LED Strip lights for rear of TV - Anyone got 'em?

I've had a cheap remote RGB 5m set of 5050's from eBay which cost £12 including the power supply for over a year now. No faults at all, metered the PSU and voltage it spot on.

A colleague bout a set from the visual chillout place you mentioned above, and he ended up with the same set as me but paid over £60.

Any reel of these will be fine, if you are unsure about the power supply then get one locally but quality will more than likely be the same, you'll just have a lighter wallet. :)
 
I've got some manual ones around the living room, 5M strip with 300 RGB 5050's. Got them for a house party a few weeks back but kept them there because it can create a nice atmosphere when watching a movie - dark red when watching a horror etc.

Don't really want ones that react to the sound as I'd find it too distracting.
 
I've got led strip lighting along the back of my tv bench controlled by a remote control. I got my kit off ebay. I like it, I have the option of changing the brightness via remote as well.
 
Ive got an ikea set behind my pc monitors.

2 strips on the middle and one on each side.

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I had these on my tv but it became a pain having to turn the on and off so i stuck them on the pc. Im going to look at powering them through the tv usb so i dont have to do this and maybe the active ones too because they look very cool.

ive also got the ebay specials in my walk in wardrobe under the shelves on a push to close switch.

here if you want to look.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18583851
 
Journey said:
I've had a cheap remote RGB 5m set of 5050's from eBay which cost £12 including the power supply for over a year now. No faults at all, metered the PSU and voltage it spot on.

A colleague bout a set from the visual chillout place you mentioned above, and he ended up with the same set as me but paid over £60.

Any reel of these will be fine, if you are unsure about the power supply then get one locally but quality will more than likely be the same, you'll just have a lighter wallet. :)
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well for every one decent ebay seller selling decent power supplies there is likely to be 100 selling dodgy ones.

for the sake of £50 is it really worth risking your own and your families life?

there's even been shows on tv about dodgy cheap power supplies and laptop chargers which have burned peoples homes down.

after my experience i wouldn't touch ebay again for such things, much rather spend the extra few quid and be safe.

although i think your exaggerating on the £50 part, and the fact yours only cost £12, my ebay kit cost me £25 and i got a crap power supply, so i don't see how you got a decent one in a £12 kit.

all you need to buy from visual chillout is a power supply you can still get the LED's from ebay.

http://www.visualchillout.co.uk/12v-led-power-supplies.htm

they cost like £10-£20 not £50+.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
well for every one decent ebay seller selling decent power supplies there is likely to be 100 selling dodgy ones.

for the sake of £50 is it really worth risking your own and your families life?

there's even been shows on tv about dodgy cheap power supplies and laptop chargers which have burned peoples homes down.

after my experience i wouldn't touch ebay again for such things, much rather spend the extra few quid and be safe.

although i think your exaggerating on the £50 part, and the fact yours only cost £12, my ebay kit cost me £25 and i got a crap power supply, so i don't see how you got a decent one in a £12 kit.

all you need to buy from visual chillout is a power supply you can still get the LED's from ebay.

http://www.visualchillout.co.uk/12v-led-power-supplies.htm

they cost like £10-£20 not £50+.
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Because in the real world, quality is not linked to price. Manufacturers or resellers know people think like this though, so raise prices to get people to think "It must be quality, look at how expensive it is".
 
lucid said:
Spoffle,
The point with the power supplies is that experience shows us that the Chinese are not adverse to making cheap shoddy goods, and also circumventing UK safety standards.
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Some Chinese, no one disputed this, but when nearly everything is made in China, it is utterly pointless to put pressure on the fact that it's Chinese, and you are responding to something no one said, again.

[/QUOTE]Further more, it's very difficult for the average consumer to spot these problems until it's too late. In effect it's a huge gamble, and the odds of encountering a problem increase as the price of the products fall.[/QUOTE]

You are making assumptions now that all these strips are crap because they're cheap, and that the non-cheap ones are good because they're not cheap. I refer you to Journey's post on this. You should know very well that just because something is low cost, doesn't mean it is low quality or "cheap crap". A lot of things have a very low BOM. Things like power supplies. LED strips and basic controller boards are, well basic, with there being little to them and not very expensive to manufacture anyway.

That's exactly the situation with cheap no-brand LED strip. If you have experience dealing with a broad range of Chinese manufacturers then you'll know this first hand.
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No, you are assuming that that is the situation, due to how you seem to be linking cost with reliability and quality. No one has said cheap crappy ones, that are build to a poor standard with little to no safety standards when it comes to the PSU exist, but you are making assumptions that they are all like this based solely on price.
 
spoffle said:
Because in the real world, quality is not linked to price. Manufacturers or resellers know people think like this though, so raise prices to get people to think "It must be quality, look at how expensive it is".
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i bought the cheapest kit i could from ebay and that came in at £25, mine was a decent set of white/daylight led's (5m 5050) with a wireless remote dimmer with on/off switch.

so i didn't try and go expensive that's what ebay is all about buying on the cheap.

in future i think it's best that people go USB, or buy from a reputable place like ikea, etc or get their led's from ebay and their power supply from visual chillout.

like i pointed out above it's £10-£20 for a power supply from visual chillout, hardly overpriced and worth spending the extra £5-£10 knowing that his are safe.
 
Quick question on positioning the light strips

Ok folks, my kit arrived this morning but I won't get a chance to fit them until tonight when my 3 year old son goes to bed. He's already expressed a keen interest in the lights and if he sees me fitting them he will know exactly where to look in order to pull them off and play with them. :D

So I'll wait until he is tucked up in bed tonight and get them fitted, will post pics of the unboxing and fitting. Quick question though to those who have fitted these to TV's/Monitors. The diagram which came with the kit shows the strips being cut fairly short and fitted near the central area of the rear of the TV as shown in the diagram below. However, the back panel design of my LG 42LN575V doesn't lend itself too well shape wise, to fitting them in that area. Where have you got yours fitted, out nearer the edge of the rear of the TV or closer to the middle? There's a perfectly flat edge which runs all the way around the top and sides of my TV which is fits the LED strips exactly, but its right at the edge where the red arrowed lines below are. Thoughts on placing them there?

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on the edge, pointless putting them in the middle IMO.

what kit is that and where did you buy from?

I got the antec HDTV kit from flubit to replace my ebay kit which i binned and they sent it to me for free.

All they ask in return is for me to review their service which has been brilliant so far.
 
It's an eBay kit, identical to the ones sold here on OcUK. Seems pretty good so far, the power adaptor isn't like a laptop type, rather it is a single plug instead of a 'brick'.
 
The point of putting them inboard rather than on the edge is so that you're less likely to see the light fittings from the side, and also it creates a diffuse effect where the light spread is more even.

In the end, there's no single correct answer that fits every customers preference. So play around and see what works for you.
 
I'll have a fiddle around with the positioning of the strips but ultimately it will be in part dictated by the layout of the rear of the TV. I'll post up some pics of the kit shortly and a few later once its fitted.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
the power supplies are a fire hazard and a ticking time bomb i bought a setup for £25 from ebay and the power supply exploded.
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+1

I plugged it in and the the thing exploded - it threw out the house electrics and i had a ringing in my ear for a few minutes :mad::mad::mad:

I told the seller, they couldnt care less:rolleyes:. I was looking for another place to buy the power adapters from - ill have a look at that link posted :)
 
Delivered in a small sturdy package:-

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Kit consists of the LED strips themselves - 5m x 5050/300 type, the remote and user guide, IR receiver and the AC adapter.

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The LED strips come packaged in this thick foil resealable bag.

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Once removed from the foil bag, the strip is wound round this plastic storage wheel.

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IR Receiver, remote and user guide.

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CE Marked AC Adapter, not a laptop type brick as some kits seem to come with, this is more of a single plug type similar to a mobile phone charger.

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Switched on to test them on default white setting.

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Blue, being 5050 types they are certainly bright enough, pics don't do them justice.

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Got these from the green jungle place, right angle 'no solder' adapters, a doddle to use and saves having to bend the strips themselves. A bit annoying they aren't supplied in the kit but at £4 for a pack of 5 they hardly break the bank.

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Will update with pics of them fitted later.
 
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That's near as damn it identical to the kit I have, same PSU and remote etc.

Sure they'll be every bit as good as you expected once you have them up and running. :)
 
That looks like a decent kit, although I still prefer the USB kits, even though they aren't as big or bright.

Since I got mine for free, I'm thinking of ordering another (my tv has 3 USB ports) to use along the bottom of the tv.

The current strip only covers the top and a few inches down the side, I need another to do the bottom and then a few inched up the sides to give it a more even look.

They have a manual on/off switch, don't use any plugs/sockets and I know for 100% that they are safe. Your kit is superior though when it comes to brightness/power and if I hadn't binned my LEDS in disgust I may have just bought a decent power supply from visual chillout for a similar setup in terms of brightness, coverage and remote control.

I personally don't see the point of coloured lights, they detract from the TV itself making the picture look worse due to the way our eyes perceive colours/lights, having a huge amount of green glow around the tv effects the greens on the tv.
 
FINALLY!!!

Got 'em fitted but the little plastic 'L-shaped' connectors I got on the rainforest place were hopeless. They didn't offer a solid 'click' type connection when the clips were folded over onto the circuit of the strips and therefore the slightest bit of movement resulted in either power loss to that particular strip in the chain of 4 or the strip changing colour slightly compared to all the others. So I binned them and luckily the strip I had left out of the 5m that I hadn't cut yet was enough to go around the entire edge of the TV by just bending it as spoffle mentioned earlier. Used some thin strips of gaffer tape at key points along the run to give it extra support as the 3M sticky backing wasn't great and the rear surface of my TV has a textured effect on the plastic which didn't help.

Once fitted and fired up they look excellent. No pictures yet, getting late so I'll grab some tomorrow. Oh and I stupidly velcro'd the IR remote receiver too high up on the back of the TV so it's obscured which results in the remote not working when sat over on the couch on the other side of the room. Drop the receiver down a bit and let it's little antenna dangle just out of sight at the bottom rear of the TV works fine though. I shall do that tomorrow as well.

And I almost fell off the couch when I was done and the missus came through. She had been raising her eyebrows at me all night as I fiddled about trying to fit these but when she clapped eyes on the end result she was all 'Oohh!!!.....Those are really nice!!! I had no idea they would be like that!!!'. :rolleyes: :p
 
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