TV Upgrade

[aabear54]

Upgrading my 2011 Itasca Cambria with a 32 inch LED Samsung for the living room and dishing the Old Jenson TV. Has anyone else improved their RV like this and how was the outcome?

[creativepart]

The Jensen is probably 12v. The Samsung is probably 120v. At least I think these two things are likely to be the case.

Just saying in case you had not considered this. I’m sure others have done this and will chime in.

[yooperjj]

I have a 2009 Winnebago Aspect and replaced the Jensen (POS, IMHO) TV with a 32" Vizio 5 years ago. We were having problems with the Jensen's volume controls. The Vizio is 120V but I think the Jensen was as well. The TV in our rig is supplied by an outlet fed by the 120V inverter so 12V is not required.

Turned out to be quite a job for me. I ended making a new wood (maple) frame that fits around the outside of the TV. The old frame covered part of the new TV. Having all the tools and wood in my shop it wasn't bad for me, but may be a task for others. I was also able to get the stain of the new frame to match the previous pretty close so it looks like it came from the factory that way.

If I had to do it again I would seriously give some thought of creating a hinged mounting flat surface (3/4" plywood) panel behind the TV that would support mounting the TV with a standard VESA mounting bracket. This would allow you to mount the TV and take advantage of the articulating motion of the mounting bracket. This way you could move the TV to more optimum viewing angles. Also, the hinged panel would allow access for storage (a premium in our rig) behind the TV.

Also, I've read where many people were concerned about off the shelf TV's that are not specifically made for RV's. In 5 years and 12000 miles (mostly on Michigans great roads) of traveling we have not had any issues. Also, I cold store our rig every winter in our pole barn in Michigan and have not had any issues due to the cold weather.

All in all, it was well worth the effort for us.

[Radioflyer]

I updated our back bedroom 24" Jensen TV to a 32" Roku ($119 at Walmart). My primary motivations were to improve audio umph and screen size. The small internal Jensen TV speakers were hard to hear, especially during heavy rain hitting the really noisy '09 Winnebago 34y roof. Just under the TV mount is the Jensen AM/FM radio which fed very nice full size speakers directly over the bed pillows. I'm experienced in electronics but I was unable to match any of the TV audio output jacks to work/ successfully provide suitable audio into the front panel Jensen AUX inputs or the L/R audio jacks provided for converting external audio on the rear of the Jensen radio. So I took the TV case off and directly connected Left/Right output wires to the tv speakers... and after determining which of the 12 wires coming out of the Jensen radio were feeding the left and right speakers over the bed pillows I connected the TV left and right speaker outputs to them.

Result... perfect TV (and Jensen radio) audio from the speakers right above the bed pillows. Audio is Crisp & clear even at very low levels.

That part of the audio improvement project went so well, decided to take it one more step since DW goes to bed/ or falls asleep much earlier than I in the middle of a movie and I don't want to wake here.... but want to finish the movie. So I decided to add his and her earphone jacks up next to our respective speakers. Plugging into either disconnects both speakers allowing the bedroom to go totally quiet while one (or both of us) can finish the movie or enjoy the Jensen AM/FM radio.

It hard to explain how much better the TV audio is listening via earphones. You just don't really have much true stereo effect when the TV stereo speakers are only 30" apart from across the room. With the earphones you can hear/ feel someone on TV walking across a room, a car speeding by from left to right as the picture is showing. Your eye & brain are already looking at the right location on the picture before to camera pans over to get it in view. Much more like live or high end movie theater experience.

One other tip... yes wearing big bulky earphones in bed is a bit weird. But earbuds work very well. And on Amazon I found a soft 'headband' that has very flat great audio earphones built in for about $10. Maybe for running/ biking in Winter. They are very comfortable, even let you lower thermostat a very more degrees, and deaden nighttime external RV Park noise when TV is off, and if you sleep better in a totally dark room/ want to sleep in... just pull the band down to totally cover your eyes!

[Radioflyer]

I should have added a few comments on the ROKU TV I used to replace the original Jensen TV. First thing I noticed when I removed the Jensen 24" TV... it weighed about 5X more than the bigger 32" ROKU The RUKU was very inexpensive. I didn't know how the RV project would end up, and knew I could use the ROKU in my shop. As it turns out the basic TV features were fine for our RV use... great audio (now) easy to use (in dark) remote, light weight, low power consumption. But it's claim to fame is it has all the new streaming TV options built-in (HuLU, Amazon, Prime, , CBS, ... But as most RVers know, RV wifi distribution systems just don't have enough capacity for everyone to stream their custom program real-time. Many RV Park wifi systems now have the technology to track who is taking up more that their fair share and will lock them out for 12 hours or reduce their data flow to below being able to stream TV. That has been our experience. So all the streaming programming services that are built into the ROKU have not been able to work because the limited capacity of the Parks we've stayed. Fortunately it works very well as a Off-Air TV or connected to the Park's Cable or our Satellite receiver. Last item, while the wireless remote is easy to audio & channel up/down & mute... it actually doesn't have 1 thru 0 keys so you can't direct enter channels and having to toggle up/ down 50-78 channel catv systems is a bit of a pain. The Roku TV is one of only a few that has a earphone jack. It also links with a Smartphone and you can can channel up/down and volume up/down and mute from the phone's screen.