North American (Canadian) TV in the UK

[pyrogena]

People keep telling me different things to this query and I don't have a clue...so...

Will a TV purchased in Canada work in the UK? If not, is there a conversion or something that can be done?

[poissony]

It's not straight forward. For a start I expect you'll need a step-down transformer to convert UK mains from 240v to 120v, which is what the TV will be expecting. You can get these easily enough.

As for TV signals depends on what you want to connect to it, how many things you want to connect to it, what quality you'd be happy with and what type of signals the TV can accept.

You won't be able to make use of the inbuilt analog tuner (if it has one) as it will be an NTSC tuner.

You may be able to connect an external tuner (Freeview, Cable, Sky etc) to the TV though. However, this will depend on whether the TV will accept a PAL signal. Modern UK TV's will accept PAL and NTSC signals no problem but not sure if North American's bother with accepting PAL signals. If you know the model of the TV you're considering a google search should be able to find it's manual which will have the info.

The next problem is that the standard defintion kit you connect to it will probably provide the best picture using RGB scart and the Canadian TV won't have scart sockets. You'll then have to connect it using composite (poor quality) or s-video (good quality but there may only be one s-video connector on the TV) or component (as good as RGB scart but few video sources have this compared to scart).

Is the TV HD ready?