12V Blu-ray players

[CapitalD]

Does anyone know of a 12V blu-ray player?  We used a Pioneer multimedia setup designed for cars that would play DVDs, but the laser reader has failed and the repair costs are prohibitive.  We have blu-ray at home so we want to be able to take the discs, rather than looking for high resolution on the boat monitor screen.   We haven't found anything after a couple of days hunting on the web.

[Idle Days]

Is there a reason why you don't want to run a 230v unit off an inverter?  

[matty40s]

There must be a vintage or antique shop nearby.....

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, CapitalD said:

Does anyone know of a 12V blu-ray player?  We used a Pioneer multimedia setup designed for cars that would play DVDs, but the laser reader has failed and the repair costs are prohibitive.  We have blu-ray at home so we want to be able to take the discs, rather than looking for high resolution on the boat monitor screen.   We haven't found anything after a couple of days hunting on the web.

 

Your best bet is probably eBay as new ones will be increasingly scarce as manufacturers are dropping the format as people increasingly switching to using streaming services such as Amazon Pime video and Netflix.

 

I know LG used to do one but a quick ckeck shows it as discontinued.

 

It is annoying though because some great films haven't yet migrated to streaming services or if they have they come at extra cost over and above the subsription which I think is a bit rum.

 

Or could you replace the whole unit with a used, but fully working one.?

[CapitalD]

31 minutes ago, Idle Days said:

Is there a reason why you don't want to run a 230v unit off an inverter?  

It offends me to be that inefficient in terms of battery power.  When we got the boat she was fitted with an 1800W Stirling square-wave inverter.  It works most things, but not so smoothly.

[Idle Days]

1 minute ago, CapitalD said:

It offends me to be that inefficient in terms of battery power.  When we got the boat she was fitted with an 1800W Stirling square-wave inverter.  It works most things, but not so smoothly.

That I can understand.  I have recently brought a Panasonic DP-UB820, with which we are very satisfied, but alas it is a 230v unit. 

[Sea Dog]

1 hour ago, CapitalD said:

It offends me to be that inefficient in terms of battery power.  When we got the boat she was fitted with an 1800W Stirling square-wave inverter.  It works most things, but not so smoothly.

That's not really a good example by which to judge inverter efficiency. Be offended if you must, but you ought to make allowances for being somewhat behind the curve.

 

[CapitalD]

OK so how should I be judging inverter efficiency?

[robtheplod]

Most small cheap Blu ray players come with mains adapters so dont actually run off 240v, so just find one that you can also get a 12v adapter for and it'll work - maybe one of those multi adapters?

 

As has been said much easier to get your films onto USB or streaming etc....

 

I originally had a BluRay but due to the storage of the disks ditched it and got a raspberry Pi with 1Tb of storage..... works a treat!

[Jen-in-Wellies]

9 hours ago, CapitalD said:

OK so how should I be judging inverter efficiency?

By comparing inverter efficiency figures in data sheets! As always, there is a bit more to it than that. You need to look at idle current, the current the inverter consumes when no AC power is being taken from it and at power conversion efficiency. There are plenty of inverters out there now which are much less lossy than an old Sterling modified square wave box. Some inverters get a very low idle current by going in to a stand by mode, where they effectively shut down until a power draw is sensed. These can have problems starting up again for small power consumers, like phone chargers.

 

You need to look closely at the figures and how they are derived. Evil marketing managers will have a hand in generating the data sheets and there are various tricks to massaging the numbers to look better than they are. Ask on here for thoughts on any candidate inverter. As always, reputable manufacturers, like Victron are going to be a better bet than some no name inverter from China, via Ebay. To just run a mains blueray player could be done from a very small inverter. A higher percentage loss from a small power consumer is still tiny so I wouldn't worry about it much.

 

Jen

[Richard10002]

3 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

You need to look closely at the figures and how they are derived. Evil marketing managers will have a hand in generating the data sheets and there are various tricks to massaging the numbers to look better than they are. Ask on here for thoughts on any candidate inverter.

I bought a Sterling inverter charger in 2011 where the no load current, (not in standby), was stated as quite low, an amp or maybe a bit more. In reality it was 4A!!! I think there have been others here who have confirmed this. My take on the marketing in this case was that it was a lie.

 

I have now replaced it with a Victron inverter which has a standby current of 0.8A, which equates to their marketing. The standby current is minimal.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

19 minutes ago, Richard10002 said:

My take on the marketing in this case was that it was a lie.

Sterling sound like they were ahead of the curve in the use of porky pies in their marketing. The manager responsible has probably gone in to political campaign advertising since!

[blackrose]

I'm not even sure what blue ray is it what it's benefits were and it seems the format has been abandoned already. I guess it's something I can be happy to remain ignorant about as though it never existed. When you think of how long cassette tapes and CDs were with us, some of these other media formats come and go in a comparative blink of an eye.

Edited August 15, 2021 by blackrose

[blackrose]

21 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

By comparing inverter efficiency figures in data sheets! As always, there is a bit more to it than that. You need to look at idle current, the current the inverter consumes when no AC power is being taken from it and at power conversion efficiency. There are plenty of inverters out there now which are much less lossy than an old Sterling modified square wave box. Some inverters get a very low idle current by going in to a stand by mode, where they effectively shut down until a power draw is sensed. These can have problems starting up again for small power consumers, like phone chargers.

 

You need to look closely at the figures and how they are derived. Evil marketing managers will have a hand in generating the data sheets and there are various tricks to massaging the numbers to look better than they are. Ask on here for thoughts on any candidate inverter. As always, reputable manufacturers, like Victron are going to be a better bet than some no name inverter from China, via Ebay. To just run a mains blueray player could be done from a very small inverter. A higher percentage loss from a small power consumer is still tiny so I wouldn't worry about it much.

 

Jen

 

You could do all that. Or you could just simply to look at how much power your inverter is drawing with nothing else switched on on your battery monitor (assuming you have one) and then how much is drawn with whatever mains appliances you want to run. The absolute numbers are much more important than efficiency calculations.

 

For me it's 0.6 amps for the sterling inverter on idle and I don't really care about inverter efficiency in terms of running the appliances as that's all theoretical. If I'm not on shore power and my batteries are able to cope with absolute demand then why should I worry about how much less power would have been used had I been running the appliances from shore power? That's a hypothetical because I'm not 

 

Of course a deep understanding of inverter efficiency could influence one's choice of inverter if one is in the market for new kit, but that's about the limit of its practical usefulness.

Edited August 15, 2021 by blackrose

[CapitalD]

3 hours ago, blackrose said:

I'm not even sure what blue ray is it what it's benefits were and it seems the format has been abandoned already. I guess it's something I can be happy to remain ignorant about as though it never existed. When you think of how long cassette tapes and CDs were with us, some of these other media formats come and go in a comparative blink of an eye.

Blu-Ray is a higher definition video recording format and not worth it without a big screen, so effectively irrelevant on a boat.  But if you have a video library that you want to take when cruising, you need a platform that will play it.  And yes, we still have cassette tapes and CDs because not everything is on-line.   Even when you can get a sufficiently strong signal.