Power protection. Power conditioners.
Do you need one? What does it do?
How can this SAVE your gear in a thunderstorm?
A lucrative niche has opened for the high end audio and video companies, and mass merchandisers have jumped onto the bandwagon at the speed of greed: POWER PROTECTION. You can spend/waste a few dollars for an ineffectual surge suppressor, or up to multi-thousands for much more sophisticated power filtration and stabilization devices.
Why do you need power protection?
Reason #1:
Lightning !!!
If you are unlucky, it'll fry your gear. ...And scare the cat, who will race around the room like a bat on a sugar diet, knocking your precious heirlooms to the floor, detroying two hundred years of family history and wiping those Antique Hunter $$$ signs from your eyes.
By the way, is your new HDTV equipment COVERED by your home owner or renters insurance policy? Call your agent. It might require a separate listing or rider.
Reasons #2 and #3:
Surges and brownouts
Over-or-under voltage swings may damage sensitive gear or hinder its peak performance.
THE GRUNGE INVASION
Why should AC power quality affect the sound or picture? High frequency noise is generated outside the house and inside it - say, by a computer or anything digital - or any industrial users on the power grid. That noise gets through a component's power supply and ends up in the audio or video. The noise isn't heard as NOISE, but as harshness, as less dynamic contrast, as grainy overlay, or seen as mosquitoes in the color, which isn't as vivid as it can be. Noise also gets into your system FROM your system - with each digital product polluting the others. It gets into the component's ground then makes it back to the AC line through the component's power cord.
How power protection works:
There are several schemes, but basically, a good power protector will provide filtration to keep anything on the same circuit, including your digital gear, from polluting your other and non-digital gear. It'll contain fast acting circuitry which may sacrifice itself rather than your equipment, in the event of a serious surge or lightning strike. It'll hold your voltage steady.
Don't confuse power protection for your Home Theater with computer power protection. The home theater stuff is usually more sophisticated and costly. Sorry. Also, don't confuse this with UPS or Uninterruptable Power Supplies which are a computer safety system to allow battery power for continued operation for a limited time.
At the more complex leading edge of this technology (or voodoo, if you are born skeptical) are the following:
Special secret material which makes your power 'cleaner' - audio and video "veils" are said to be lifted, video colors and black seem deeper and less 'noisy.' Such material is said to have been a spin off of extremely low noise sonar work in submarine design.
The Power Regenerator:
A box that takes AC (alternating current) power (from the wall), turns it into DC (direct current) power, like a battery, stripping all electrical 'noise' on the line caused by refrigerators, cell phone sites, air conditioners, etc. - including your neighbors' - and then rebuilds it to AC in perfect 60 cycle purity. (Also you have the capability of setting the frequency higher, which is said to improve things. You can also change the waveform from sine wave to partial square waves or mixtures of frequencies.)
Balanced power. Noise reduction.
You asked for it, tech-head: In normal wiring there is one neutral wire which is always at (almost) ground potential, another wire which carries the 120V AC voltage and a separate safety ground wire.
In balanced power there are two out-of-phase 60V lines rather than normal 120V and neutral. The voltage difference between those out of phase 60V lines is 120V, so the equipments will get full 120V between their power input pins. It's a 1:1 power isolation transformer with a center tap to ground, so that you have two legs of AC which are 180' out of phase with respect to one another (with respect to ground), so that your ground currents cancel out. The center tap is also situated as at the center of the output voltage swing. It's more efficient if the voltage and current swings are synchronized.
But, does it work?
Many think so. I do too.
OPINION
If I put thousands of hard earned dollars into my new home theater, and I lived in an area with heavy thunderstorms, I sure would (and have) put protection on my AC lines. But don't cheap out. Get ready to spend $500 or more. What they don't tell you: some power protection gear has circuitry that actually wears out over time. Will it be there when you need it? (Yes, there are units that don't degrade. No, they aren't $199.)
Great Advice: I think you need protection more than you need conditioning. However, you might borrow - and CERTAINLY CAN BUY with a 30 day return privilege - a power conditioner - and try it - to see if you think the improvement is worth the expense.
How to avoid the common expenses of "extras" and "add ons":
An important warning which will save you money.
Warning!
Many stores try to scare you into buying more than you plan when you start to buy... it's the old UPSELL. Would you like FRIES with that? Let's say you walk in with a budget of about $5000 for everything, and you find a receiver and a HDTV display and some speakers for just about $5,000. Then they'll try to sell you the stand (HIGH PROFIT ITEM), special wires (DON'T! Buy from a source with 30 day return for credit, but get used to your picture and sound BEFORE THAT), power protection (WAIT - research it) and the 'undercoating' of the electronics world...The Extended Warranty. (Check with your credit card company FIRST - you may AUTOMATICALLY get extended coverage. Get the terms and exclusions - you can always buy that extended coverage if you want it, later!)
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