We're moving from the US to Switzerland in a couple of weeks. We haven't been able to sell our TV and sound system at a decent value and I think it would be silly of us to drop the price ad eternum until someone picks it up.
There *should* not be any issue in terms of the shipping service we hired to get our items from California to Zurich so we're thinking about bringing the TV and sound system.
We know we need a step down converter from the voltage in the US to the one used in Switzerland and confirmed with the manufacturer that there are no conversion kits available.
The actual question:
What we really want to know if you have experienced any issues with bringing electronics and using a step down converter. To be honest, we were not expecting to have a TV in Switzerland to focus on reading the backlog of books and ebooks we have but we would certainly enjoy our series and movies from home.
We're planning to bring an LG OLED TV and Dolby Atmos sound system if that provides any useful information.
Thanks for your comments, hope this is not too much of a duplicate question around. I understand that I need to get a step down transformer for the wattage of the devices. Any other tips appreciated.
Never had any issues with our US TV, bluray player, Apple TV and soundbar plugged into a US powerstrip that was plugged into a transformer nor with some small appliances on a different transformer.
Just make sure you calculate the wattage correctly for all the items and get some extra fuses to have on hand just in case!
Yes. One would think that for sake of standardization all TVs would accept the two most common voltages, since there is no external PSU to upgrade; however companies still differentiate across markets. Apparently LG OLED TVs sold in North America only accept 110~60 while e.g. Southafrican OLEDs are dual-voltage.
There are rumors in the internet that N.A. TVs are also dual-voltage internally - say people who claim to have compared the motherboards; this would make some technical sense, but I would not dare to try.
I'd expect any modern TV to have an internal switch-mode power supply that can take any input AC voltage from 110-230V, so a transformer should not be required.
Bring what you would like - especially if it won't cost you and if it is compatible.
There's a huge slowdown in availability in many electronic items that use semiconductors due to the current global shortage. If you are happy with what you've got, bring them. We've been lucky in getting just about everything in our recent move, except for telephones.
Switzerland has roughly an 80% penetration rate of iPhones and with the new 13 release, they are mostly gone, yet the 12s remain at the same price as the 13 (give or take tracking one down for CHF 50 cheaper), and so if you've got one that you can just switch the chip with, bring that (unfortunately we came from Japan, where when we purchased our last iPhones, they still locked them).
Technology may have changed, I'm not that with it...
Aren't US TV's NTSC, whereas most of Europe is PAL/SECAM? I know that is not relevant if one is using Apple TV or any any other downloaded stuff, but would it be relevant if the OP wanted to connect at some point in time to Swisscom TV or UPC/Sunrise? Or does the fact that everything is now over the Internet and not terrestrial make that totally irrelevant?
I know I am a dinosaur, but I was sure that someone here would be able to enlighten me!
I don't think NTSC/PAL/SECAM are still in use, except for legacy standard-definition devices, e.g. old disc players with composite output. Analog broadcasts don't exists anymore in (most of, if not all) Europe.
However similar issues could apply to digital antenna tuners, or cable transmissions - here I have no experience, e.g. of North American TVs connected to Swiss UPC.
Yeah. I think that was a big issue in CRT times, but I'm guessing most monitors were multiscan by the 90s if not the 80s. I'd be surprised if today there are TVs that are locked to a single scan rate.