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TVs and Electricity

JNickel101

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Alamogordo, NM
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575555,00.html

Wow...ok, I'll have to admit, I had no idea plasma and LCD TVs used so much electricity....one would think that new technology would be more energy efficient - at least it's good to know that manufacturers are going to start making them that way....
 
ugh.. commiefornians...
I thought LCDs where more efficient than CRT. I could of swore that somewhere I heard that a LCD uses like 1/3 the power of a CRT. I guess not...
 
LCDs are a power hog, not as bad as my old 21" DEC Trinitron though... that sucker weighed 76lbs, took up the bulk of my massive desk, and was enough to keep my room warm in the dead of winter with the heat turned off. My five LCD monitors at home do tend to keep the heater from kicking in very often though... I have them on a timer that powers them off at midnight on weekdays and brings them back on at 4:30pm so they're warmed up by the time I get home from work. Also doubles as a hint that I should go the hell to bed when my monitors turn off while I'm using them.
 
My new 50" Panasonic plasma SX1 is energy star compliant but the wattage is there for sure, still draws less than the 4 computers that run 7x24x365 though. I'll have to feel it for heat tonight if I think of it.
 
Depends on the Tech involved.

Plasma TVs are a no brainer. Those things consume massive amounts of power. It has to do with the fact that they are constantly charging, and discharging "cells" to generate a picture. They also contain phosphorus, and use leaded glass to contain the X-Ray radiation caused by bombarding phosphorus with electrons.

Rear projection DLP and LCD tvs have high intensity lamps to shine at ( or though in the case of LCDs ) the generated image and display it on the screen. These lamps are mercury vapor lamps, and consume large amounts of electricity.

Direct view LCDs do not consume more power than a standard CRT TV ( or monitor), they use less, much less. The 19" LCD monitor I am staring at right now uses 60watts. I just looked up a Samsung Sync Master 19" monitor, and it drew 100 watts, and weighed 4 times as much.

edit: Energy Star compliant is a joke on the public, and a bad one at that. The theory is that if you walk away from your appliance, and it goes into standby (less power, but not all the way off) it will save energy over you leaving it on. The problem is, that in standby, the little power sucker is still consuming power like crazy over you having actually cut the power to it. If you unplugged every softstart "Energy Star" complaint piece in your house, and only plugged it in when you need it, you would save $20-$40 a month in electricity. We need to go back to regular hardwired On/Off switches.

Ron
 
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The plasmas have improved quite a bit, in the 50" area they draw about as much as a LCD of the same size. When I shut mine off it takes about 20 seconds to power back up vs a friend of mine who has an older plasma, that comes on right away which tells me something is not powering down in the older ones like they do in the newer ones.
 
Rear projection DLP and LCD tvs have high intensity lamps to shine at ( or though in the case of LCDs ) the generated image and display it on the screen. These lamps are mercury vapor lamps, and consume large amounts of electricity.
Mine uses a quartz halogen bulb - I've never seen one that uses mercury lamps because of the warm-up time required and the crappy color temp.

edit: Energy Star compliant is a joke on the public, and a bad one at that. The theory is that if you walk away from your appliance, and it goes into standby (less power, but not all the way off) it will save energy over you leaving it on. The problem is, that in standby, the little power sucker is still consuming power like crazy over you having actually cut the power to it. If you unplugged every softstart "Energy Star" complaint piece in your house, and only plugged it in when you need it, you would save $20-$40 a month in electricity. We need to go back to regular hardwired On/Off switches.

Ron
Fully agreed. That's why I have my monitors on the timer setup - it also allows me to not worry about how long my system waits for the screensaver to start (I use this just to lock my terminal and be entertaining, LCDs don't need a screensaver) and what my display timeout is, because the monitors receive exactly zero power while not in use. I also use it to make sure my soldering station is off when I am asleep and at work, and to physically disconnect my backup server from the mains when it is not doing a backup to make it more lightning/surge safe.
 
The plasmas have improved quite a bit, in the 50" area they draw about as much as a LCD of the same size. When I shut mine off it takes about 20 seconds to power back up vs a friend of mine who has an older plasma, that comes on right away which tells me something is not powering down in the older ones like they do in the newer ones.

My point "Energy Star Complaint" means that Off does not equal no power drain.

I went to the Mitsubishi Website. Here are some interesting comparisons.

Model Size Technology Power draw

PD-5065 50" Plasma 480watts
PD-6130 61" Plasma 540watts
LT-52133 52" LCD-Direct 370watts No 60" available in this technology
WD-52526 52" LCD-Rear proj 225watts
WD-62526 62" LCD-Rear proj 225watts
WD-52631 52" DLP-Rear proj 250watts
WD-65837 65" DLP-Rear proj 208watts

Ron
 
My Pioneer Elite PRO-1150HD is 376W but the screen quality was more important than power usage.
 
...,If you unplugged every softstart "Energy Star" complaint piece in your house, and only plugged it in when you need it, you would save $20-$40 a month in electricity. We need to go back to regular hardwired On/Off switches.
TV, DVD, Tuner/amp are on one surge protector, Printer, computer, monitor, and all the other little power suckers that go with them are plugged into another. Also have the cell phone charger plugged into that one. When I shut everything down, the power goes off. We don't do "standby" here. :D
 
Look at the power usage of the LED TV's. It is about a 1/3 the usage of a CRT monitor. I'm waiting for the technology to improve the picture quality and reliability on the LED monitors. LCD and Plasma require quite a bit more energy. I always tell the Woman if your cold and nipping from walking in the freezer section to head over to the flat panel TV's to warm up. :greensmok I just don't tell her that when I'm with her.
 
TV, DVD, Tuner/amp are on one surge protector, Printer, computer, monitor, and all the other little power suckers that go with them are plugged into another. Also have the cell phone charger plugged into that one. When I shut everything down, the power goes off. We don't do "standby" here. :D

Yea, we have a anti-vampire power strip that all the cell phone and camera chargers are plugged into. My iPhone gets charged off the USB port here on my laptop at work or at home. I could probably be even cheaper and get everyone to charge off their car chargers and eliminate the home wall wart chargers.
The iPhone also has the advantage that it will charge off the USB connector on my JVC head unit in the jeep but then so will my V750 motorola. Sitting here typing and connecting the dots we could actually eliminate the wall chargers completely with some forethought.
All the PC's at the house are plugged into hefty UPS's and the one Vista ultimate desktop I have seems to really go into hybernation well and comes up really quick, under 8 seconds, much quicker than any laptop I have ever seen.
I for sure saw a big drop in the electric bill when I took down my server farm running seti at home, 8 dual core 3.0 zeon servers cost me about $40 a month to run, must have been the 10 fans each server had :D
The down side is they kept the cellar warm in the winter but I had to run a window a/c unit in the spring summer once it warmed up.
 
The LED TV will help energy consumption as well.

The plasmas have improved quite a bit, in the 50" area they draw about as much as a LCD of the same size. When I shut mine off it takes about 20 seconds to power back up vs a friend of mine who has an older plasma, that comes on right away which tells me something is not powering down in the older ones like they do in the newer ones.

The thing with that is that there is an option in the menu, for quick turn on and power-saver. SO depending on which setting it is depends on how the TV or whatever shuts down/turns on.
 
Reason number 234,334,440,550,553,338 to wish California would blow up, catch fire, shake apart, slide under a mudslide and then sink....Oh and take all the idiots with it. The USA would be a much better place without the California idiots as citizens. (no, I'm not saying that all Californians are idiots)
 
Every nation needs a place to keep the nut jobs. I just wish there was a way to keep the californians in california.
 
Give it back to Mexico and build a bigger fence.
Naw,...

There are a lot of reasons to keep california. The redwoods, Sequoias, Yosemite, the sea cliffs, The coast highway,....


A place to keep all the nut jobs,...
 
Instead of banning screens they could put effort into technology. OLED? Find a solution not some complicated way around a problem.
 
Instead of banning screens they could put effort into technology. OLED? Find a solution not some complicated way around a problem.

Sony has an OLED TV on the market now. 13 inch...something like 10K. I don't think so. Lets just blow up California....redwoods, Yosemite and all.
 
Just got done watching pirates of the Caribbean so it's been on a while, no heat generated at all by my 50" Panasonic Plasma, not like some I have looked at in stores last year. While it's not cold it is not real warm either, in fact some of the trim is cold to the touch.
 
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