Replace old tv?

[Jbgraziani]

We recently purchased a 1995 Winnebago Itasca motor home and it has the original Audiovox tv and vhs player. I’d like to replace the old set with a modern tv and DVD player. We’re new to the RV world and neither of us has much in the way of mechanical ability. Can this be done? Are there any pitfalls I should watch out for? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

["EZ"]

I replaced all of our 80 pound TV's with modern flat screen smart TV's. It was EZ. The 2 biggest problems you'll run into is the old TV's were relatively square. The new flat screen TV's are rectangle shaped. If you are creative you won't have to rebuild all of your cabinets and it'll look good. The second problem you'll run into is how to keep the TV from swinging out on it's articulating mount every time you hit a bump in the road. The mistake I made was buying swing out TV mounts from Costco. They worked VERY well and were very sturdy except there was no way to lock them into place for travelling down the road. So the TV's would swing out every time we would hit a bump. Classis Coach Works installed swing out TV mounts that have locks on them with a cord that hangs down so you can pull the cord and unlock it so you can swing the TV out to access the cabinet behind it or to give you a better viewing angle. Here are some pics from the bedroom.

 

["EZ"]

Here are some pics from the living room at the front of the coach. Notice how unruly and messy all the wires and cables and H&A hoses were from the factory. I tied up everything so it is very neat now. Notice how the old TV was square and the new 36" flat screen is rectangle. SO I made a panel at the bottom of the opening and painted it flat black. It fills in the gap at the bottom of the TV. You hardly notice it at all. Now we also have a nice deep cabinet to use for storage of DVD's or CD's or cellular routers or whatever as well. Also note the 50 pounds of square steel tube roll cage that was around the original TV. Between the weight of all that steel and the weight of that old TV, I bet I removed close to 100 pounds!!

 

[Pauliewog]

I am in the process of doing the same thing, thanks for the guidance! My plan is to replace the old TVs with TCL/Roku TVs, which are fairly lightweight and inexpensive. They can also connect wirelessly to WiFi and I plan to add a router/hot spot at some point, along with a media server based on Plex so we can stream movies without the internet. I'll probably build the media server on a Raspberry Pi as these are inexpensive and do not take up much space.
Cheers,
Paul

 

[cjosatx]

We recently purchased a 1995 Winnebago Itasca motor home and it has the original Audiovox tv and vhs player. I’d like to replace the old set with a modern tv and DVD player. We’re new to the RV world and neither of us has much in the way of mechanical ability. Can this be done? Are there any pitfalls I should watch out for? Any advice would be appreciated.

Yes, i just installed a 24" Vizio tv from Sams in my 2002 VW Vista rv. Mine had a place to power it up with 12 volt or 120vt household power. You can purchase a separate dvd-blueray player and put it by the tv or somewhere near. The great think about the newer tv's is they have Netflix and other app you can access. I think Walmart carries a tv thats 12 volt if you need to go that way, but you will have to use the dvd-blueray player for the apps.

 

[latech]

I put 2 new TVs in my class A. I ran HDMI cable to them and a splitter , as well as the existing cable from the cable box and antenna switch box.
Now I can run Youtube TV as long as I have an internet connection for my laptop.I can also run a dvd in the laptop as well. No need to buy a TV with a dvd in it, unless you prefer it that way. Plus you may not want to deal with running a new cable
AND, I can run my smartphone to my laptop and on to the TVs and watch TV without an internet connection. Just use some data from the phone plan, in case there is no internet, like when boondocking. Lots of constructive ways to get video