Do you have a computer? If you are reading this, I will assume the answer is YES. Most people know the importance of having a UPS for their computer system. Here's another question. Do you have a TV? YES! According to Nielsen Media Research, since 1990 over 98% of households in the US have a TV. Do you need a UPS for your TV? That's what I will cover in this article. My guess is YES.

BASIC UPS.....GOOD

Getting a UPS for your computer system is almost a no brainer for a majority of computer users. The abrupt cutoff or fluctuation of power can and will damage certain components of a computer. If a hard drive is writing to the disc at the time, it can cause a major failure. Displays, disc drives, memory, power supplies, everything is at risk. What about your TV? The new Projectors & DLP sets and even LCD and Plasma displays have some of the same components that can receive major damage when the power goes off. The lamp inside a projector or DLP set needs to be cooled down properly to allow for a long life. The power goes out and damage can occur. What about your Cable/Satellite box? Some of the most popular units have a hard drive or DVR (Digital Video Recorder) on board. Taking the place of a VCR, the DVR writes TV programs to a hard drive so you can watch them later. Since most DVR's continuously write to the hard drive while on, any power outage could damage the hard drive inside. A basic UPS allows continued power to anything connected to it, but runtime is a huge consideration. If it only stays on for one minute, you need to dash across the house and shut everything down before the UPS runs out. The bigger the capacity of the UPS unit, the longer runtime you will have. Here are some basic runtimes.

These runtimes are an average and your runtimes may be different in certain cases, but you get the general idea. So, what size UPS do you need? Let see what eats up the most energy. Looking at my setup in my home, my DLP HDTV set uses 255 watts when on. My A/V receiver, it eats up to 490 watts!!! That's 715 watts just for audio and video! Add in the HD DVR Cable box with a measly 30 watts. My extra hard drive for my DVR at 30 watts. My average total is now 775 watts for watching TV. If we are playing XBOX 360, add 170 watts and the HD-DVD add-on uses about 85 watts. (By the way, Sony Playstation 3 will consume over 205 watts) Now I am at a whopping 1030 watts! My subwoofer eats 250 watts! It does not need to be on a UPS and won't be damaged by a power outage like any of the aforementioned items can be. I currently have a 1500VA UPS. If everything is running at once (minus the subwoofer), the load is about 1700VA. For that amount of VA load, I need to have a larger UPS if everything is running at once. The overload on the UPS will cut the runtime to just a minute or two. This cuts the battery life on the UPS and it needs to be replaced rather quickly. You should usually not go over 80% of the capacity of the UPS system. My typical day in the living room consists of just watching TV, so lets calculate that activity. At 775 watts, the load is about 1290VA (86% of my UPS capacity). I should have a runtime of about 10 minutes or so. This will give me plenty of time to shutdown my DLP TV and allow the unit to cool the lamp properly and extend the life of the lamp. Since I can now shutdown everything else before the UPS runs out, I can keep my components safer than without a UPS backup.

ADVANCED UPS.....BETTER

A regular UPS will give you protection against blackouts, but there are many more power problems than just blackouts that can damage your home theater system. With a regular UPS, if the voltage drops or rises beyond a safe limit, the UPS switches the load to battery power and disconnects the utility power until the voltage returns to an acceptable level. Add in brownouts, sags, spikes, line noise, appliances going on and off and you need added protection than just a regular UPS. Here are some keys things to look for when shopping for a UPS.

AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation) is a very important feature. AVR will step-up or step-down the incoming line voltage without switching to battery power. This allows the UPS to correct most over-voltage or under-voltage problems without draining the batteries. This will also extend the life of your UPS battery.

EMI/RFI Filtering is another aspect of home theater protection needed for clean audio and video signals. EMI (Electromagnetic interference) and RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) can come from many places. When any electrical device is running, it can emit electrical signals during normal operation which can causes unwanted interference or noise along the rest of the power line. The Sun can even cause EMI. When this EMI/RFI reaches your A/V unit or TV, it can effect the performance. Filtering EMI/RFI is a desired feature in surge protectors and more so in UPS units designed specifically for home theater systems. Many manufacturers will have "stages" or "levels" of filtering on their specialty UPS units.

Enhanced Scalability is needed for larger home theater setups. If you have just a normal living room with a few components, you should buy a UPS based on what you need to protect, but if you are building, adding or have a dedicated room for your home theater, scalability is important. Scalability basically means you can adjust the size of the UPS to your needs should they grow. When buying a base UPS unit, makes sure you can add on extra battery modules. This will increase the capacity of the UPS system.

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