Electrical stuff
 

Folks,

Off to Atlanta next month and we will be shipping a lot of our possessions with us. This includes electrical kit...

A/V kit, DVD players and recorders have been de-zoned and will play NTSC discs. I have also found a web site that sells US-UK power transformers ranging from 150VA to 3kVA. Might have to get a few of them as well....

PS2 and X-Box have been dealt with!

Mrs wants to bring her AEG coffee maker too...!!

TV's are multi system on AV inputs anyway, so no issue there. Has anyone experienced difficulties before? Nothing is frequency dependant but I just thought I would ask...

Martin

Re: Electrical stuff
 

It sounds like you are going to a lot of trouble. Personally, I think
that may not be worth it. Dezoned DVD players, multisystem TVs, etc.,
and adding the shipping cost and the transformers - wouldn't it be
cheaper to buy this stuff again? And then you wouldn't end up with the
mess of voltage converters, adapter plugs, and all that comes with.

To view European DVDs, multistandard DVDs are easy to find here.

By the way, a dezoned DVD player won't play all DVDs. Some DVDs insist
on a zoned player (with the correct zone, of course). Given that DVD
players are a dime a dozen (<$40 nowadays), why worry, though? And even
if the zone was right, there still is the PAL vs. NTSC issue; I hear
that that is still a separate one (you do mention it in your post).

Don't forget that the connectors aren't necessarily the same, either. So
if you find that you end up having to buy a new DVD player, you may then
also find that you still have to get a new TV to connect it to.

What is so special about the coffee maker that she needs to bring it? I
would be concerned about a few things:

- - If it's a specialty coffee maker, will you be able to buy filters for
it in the US, or will you have to have them sent to you?

- - Will it prepare coffee that tastes as good with US coffee flavors as
with the ones you are used to?

- - Will the coffee maker handle US water? I suspect that the water is
treated differently here from European water.

If you really insist, there are places here that sell European kitchen
appliances designed for the US market. You may end up with the best of
both worlds.

Re: Electrical stuff
 

welcome to the board - i live a relatively short distance from atlanta and i'm sure you will have a great time

Lots of people on here will tell you to junk all your UK stuff and buy new over here

I personally don't go along with that train of thought - if you stuff is of value and/or has some sentimental value, go ahead and ship it - they will all work fine with converters

As you will find when you move here, a lot of american stuff is very cheap, but its also very shitty quality.

A/V stuff over here is also tough for brits because most of the popular UK brands aren't available or have restricted availability over here

I got mine from www.dvdoverseas.com

if you have another source please list it so I can compare costs! as I need a couple more transformers :)

Re: Electrical stuff
 

I just got a Sony DVD/CD/VHS player from Best Buy for less than $100. You can hack into it to play PAL DVD's.
Will it cost you less to ship your stuff?
Rob

Re: Electrical stuff
 

your dvd player, chuck it, cost of getting a tele that's dual ntsc/pal or getting a convertor is more expensive that a new dvd player....unless your old one outputs a ntsc signal.

Same goes for most electronics, unless there seriously good quality...decent power convertors aren't that cheap, and you'll want really good ones otherwise they'll get hot and aren't meant to long term use.

Ditch the coffee maker, loads of them here as well.


As already mentioned: http://www.dvdoverseas.com/ There good...

http://www.threedoubleyou.com/converters.htm and there good, very helpful if you tell them what you have, they'll tell you what you need to get working over here and if it's worth it.

Re: Electrical stuff
 

As long as my visa comes through on time I'll be moving to the states end of june/july, luckily we are cruising on the Queen Mary II so can take a bit more stuff than a plane allows.

I like you originally wanted to ship all my things over, for example i have a £500 Receiver/Amplifier which has everything and anything you could think of, as well as my DVD player PS2 etc etc,

However i have found that you can sell all your english items on somewhere like ebay or adtrader and the money you make, with the currency the way it is, will generally make you at least the value it will cost you to replace it in the US with an equivalent kind of spec and make and that is without even taking shipping prices into account.

Then as people say you have all the compatibility issues with american electrics, yeah it'll be fine whilst using all your english but when one breaks or becomes outdated and you have to get a new one then your gonna run into possible compatibility problems.

In my opinion you really should be taking as little as possible, specially also considering they do not get to America in days its more like weeks.

Re: Electrical stuff
 

OP hasn't stated who's paying for the shipping. If employer is footing the bill, the economics look a little different.

It's certainly a waste of time bringing anything that consumes high power -- iron, hairdryer, coffee maker, etc.

Only thing we bothered bringing across was the innards of a relatively new desktop (minus the PS and box -- bought a new empty box in the US for $30 and transplanted) and a laptop.

Re: Electrical stuff
 

Funny you say that i was going to take my whole computer then remembered how much spare space a case has so i to will take mine to peices and bring them seperately and buy a box for it in the US. However the monitor (which is flat screen and 17") is top qaulity by i can actually sell mine second hand here and buy a better one in the US for the same price i will receive.