power

While wandering around the local superstore today, we noticed that small LCD flat panel TVs have come down in price significantly... we had a good poke aroud them, and sadly, all the particu;arly cheap ones are 240V, and the only ones with a 12V power supply are the more expensive ones....This got us to thinking about what the options might be...I've looked at the price of inverters, as we have a built in Microwave onboard, and its useful in the marina, but obviously can't be used away from shore power... its an 800W microwave, so not overly powerful...However, I have also noticed that the combi charger inverters aren't much more...So i'm thinking of taking the following approach:A combi inverter, that takes 12V from the batteries and delivers 240V, with a crossover switch, so that when we are on shore power, then that is the source... this has the advantage that it can share the load between the two sources, so you can avoid popping marina fuses if you want to boil the kettle while the lights are on!. They also have a built in battery charger...I've looked at the Sterling system, which also has a solar input, allowing instant regulation of a solar panel setup, plus allows an external source such as a generator in future to be used instead of shore power...It would also allow me to remove the existing Cetrek battery charger and shore power set up...Overall potentially a very neat solution...However.... the bad news... its either £349 for a qausi sine wave setup, or £600ish for a pure sine wave... neither is cheap... i would need to decide whether a quasi sine wave would be good enough...So, this afternoon, i've stuck the spare tender and outboard on eBay... add to that the £150 quide saving on the TV, and maybe that'll provide enough funding....Back to the subject of TV's, two other considerations... I have a spare VHF aerial up the mast that appears to have a standard F-Socket aerial connector... I have found an adaptor to convert that to a normal TV socket... so maybe that'll provide a decent signal... secondly, I need to review how I mount a TV..The obvious answer is to mount it on a bulkhead, for which we potentially have some space... this doesn't appeal for two reasons... 1] thats the best space for a really nice picture of family and friends, and 2] its in the wrong place for lounging and watching TV... a better position would be above the chart table, which I like as it also allows potential future use of the TV as a large display for the laptop basde plotter option!However, this isn't a bulkhead, its just a space with a pole at one side, so I need to explore the options for a mounting kit that use a pole... I know they exist....Plenty to consider....