CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[HD-DAVE]

Don't assume that if your projector is behind a surge protected power bar it will survive a power outage/glitch during an electrical storm...we had one two nights ago here in Curt's/my territory and here's what I saw the next day when I powered up my XG (135 LC). Convergence is off, there is weird patterns/breaks in the image horizontally, if I press the INFO button the text is all garbled/smeared across the screen...ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH !

If anyone has any guesses as to which board may have a problem I'm all ears!

[Curt Palme]

you lie, there was no lightning here in the last few days!

System board issue. You probably need a replacement. I should have one.. or three.

[Curt Palme]

you lie, there was no lightning here in the last few days!

System board issue. You probably need a replacement. I should have one.. or three.

[HD-DAVE]

Maybe it didn't get out as far as your place, but it sure blasted away here over Richmond ! It was 1 AM or something so I was in a sleepy stupor otherwise I would have jumped up and unplugged a bunch of stuff.

If its the system board I may have bought one of those from you last year when I bought my Chief Lift !? I will check....

[garyfritz]

Curt, is that a Dreaded Scrambled Mess problem? The image doesn't look scrambled enough for that...

[macgyver655]

The menu is scrambled. The image problem is because it is not locked onto a stored entry so no geometry or convergence info is loaded.

[garyfritz]

Got it. I was thinking the image got scrambled too. Been too long since I worked on an XG.

[macgyver655]

It can also have a no sync issue which would then distort the image to wavy lines. You can have one issue or the other issue or both.

[Jeremy112]

I'd say a sync & sys board issue going by what Dave has mentioned. As for surge protector on the projector, I see little point, as the XG sucks 7 amps of juice and a few hundred watts, I would never expect a $30 protector (even a $200 protector) to actually "protect". If electricity wants to find its way, it will.

A couple nights ago my side of the street was getting some brown-outs from a bad storm, the whole other side of town lost power, I luckily was on a different substation so I still had power. But the half assed power coming to my house made the lights and everything dim and buzz (always neat to hear your wires in the house buzzing!!). I just went around unplugging things I didn't want to fry.

That would be your best option during any storm... just pull the plug if you don't want it to fry

[gjaky]

[Curt Palme]

Guys, IMHO, surge protectors and power conditioners are completely worthless. Almost all power supplies already have MOV surge protectors built into them, which blow when the input AC goes over 180 volts. Problem is, they are only good once, then short out, and blow the power supply fuse. Adding those via a power bar or Monster conditioner do nothing.

A number of times I've been asked to fix a $1500 Monster power conditioner 'that was supposed to protect the equipment'.

Well, I guess it did.. probably at a cost more than it would have been to repair the equipment in the first place. Definitely a make work piece of equipment. The best one was though a series of Panamax power conditioners that used cheap Chinese electrolytics in their little power supply to turn on the main relay and light up the fancy LEDs on the front panel. About 10 years in, the caps would die, and so would the power bar. Panamax removed their 'lifetime warranty' on those things pretty quickly. Bahahahahahahahha!

[Curt Palme]

Guys, IMHO, surge protectors and power conditioners are completely worthless. Almost all power supplies already have MOV surge protectors built into them, which blow when the input AC goes over 180 volts. Problem is, they are only good once, then short out, and blow the power supply fuse. Adding those via a power bar or Monster conditioner do nothing.

A number of times I've been asked to fix a $1500 Monster power conditioner 'that was supposed to protect the equipment'.

Well, I guess it did.. probably at a cost more than it would have been to repair the equipment in the first place. Definitely a make work piece of equipment. The best one was though a series of Panamax power conditioners that used cheap Chinese electrolytics in their little power supply to turn on the main relay and light up the fancy LEDs on the front panel. About 10 years in, the caps would die, and so would the power bar. Panamax removed their 'lifetime warranty' on those things pretty quickly. Bahahahahahahahha!

[ecrabb]

I thought that was kind of the point of the surge protectors though, Curt… Sacrifice themselves instead of the connected equipment. It's easy for you to say that it does so while it costs more than it would to repair the equipment, but that's because you can easily repair equipment, while most people can't. Most people don't even know where to begin getting their equipment repaired other than whatever warranty depot the manufacturer approves. Even then, a person is very likely to go without their equipment for 6-8 weeks. If I buy a $100 or $200 surge protector or UPS or whatever, and it dies an untimely death, but my equipment is saved, I can buy another surge protector or UPS from Amazon and have it here in two days.

Or, are you suggesting that they both break themselves AND don't protect the connected equipment in any meaningful way?

BTW, I should state that A) I have no surge protection on my HT rack at all, and B) when it comes to lighting and nearby or direct strikes, that there is no surge protector in the world that will protect anything.

SC

[Curt Palme]

I concur with points A and B, but if you have a surge protector with an MOV rated at 180 volts, and also one within the equipment rated at the same, it's a crapshoot which one will fail first.

they really only *may* protect if a neutral line is dropped (that can happen), and the 110 line goes to 220 volts. Usually when a neutral is dropped though, the voltage can fluctuate between 80 and 150 volts depending on the loads on each leg of the incoming 220 volt line, in which case your equipment gets nuked and the surge protector does nothing.

There are self adjusting voltage regulators, that have a massive toroid multitap transformer in the box (Furman made/makes them), and it will make sure the output is 117 volts, while the input can fluctuate between 105 and 130 volts, but I'm not sure at all how those benefit anything, since all equipment plugged into it have regulating power supplies in them as well.

[Curt Palme]

I concur with points A and B, but if you have a surge protector with an MOV rated at 180 volts, and also one within the equipment rated at the same, it's a crapshoot which one will fail first.

they really only *may* protect if a neutral line is dropped (that can happen), and the 110 line goes to 220 volts. Usually when a neutral is dropped though, the voltage can fluctuate between 80 and 150 volts depending on the loads on each leg of the incoming 220 volt line, in which case your equipment gets nuked and the surge protector does nothing.

There are self adjusting voltage regulators, that have a massive toroid multitap transformer in the box (Furman made/makes them), and it will make sure the output is 117 volts, while the input can fluctuate between 105 and 130 volts, but I'm not sure at all how those benefit anything, since all equipment plugged into it have regulating power supplies in them as well.

[HD-DAVE]

As an electrical engineer I happen to work with backup power / surge protective devices every day in my job, and I can honestly say they do work but there are limitations. The best power bars will have detection circuits that can tell if the MOV's and Clamping Diodes (which are sometimes called Transzorbs) have taken too many hits and no longer do their job. Inductors in the surge suppressors serve to clamp inrush.

NTC's (negative temperature coefficient resistors) are also present in surge suppressors and on the inputs to switching power supplies to reduce inrush current.

My XG was plugged into an APC power bar with the detection feature however "My Bad" its buried behind my HT equipment rack and I have not checked the green "Protection working" LED for sometime...for all i know its probably Off now...

With Electronic equipment there is a guideline called the "Safe Operating Area" in regards to electronic disturbance intensity and duration... you may be surprised to learn that most DC power supplies can safely operate on input conditions that are well outside normal - IE 120 VAC north american power. Most devices fail due to current inrush issues, not voltage...IE even if a power supply sees 180 volts spike clamped by a MOV it may well be fine and dandy...it more depends on what the voltage current relationship is. Voltage sags , especially what happens at the end of them, can also be damaging which may seem counter-intuitive!

Here is a really good article/paper on this subject, which references lightning strikes:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1620635&tag=1

...Dave

[HD-DAVE]

While I haven't heard that even unplugging equipment may not be enough to protect against equipment damage from a lightning strike close by, i have heard that you can sense the magnetic field if you are standing near to where a strike is about to occur. I had family experience this while camping in northern BC a few years back.

Also, merely having something switched off isn't always enough. 15 years ago i had a 200 Watt power amp get damaged by a nearby strike (<1km)... even though it had a linear power supply (no warm / standby circuit) and was totally switched off, there was enough energy in the surge to arc across the open contacts in the power switch !!!

...Unplug Unplug Unplug is the rule....

[mr_ro_co]

[mr_ro_co]

[gjaky]

[Curt Palme]

[Curt Palme]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

[CasetheCorvetteman]