[Anonymous user]

Folks- I'm buying a 40" LCD TV. I want to buy a reasonable (not very expensive) surge protector. How many Joules I should be aiming for. I also have an A/V receiver.
Thanks.

[Anonymous user]

Can I use a ACP battery backup on my tv?
I want something to keep the satellite & tv from turning off when the power goes off. It takes our satellite a while to set back up.

[EZ_Button_apc]

Something like the P11VT3 will be about as good as it gets for you. There's a link to it below. You can also use it to surge protect your cable and phone lines.

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=PF11VT3

[BillP]

If you are looking for something a little more flashing and geared towards A/V, we have this entire product line as well:

[Click here to view the A/V Solutions|http://www.apc.com/products/category.cfm?id=15]

Everything has surge protection but we have some power conditioners as well, power filters, and A/V battery back UPS. I realize also you are looking for something cheaper but just incase.

[Here is an article that explains Joules and let through voltage|http://nam-en.apc.com/cgi-bin/nam_en.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=65]

Reading that may help you understand that there is a little more to surge than joule ratings.

[Anonymous user]

Thanks both for the answers. Is it true that surge protectors only protect the equipment from the first surge? How do we know that the surge protector is still effective?
Also, does running the cable providers cable via a surge protector results in any loss of picture quality?

Thanks.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

most of APC's surge protectors have a "protection ok" light to tell you that the protection is still working. also, APC uses a few different methods when dealing with surges. like most surge protectors on the market, APC uses MOVs (metal oxide varisters) which wear out after time. what may be different is that APC's surge protectors attempt to shunt the surge to the ground. if it is too large, the surge protector will sacrifice itself to save the equipment and absorb the surge itself. lastly APC also uses thermal fuses in the surge protection process.

i dont think its true that surge protectors only protect from the first surge..APC's anyway. there are surge protectors out there that ONLY use MOVs..if one of those absorbs a big surge, the MOVs will degrade and it may be of no use. APC's try to shunt the surge to ground and then have a combination of thermal fuses and MOVs.

lastly, if you feel that there is an issue with the surge protector or it does stop working because it had to absorb a surge, the regular surge protectors have a lifetime equipment protection policy and most have a lifetime warranty.

on the coaxial question - dealing with the cable company ([see this article|http://nam-en.apc.com/cgi-bin/nam_en.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=912]), but heres the quick version - the average home receives a signal of 14dB from the cable company. any APC product with coax protection introduces an insertion loss of 2.3dB which is unavoidable (this is only of course if you plug your cable line into the coax protection). thus, if you have so many splitters in your residence and the signal is poor already and then you use the surge protector, then yeah, you may get a crappy signal or no signal at all. with signal loss you usually see a pixelated picture or maybe something a bit fuzzy..so if you have like 2.0dB of signal left, you arent going to have any picture left when you use the coax protection 🙂 I dont even know if you'd have a picture with 2.0dB..