Redwarf

Dear all,

Thought I would write to say hi to everyone and hopefully someone can advise me on the following issue.

We are in the process of emigrating to Canada and would like to know some information about the use of electrical equipment over there.

I have read up that they use a different voltage and hz than the UK. Is it possible to bring over certain UK electrical items i.e Xbox 360, Wii, kitchen appliances, or do we have to buy new when we get over there?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Alan2005

The wiki has lots of stuff about this in it.

as a general rule - if it's motorized (drills, blenders etc) or heated (hair dryers, hair straighteners etc) and it's not explicitly dual voltage then buy new here. Otherwise you can use transformers for things like TV's, dvd players etc. Not sure about the games consoles.

PeterF

For your info, its 120VAC at 60Hz here, as opposed to 240VAC at 50Hz there.

DJNG

Games consoles are regional for their output so won't work here unless you also bring a TV to hook them to, games bought in canada wouldn't work either - sorry

Peterfrombournemouth

British T.V.`s do not work over here , we use N.T. S.C. as do all other countries in the America`s with the exception of Brazil , in the U.K. you use the PAL system

Alan2005

Most TV's sold in Europe in the last decade multi sync and will work just fine with NTSC.

rich07

I brought an LG plasma, works fine with HD connection, just needed to change plug. Also brought a Loewe LCD, this initially didn't work, as it was 230v only. I bought a voltage converter and works fine now.

JB0591

The whole NTSC vs Pal is to do with analogue connections.

HDMI is fine, we brought UK procured TV with us which was dual voltage (100 - 250 V AC, 50/60 Hz). It is connected via HDMI to a Bell HD Receiver. Also got UK procured Media Player which has NTSC output selection playing on North American TV.

I would agree with the other statements, generally kitchen stuff if not dual voltage then dont bring it. If bringing games console then bring TV to play it on if it does not have either NTSC selection for analogue output.

For games console, if power adapter is seperate to console, like Wii, rather than buy a voltage converter you can buy the North America Wii power adapter. Both UK and North America power adapter produces the correct DC voltage for the Wii.

Cheers

JB

Peterfrombournemouth

Thanks for the updates , I guess I have been here too long , and not kept up with the times , sorry if I mislead anyone..

Posidrive

XBox360 may not be a dead loss, at least we have not had any problems going the other way bring our son's Canadian one back to the UK. The power supply can be replaced by a 110V one, so the only issue then becomes the PAL/NTSC issue which can either be solved by hooking it up to a TV that supports both NTSC and PAL or if you have a TV with A VGA/Computer input you can buy a VGA XBox 360 cable.

Region protection for the games may or may not be an issue. So far we have been lucky and haven't found a UK game that won't play on a Canadian XBox 360, but the converse may not be true. This web site is good for checking out compatability issues.

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-00-3-x...ide-49-en.html

swoops

This is ture...our sons UK xboxes work great when we changed the 110v power supply for around $30 the only prob we got was with buying xbox live in Canada the active key is for the Canadian region but our other son's worked fine so its a bit hit or miss with the xbox live...many xbox games are multi region... http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-00-3-x...ide-49-en.html

Zoe Bell

Also on the 360 , you will need to set up a Canadian gamer tag and account or you will be limited to the UK X box live stuff.

Microsoft doesn't allow you to change your location on your gamertag account thingy

cargomatic

Don’t bring kitchen equipment or things that have a motor like Hoovers hairdryers etc. everything else like flat screen TV’s, game consoles, DVD players, computers etc all work perfectly fine, but for every TV you bring, you will need one of those adapters that come in games consoles and camcorders etc that converts your red, white, yellow cable to a scart socket. If you use the scart socket that is. Scart socket and cables do not exist here. If you use the HDMi you will be fine. If like me I had $100’s dollars of power tools, you can either buy a voltage converter to power them or it is possible to wire the house with Canadian 240volt plug sockets which would mean you just needed to change the plugs on the power tools and they will work fine, but I would only go to all that trouble if you had loads of power tools like me. All homes have a 240v supply to the property, as your Stove and dryer run on 240v. (Not everyone knows that though), they plug into a large special socket, a lot bigger than the normal Canadian 240v sockets which are the same size as a standard socket. So having a couple of extra 240v sockets run off their own breaker on the board, will not be a problem. Get a qualified electrician in to do it though, in less you are one like me. The pins on a Canadian 240v socket go horizontal instead of vertical. That way you can not plug a 110v plug into it by mistake.

Hope that helps

jimf

TVs, DVD players, laptops, PCs etc are fine as they are either dual voltage or can be used with a transformer.

We brought UK Xbox360 and Wii to Canada and bought an Xbox360 in Canada. Most Xbox games seem to work in either console but there are exceptions. Only bought one Canadian Wii game and it's region locked and never got around to unlocking it although I'm sure its easy enough to do.