I need two, any reccomendations?

 

After lightning hit my parents house back home, and they had to replace a ton of stuff, every electrician said that there isn't a surge protector fast enough to catch a direct, or almost direct lightning strike. They had like $100-$200 surge protectors that didn't even trip.....but the electronics on the other end were fried....

 

I am interested as to what people have to say as well.

I know a surge protector won't give you total protection from a direct hit, by we have thousands of dollard worth of A/V equipment in our media room and it would suck if they blew up from even an indirect hit or minor surge.

 

i use the cheap ones, yet when ever there is a big lighting t-storm i unplug them till its over.

 

a lot of them offer 50,000+ warranty's for connected equipment.

 

i use a belkins one that has the cable side so i can plug in the cable, i havent had an outage but i don;t think it has been tested by thunderstorms yet

 

Monster Cable Home Theater Reference PowerCenter 5000 (MP HTS5000)
http://www.monstercable.com/productpage.asp?pin=587

 

monster cable is overpriced junk

 

Belkin. They're fairly inexpensive and usually offer $25K protection for equipment attached to them that might be damamaged.

 

always unplug in a bad storm...... its worth the 2 min of work for the level of protection.

 

use a panamax as well as a APC w/ a battery pack both new from ebay for less than 1/3 of their retail price

 

 

I live out in the boonies. Lots of power surges, lightning storms and brownouts.
So I’m a bit more protective of my equipment.

(1) Panamax 1000+
(1) Panamax 5100
(1) APC UPS for the digital cable box and ReplayTV unit
And a recently purchased Richard Gray “Power Company” RGPC 400 Pro line conditioner.

I ran out of room in my Equipment Rack so I have them mounted behind the system on the other side of the basement.

 

does brownout= trees on lines?

 

Brownouts are lower then normal voltage
Instead of being 115-120 volts, it will drop down to 100-110 or lower.

 

belkin is overpriced also. APCs for all my expensive electronics gear.

 

Well i am going to order a pair of APC's. Thanks for the advice. If a mod wants to close this they can.

 

Why close it….It’s an interesting discussion.

As for APC, I always thought they were more for computer equipment, not Home Theater gear.

 

I have this one Panamax 5510

 

It's a battery backup dude. You could run a toaster oven from it if you wanted to.

 

I actually asked the same question in a home theater forum. In the end I decided that it wouldn't be effective to have an uninteruptible power supply on my entire system. Instead, I decided to go with panamax surge protectors and used my APC unit to backup my projector because it needs time to cool down the bulb before shut-down.

Here's a link to the thread that I started on that forum Uninteruptible Power Supply

I recommend panamax because a member on the other forum did a RFI/EMI test on both the panamax and the monster cable units and found that the lower end monster cable units didn't filter RFI/EMI interference well. Also, it saved my ass (and about $4000 worth of stereo equipment) during the northeast blackout a few years back. I actually didn't lose power during the blackout, but when it started I got a nasty surge and the panamax worked flawlessly.

 

Not really, but I don’t have the time right now to get into that.

Computer equipment and Home Theater gear are two entirely different types of electronics.
Your laser printer or scanner won’t care if it’s fed “unclean” power, but it will sure distort the image on a quality RPTV or Projector.
And a big multi-channel Power AMP will bring any small UPS to its knees in SECONDS if the power goes out.

 

right now i am only hooking up my plasma, the cable box and a dvd player, so i dont need something like the panamax.

 

Plasma’s use a LOT of power.
Check your requirements.

 

check what requirements? what would I need? they are the panasonic 42" commercial plasmas.

 

How many watts does it draw when running?

 

how does furman compare to panamax?

 

Hey Shawn...what the hell kind of setup do you have...it looks ridiculous.

 

shawn is our resident A/V god.

 

i cant find it on their site, what difference would it make? how much more power does a plasma take to run then a DLP or LCD?

 

what's the model number on that Panny?

 

Th-42pwd7uy

 

That Panasonic Plasma uses nearly 500 Watts
A comparable 50” RPTV uses about 200.

 

How much of a difference would that make on an electrical bill out of curiosity? Do I need something beside a surge protector?

 

It’s an addictive hobby for me.
Front view of the equipment rack:

 

http://www.plasmatvs.com/panth42pwd5u1.html

says the power consumption is 290 watts.

 

A quality surge protector is fine.
I’m just saying don’t expect it to run for more then a few seconds on a small UPS.
They aren’t designed for that kind of load.

 

The one I looked up on the Panasonic site was 480.
Not sure what model it was.

 

Thanks, what about the electric bill?

 

Jarod...any particular reason why you elected to go with EDTV vs HDTV?