Plasma TV at high altitude

[mointainwalker]

When talking to a friend recently, he happened to mention that when looking at new TV's he had had to strike off all plasma units as they are not suitable for use where we live in the mountains - 4,400 ft.

In this right or has he got hold of some false info.

Wanted to ask in a hypermarket audio-visual dept today but too many customers.

Some things have to be adjusted to work up here like double-glazed windows which are manufactured to order to give a pressure equalisation so the panes don't bulge because of higher pressure inside. Just as an example.

 

[bernardgreen]

Quite a few items of consumer electronics have limits on the altitude they can be used at. Always read the small print.

One reason in computors is that the lower air density means the cooling system cannot remove heat as fast as the processor produces it so the machine shuts down ( or cooks itself to death ).

Hard disc drives require a minimum air density to ensure there is enough air to float the heads above the spinning discs. At high altitude the heads rub on the discs and one or both are soon destroyed.

At low air pressure the voltage at which insulation breaks down or arcs over is lower and for compact equipment with high voltages this is a problem.

A lesser problem is thjat at high altitude the amout of cosmic radioation is higher ( less air to absorb it ) and soft errors in computors are more frequent. A soft error is when a bit of data store in RAM is changed by the memory cell being affected by a cosmic particle hitting it.

 

[mointainwalker]

In case anyone is interested . I went back to that store and spoke to a very knowledgeable manager who told me that plasma TV's are fine up to about 2,800 m, so only mountain refuges might be bothered by the problem ( and they don't usually have TV anyway )