Lazy Daze Owners' Group

Sony 12 Volt Blu-ray For The LD

November 20, 2018, 07:59:20 pm

After a beautiful day visiting vistas and riversides, a fine meal and the good company of  friends and loved ones, it is not uncommon to find a Blu-ray playing in the LD to cap off the days adventures.

Until just recently, powering the Samsung player was accomplished by up converting 12 volt to the needed 110 volts for the player. We all know the inefficient nature of using an inverter to power such devices.

Enter the 12 volt Blu-ray player. After an exhaustive search for such a beast, I found one off brand Blu-ray player available with poor reviews. The price was much too high for my budget. Cost and reliability rank high on my list. After all, we own a Lazy Daze.

The search continued until I came across a comment on another RV forum. Sony as it turns out produces a Blu-ray player that is powered by an external power plug that downconverts 110 to 12 volt. Simply looking for this player proved to be a bit of a challenge in its own right but I managed to find several Sony’s that fit the bill. I purchased the Sony BDP-S3700 at Best Buy for about $80.00

The next challenge was to ditch the 110 downconverter and install the 12 volt plug that will fit the back of the Sony. Couple that with the Sony’s need for 12 volt 1 amp input and the challenge increased.

The end results were very gratifying- a Sony Blu-ray player with NetFlix, Hulu and other on line apps for a total out lay of about $125. The quality is amazing and all for 12 volts. No more draning the coach batteries for movie night.

Here are some photos of all the equipment that went into this upgrade. I purchased the 12 volt power cord from amazon along with the DC to DC downconverter that provides 12 volt 1.5 amps to the Sony. A separate adapter pin (labeled H on the pin) was needed between the Converter and the power input at the rear of the player. All in all everything was straight forward once all the pieces were gathered.

For those of us who enjoy a Blu-ray/DVD but prefer to take the burden off our coach batteries, this is a must have on a budget with name brand equipment.

Bring on the popcorn.

Kent

Re: Sony 12 Volt Blu-ray For The LD

Reply #2 – November 20, 2018, 08:42:20 pm

Kent, a couple of years ago when I was outfitting our 98~MB with a flat screen TV mounted on an articulating arm in the back lounge and a DVD player, I found a Vizio that was 12V DC powered and a Sony BlueRay at Costco.  Each device had a small power converter that plugged into 120V AC wall outlet and the other ends to the back of each unit but both units at the back were 12V DC.  I had run 12V DC power to that area earlier so I was all setup.  I just used the 12V power cord from each the power cables and wired them in with 12V DC accessory plug.   Question I have is why do you need a DC to DC converter when you have 12V DC source to a 12V DC unit?  I must be missing something here?

       Karen~Liam
          98 ~ MB
            NinA

Re: Sony 12 Volt Blu-ray For The LD

Reply #4 – November 21, 2018, 01:24:13 am

Well long story short, our LD was broken into in September, they got in the escape hatch and stole the TV, DVD and other smaller items that could be easily carried away in our two back packs which they took also.  So when I looked to replace the TV, I looked at reviews for 12V DC combination TV/DVD BlueRay and Supersonic came up many times as the best 12V DC unit.  So now we have this new Supersonic TV/DVD and it will also take SD cards so we can look at photos we have shot in JPeg on SD cards.  We have noticed that the DVD player in the TV is a little louder then the old Sony so during the quiet times in a movie you can just hear the disc spinning a little.  We are movie people and thus watch DVD,so if this TV/DVD is not the best for DVD, we will look for a 12V DC DVD player which we can add to our setup, I still have space where the Sony was.

             Karen~Liam
               98 ~ MB
                  NinA

Re: Sony 12 Volt Blu-ray For The LD

Reply #6 – November 23, 2018, 11:23:37 am

I must admit that external drives have a lot to offer in terms of storage and indeed the physical storage of Blu-ray Discs/DVD media can take up a lot of LD real estate.

I have considered transferring a portion of my movie library to a 4 Terabite drive, but with with over 1600 LD’s, 600 DVD’s and about 400 Blu-ray’s 🤪 where would I start and how much time do I want to devote to such a project?

Actually, I have found that flipping through my catalog of films can find me closing the pages and opening a good book. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve looked at a title and said, “Not now”. So taking the time to transfer titles to a drive would, for me, have similar results. I can absolutely see the value added by such a venture but I can see the writing on the wall already. “Uh, no not that one. Nope. What else do I have”?

Now I just pick up new films on disc and save them so my DW and I can enjoy them on a trip for movie night. A season set of “Scrubs” or “Leave It To Beaver” and we’re good. And if there is a decent signal and my Hot Spot works well, there is always Netflix and Hulu to fill in the gaps when necessary.

Or...I can just step outside and enjoy the stars.

Kent

Re: Sony 12 Volt Blu-ray For The LD

Reply #8 – November 23, 2018, 12:40:11 pm

This may stray a bit from strictly an RV topic, but the advantage for us of using the hard drive extends far beyond our LD. Our media travels along to our cabin, which has few useful other viewing options, and is available at home, too. Programs to rip DVD and CD collections are efficient and fast, and mostly set and go, freeing one up for other daily tasks. Another program transfers recordings from our TiVo, not only freeing up its internal space, but allowing us to take those with too, without carting around the box.

While it takes time do do this, spread out in odd moments over a few weeks it does get done, and was worth it.

Steve