AROUND-OZ MOTORHOMES

TV - DVD - Video - Monitors

This is absolutely the way of the future! You take any LCD video monitor, add a "black box", speakers and an aerial and you have a complete motorhome entertainment system. One drawback at present is it all runs on 240 volt, so you need mains or an inverter. These pictures were taken with the signal coming from one of the Parabolic Dome TV aerials STILL IN THE BOX! What a nasty test! Because there is no scanning with an LCD TV you can easily photograph the screen.

You can buy the control box seperatly if you wish

On the back of the Zinwell control box there are inputs for ordinary video, video camera, digital camera, ordinary video, S video, computer monitor and DVD. Pretty impressive stuff! If we hadn't recently invested in another Orion we would have come home with this set up! It is very good for use on the road as the tuner already has all Australian TV channels pre-tuned. The remote control is excellent. We had never heard of the brand before although one must remember that this is an emerging technology. We did a story a few months back on The Way of the Future. This was on a Samsung unit - a lot dearer and not quite as comprehensive. It did have one marvellous feature for motorhomes though. You could easily hang it from the wall or ceiling!

This set up has a huge advantage for those with laptops. Many older laptops are very hard to see and hard on the eyes. The type of LCD monitor used here is absolutely flicker free and the picture is super rich in colour. We use LCD monitors all the time in our motorhome and will never go back! Now if you are on a budget and can't afford a laptop computer with this set up you can take your computer "box" with you as the power requirements are so low (monitor under 40 watts). The possibilities are endless and exciting. The unit shown was put together by Solar Panel Xpress and the cost comes in around $1700.00. This will definitely reduce as at present it uses the very expensive NEC monitor. Ian Hall has a unit on display just north of Brisbane. If you are like us an already have a monitor you can by the controller, remote and speakers separately. Another thought is to buy an Acer FP563 with built in speakers.

In summing up the advantages are less setting up troubles, low weight, small compact size, very low power consumption, fantastic versatility and above all an excellent picture. Watch this space as they say and occasionally check out Ian's website.