A ups is great for keeping things turned on during a power failure so that you can shut them off properly in a correct order and such. Also if you have a projector or tv with a lamp that needs to shut down properly and have time for cool down they work great. A power conditioner cleans the power from the wall or the ups to give you less noise in the system. On the good brands you notice less background noise in the audio which gives you more detail and greater dynamics. In the video portion you will see better blacks, less mosquito noise, better contrast, better color, overall a better picture. On a good brand of power conditioner they will always do surge protection which will also protect your phone line and coax line which a lot of power surges and lightning strikes will come down a coax line. Check out Furman and MIT, they are 2 of the best that I have found!
Out of an abundance of boredom, I did some experimenting today on picture and sound quality with my power console. My conclusion is that it barely improves my picure but more dramatically improves my sound. I've been using it for a couple of months and didn't notice any difference at first but, I was wrong. Lately, I've thought that on my standard def stations, the contrast looked a little better and the sound, a lot better. I was thinking that Time Warner must have done something to improve my picture and sound but it's actually my power supply. For standard def, I use Neo 6 Cinema, mainly because Josten said so, but was never really satisfied with the matrixing of either it or Dolby Pro Logic Movie. Just wasn't getting much of an effect from my rears so it still sounded a lot like plain ole 2 channel. Lately, my rears have really kicked in and it sounds much closer to actual surround sound. That's where I see the big improvement. I think my receiver just sends a stronger signal to my rears with the power supply and it makes a big difference. I don't notice any big improvement to the picture or Dolby Digital EX on the high def stations
I bought the exact UPS I said I wouldn't buy because of poor tech support, a Belkin AP30800fc10. Before I bought, I had questions that they should have been able to answer but couldn't. Didn't know what a UPS was much less a sine wave. I did it for the usual reason of course, beacuse I'm cheap. When I was trying to make up my mind, Fry's had them for 99.99 after 50.00 mail in rebates. Bought one for my TV and one for my computer. Two months later, I still haven't gotten my rebates. The rebate company they used initially denied both claims because they said the bar codes off of the box were invalid. After offering to fax the copies of the bar codes I cut off the box and send them, they agreed to put the rebates through and I guess I'll get them someday. Between that and the customer tech support guy who only spoke so so English and didn't know any more about a UPS than he could read from his answer book, I really hate this company. It's a high, high price I pay for being cheap but the UPS is definately worth 100.00. My power has gone off twice during electrical storms since I bought them and they worked perfectly as battery back-ups. Because the UPS's I bought only have AVR but no more serious line conditioning, I don't know if I could improve my waves with a more expensive unit. I get bad static on AM radio stations when my computer is on. These UPS's did not solve that problem. With better line conditioning, who knows?
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