http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20100401/THISJUSTIN/4010362/1002/NEWS01

Normally 120V to a 230V device shouldn't do anything,but since UK and US hot and neutral positions are different,could this have caused the smoke?

I see a poster quotes "forcing a round pin UK plug" into an Americal receptacle. I doubt that many round pin 5A plugs have been fitted to UK appliances for several decades. I'd bet it was a faulty adaptor. A BS1363 13A plug would need a stick of dynamite to force into an American recept.... Hey, perhaps that's what apertained...

Unless both TV and DVD player were live chassis and connected via the shield of the RCA cable I can't see how polarity could possibly have been an issue here.

Probably the TV went up in smoke when the fire caused by a wobbly adaptor spread far enough to reach it. The stick of dynamite sounds pretty reasonable too though.

Polarity was most definitely not the issue as any DVD player sold in the UK would comply with European standards, which would include no-sensitivity to polarity as they have to be safely connectable using CEE 7 family of plugs which are not polarised.

Also, most DVD players have a figure of 8 connector on the back which cannot be polarised.

Also I have no idea how anyone could insert a UK plug into a NEMA 15A socket outlet. They're very physically different devices.

It's also completely impossible to bend or twist BS1363 or older BS546 pins. They're solid brass and pretty serious bits of machined metal. They won't bend or deform, even if you took a sledge hammer to them. The plug would break first!

I can only conclude that someone was using a dangerous adaptor or some kind of plug-in transformer.

These devices need to be regulated to comply with UL or CE type certification regimes.

Do you really trust China-made DVD players?

Seriously I guess the adaptor or transformer shorted. Jokingly I still like the dynamite best!

I don't think the poster who wrote about the "round pin UK plug" was in any way involved in the affair and just mixed up BS1363 and Euro plugs (thought the UK used Euro too).

Correct. The comments are made by readers registered with the web site. Not much detail to go on,but this is the first time I have heard of a 230V appliance smoking up from being connected to a 120V outlet.

Thanks for everyone's input on the matter.

I noticed that the date of the article was April Fool's Day, FWIW. Anyway,

Most DVD players and similar consumer electronics usually have power supplies that can accept any powerline between 100V to 250V 50 or 60Hz. Usually a switching power supply that automatically adjusts itself to whatever line voltage it finds itself supplied with. This allows China to ship the same product to anywhere in the world, and all they need do is supply a detachable power cord with the destination's power plug. This means that that DVD player should have had no problem with 120V vs 240V. Another issue would be the British video signal is PAL (25 frames a second) and America used NTSC (30 frames a second), but a TV set shouldn't burn out with the wrong signal.

It was probably just a bad plug adapter (bad contact making it hot and catch smoke).

Must have been a seriously bad contact given the usual current draw of a DVD player. Maybe it even shorted, that could well cause a fire.

I mean I ran a hair dryer on a seriously wobbly adaptor and it didn't even become hot, even though it was awfully close to falling out of the NEMA 5-15 outlet! (if I remember correctly 1200W 120V or maybe even more).
(In case eanyone worries, that was when I was 15, before I joined here).

Adaptors are the bane of my life! No matter how many you have, they all vanish into thin air when you urgently need one; or you find dozens, herded together like Wildebeasts stretching to the horizon - and they are all the wrong ones!
Living in France, with a lot of brit and french tools, camera, toothbrush and chargers etc., plus visiting the anklebiters in Blighty regularly, I have to put up with French to English and vice versa on an almost daily basis.
For some reason they are all flimsy china junk [sic], prone to falling out of sockets, overheating & disintegration.
Oh for an Eu wide standard!

I guess the Americans settled on the 5-15 and use it universally because they know we will just cut the cap off, strip the wires and poke them in the holes if the plug doesn't fit. "Get'er done!"

Sloppy sensationalist journalism, and the reader comments are equally as ignorant.

1)"All appliances are made to handle 110 volts,appliances made for oversees use,have a power inverter inside,that turns 220 into 110 volts,what they did was burn out the inverter by not giving it 220 volts." - what a load of garbage. All appliances are made for 110V? That's a classic!
What's this "inverter" I wonder? This reader seems to think the rest of the world uses appliances made for the U.S market, complete with 5-15 plugs and adaptors. I don't know about the UK, but in Aus/NZ it's illegal to sell appliances unless they have the proper plug; adaptors are not permitted. I bet this guy doesn't have a passport.

2)"Since Great Britain uses 220v/50hz" - I'm being picky here but it's actually 240V (even though the EU calls it 230V on paper).

3)and the journalist stating "but they did find a burnt-out television and DVD player" -really? What exactly is "burnt-out"? Melted and carbonised plastic and the like? I've repaired thousands of items of audio visual equipment and there is no possible electrical mis connection that will do that. All that happens is blown fuses and burnt tracks on the PCB...nothing visible from outside.

The problem here is the facts are so garbled it's impossible to know what happened.

I find that to be true of most news stories. Reporters seldom actually understand what they are writing about and they just use sensational language that sells the media they are reporting for.

The flip side of that is most firemen are not electricians or electronic techs so in a lot of cases simply calling a fire "electrical" is short hand for "we are not sure what caused it but we found some burned up electrical stuff near the source of ignition".

Maybe we need more guys like Mike on the FD?

I'm totally with Greg on this one. I still laugh when I remember those ridiculous phrases on the TV news.

"Osama Bin Laden almost certainly either dead or alive"

And my all time favorite...from the Columbia breakup;
"Shuttle was traveling 18 times the speed of light"

There are a lot of people in journalism because they couldn't hack the tougher school courses like Writing or Physics.

And I also vote for getting more guys like Mike in the Fire Service!!!

I feel your pain, Greg.
Things are pretty fractured when it comes to getting REAL news these days.
I refuse to make any media statements whatso-ever to the media, I leave that to our Chief Fire Officer, mainly because at the end of the day, the media will twist and turn anything that you DO say to their own ends, if it will sell a few extra hundred papers.
Been there before, not my style.

Having said that, we took 3 crews of the local fire brigade out, when I was with the PoCo, and taught the lot of them about the dangers of electricity (LV. HV and use in houses).
Also what can cause a fire in a house.
Our last house-burn took this into account, where-as the power would normally have been cut from the place, days before the "burn" occurred, we tried out over-fusing, with 30A wire in a lighting circuit, looping off a range circuit (32A) to a power point supplying 3 2kW heaters.
We also tried out some dodgy CB's as well, they never tripped at all.
So we all learned a thing or two that day.
And good lord, did we have fun.

is it possible this was a *really* old hotel which might have had some NEMA 2-15 outlets in use? Ive seen those warn out to the point one might get a round pin into them...

It still doesn't make any sense as UK and Irish appliances don't use round-pin plugs. If it actually was a UK appliance it would have had a BS1363 plug which, without the use of a sledge hammer, is not remotely compatible with any NEMA outlet I've ever seen.

That's what you would have on a typical DVD player over here :

There is no 2-pin version as the ground/earth pin is required to open the interlocked shutters on outlets here.

That's what's used in Continental Europe for appliances under 2.5A load :



It's not used on UK or Irish appliances.

The story just doesn't make any sense. I'd say it's a faulty adaptor of some sort.

It sounds a bit strange that someone would take a DVD player with them on holiday in another country?

I mean, don't most laptops play DVD's?
They must have taken their own DVD's as well, because I'm pretty sure you can't play US DVD's in a British DVD player (different regions), I could be wrong about that, too.

The way air-lines charge you for baggage, you can really only get away with taking your tooth-brush and a change of clothes.

a) I don't think there is any European plug that can be forced into a NEMA outlet, the pins are just spaced too far apart to make that work even using brute force. NEMA 1-15 has the rongs spaced 13mm (give or take a few tenths) apart, all round pin varieties 19mm on centre, BS 1363 22.5 mm. So... an adaptor (purchased or makeshift) must have been involved.

b) could have been a portable DVD player I guess - they look a bit like those Nintendo DS GameBoy successors. Don't knopw if they have video out to connect to a TV though.

c) qhile being a bit more expensive, code-free DVD players that happily play any DVD are readily available.

With a bunch of bored kids involved, taking a pile of DVDs kind of makes sense. It would be far more interesting how the accident happened. We aren't likely to ever find it out I guess. Undervoltage is probably the least likely explanation - I mean we're talking about electronics, not big motors!