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New Energy Efficiency Rules For TVs Sold In California
petehead writes "The LA Times reports on regulations expected to pass in 2009 that will not allow energy-inefficient TVs to be sold in the state. 'State regulators are getting ready to curb the growing power gluttony of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules requiring retailers to sell only the most energy-efficient models, starting in 2011... The regulations would be phased in over two years, with a first tier taking effect on Jan. 1, 2011, and a more stringent, second tier on Jan. 1, 2013.'" According to the Energy Commission's estimates, purchasers of Tier 1-compliant TVs would shave an average of $18.48 off their residential electric bill in the first year of ownership.
These new TVs will be identical to other TVs sold elsewhere in the country, except that have a governor that limits the brightness to 7.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
the models where the power cord doesn't end in a 3-prong plug, but in a stationary bicycle...
We're getting to a point where items like TVs and game systems should have power consumption ratings on them in the store, like with many kitchen appliances.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Yet another revenue stream disguised as a certifcation process....
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
How about cable and sat boxes that can power down more then they do now and DRV's that spin down the HD when they are off and have no planed shows coming up.
Great, more government intervention in both the market and our lives; the net result will just be less choice and higher prices for TVs everywhere.
$18.48 in just a year? That new LCD HDTV will practically pay for itself!
-Peter
Non purchasers will save up to $1000 in the first year. lol
If the shoe fits, it's ugly.
Yep, you can save $18 and year and pay an extra hundred today. Sounds great for something like a TV that is only going to be used for 5 years or so anyway these days. Never mind that time value of money consideration. Thank you Nanny State for saving me from high energy bills, and myself.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Perhaps they should focus their energies (pun not intended) at something that would make a more substantial impact, such as CF or LED lighting...
Okay. So I'd save that much in the first year of ownership. But if the Tier 1 TVs that can only be sold in California costs substantially more than that (Say $30-$50), it could take years to recoup savings on the electrical bill.
I wish my country had such laws.
This is ridiculous. If people want an inefficient television set, they'll get it out of state if they have to (paying that state's sales tax, as opposed to ours). The government has no business telling us what sets we can and can't buy, if we're willing to pay for it.
...and then the utilities raise their prices by 19$ because they "lost" that money. Great...
Are any LCD TVs using LED backlights like some laptops do now?
How exactly was it they planned on stopping people from just ordering from out of state and having them delivered?
Will the cost of a "tier 1" TV be more than the cost of a "what I actually want" TV plus shipping/delivery?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I measured my DirecTV HR20 DVR with a KillAWatt. On: 41W Off: 40W
DRV's that spin down the HD when they are off and have no planed shows coming up.
Your DVR doesn't know if your TV is on. How useful is a DVR which doesn't offer rewind, but only records scheduled programs?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
LCD -- liquid crystal display -- sets use 43% more electricity, on average, than conventional tube TVs; larger models use proportionately more.
A same-sized LCD will use about the same as or less than a CRT with full backlight. If you lower the brightness on the backlight by half, you save proportionately.
Where they get this idea that LCDs use more power is that most people upgrading from CRT to LCD buy a bigger screen.
My blog
You'd think that I was stealing my electricity from the government.
But I'm not. I'm paying for it out of my own pocket, but the government still insists on regulating how much I use of it, and now even what I'm allowed to buy to use it with...
One would think that, since I'm the one PAYING for electricity (not to mention various taxes and sales taxes associated with a TV, if I had a TV), I'd be allowed to pay more and use more? Now THERE is a novel concept - if I have more money, I can use more money to get more things! Wow. And if I'm smart, I can save money by buying a more power-efficient TV! Wouldn't that be a thought...
California, frankly, is wacky :)
Is it really? Does anyone actually look at wattage when selecting a TV? I'd think it would secondary to size, features, resolution, color fidelity, contrast ratio, brand name, ergonomics and maybe audio quality.
I think this is overstepping it a bit.
I'm a big a/v-phile and I dislike LCD and "flat" tv's because they don't have true black points or uniform color.
I want a CRT, and CRTs are power hungry.
This doesn't mean i'm not environmentally conscious.
I use all CFL's and avoid having anything on unless i'm making immediate use.
How about introducing power consumption rules for homes, at least maximum peak power consumption to help lessen the load on the grid by incorporating localized temporary storage?
This would also have a side benefit of helping to prevent the kind of chaos mass blackouts produce by providing a bare minimum power to, say, keep your fridge running for 24-72 hours when the grid goes.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
In California we already pay an Electronic Waste Disposal Fee whenever we purchase a new TV that varies based on the price of the TV, but was $20-30 last time I purchased one. Yet another example of the state trying to control its citizens, and those of other US states given that California is such a large segment of the US economy, and manufacturers will be less likley to export units that meet environmental standards in other states. When I lived back in Ohio I always got a card in the package when I purcased solder that said "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.", and often see links on websites for "Your California Privicy Rights."
All it really does is hurt retailers whom are going to loose out on sales in border cities where consumers have more choice in other states (such as Nevada, Oregon or Arizona), and making life difficult for online sellers to keep track of what units they can/can not sell to CA residents. All the while, most Californians are probably watching TV on their old CRTs that are burning up energy and are probably going to be dumped in the desert somewhere when they quit working. Southern California (where energy is hardest to come by) has literally millions of square miles of desert and lots of folks moving there to find affordable housing but still commute to the LA area to find reasonable paying jobs. If they built a power plant or two up there and some manufacturing they could cut down on transportation costs, improve the quality of life of residents in the desert and the valley and not be so desperate to save power that they're going to restrict tvs and non CFL lightbulbs (wish I still had the URL for that nonsense someone was proposing about a year ago).
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Too many government regulations, man....too many.
Next I guess you're going to tell me I can't burn tires on Earth Day?
Good Grief!
WTF? Over?
The article and in particular this "infographic" is completely wrong or at least misleading. LCD TVs do not consume more power than the same sized CRT as claimed. In fact, an LCD set will consume 50% or less power than a comparably-sized CRT. Of course, if you decide to base each type of set's power consumption on "average set size" without fucking bothering to define what that average is or even bothering to keep the same average for each type of TV (!), then you can pretty much "prove" anything you want, can't you?
Hell, my neighborhood newsletter is way more popular* and produces much better advertising results** than the LA Times!
I don't know why the "California Energy Commission" would make such a preposterous claim, unless they're not comparing the same size LCD and CRT, which would be ridiculous of course. I also don't know how the LA Times could be so ignorant as to not notice this obvious error, and how they could be so irresponsible as to report such obvious nonsense without doing any research or checking with other sources, or at least questioning or pointing out the (unfair) comparison of small CRTs to large LCDs.
Educate thyself and read any of the dozens of results that show LCDs use less power than CRTs.
Then wonder why the tax/power requirements isn't based on size/overall power consumption instead of just being arbitrarily assessed on LCDs in general. (Hint: it's another money grab, and what better way than to focus it on the better selling, higher-value product?)
* "popular" is defined as the percentage of my relatives that read it daily.
** "results" is defined as how many free gifts I get from advertisers.
*** Hey! Look at that! I'm full of shit but at least I cite my bullshit definitions, which is more than you can say for the LA Times and the California Energy Commission!
everything in moderation
It's possible over HDMI at least to have the DVR know if the TV is is on or not. I know some newer TV+Blu-Ray player combinations can even have the Blu-Ray player turn the TV on, and turn the input to the correct one, all automatically when you insert a disc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Consumer_Electronics_Control
Morphing Software
The article states that LCD TVs use more electricity then 'conventional' tube TVs. That's absolute crap. A few years back my old Sony 27" XBR went tits-up. Its power consumption was approx. 550 watts depending on screen brightness. Knowing that LCD and plasma sets where the 'wave of the future' -yet not wanting to be an early adopter- I decided to buy a cheap 27" Phillips CRT-based TV which has a power consumption of 275 watts at full screen brightness -since I don't run it that high it's actually averages about 225 watts. New LCD TVs have power ratings in the 215 to 275 watt range depending on the screen size -the CCFL is the big power user I guess. Plasma sets are considerably higher, closer to the range of the XBR. So what kind of savings in energy do these laws hope to legislate? Ten percent? Twenty Percent? There has to be some minimum power usage for LCD TVs even if they were to go to OLED by the time frame stated -which probably won't happen- so given the dollar savings figure cited, they seem to think that they can get a fifty-percent savings -or more- through legislation. I just don't see that happening.
I've got your sig, right here.
...An industry would look a state like CA that wants to foist stupid regulations upon them STRAIGHT in the eye and tell them to "go suck it". Californians just simply would have to go to other states (thus losing the morons in Sacramento some serious tax revenue) to buy these things.
What will happen is that this will make these products more expensive for those of us who live in the sane part of America. It's all about foisting a radical green agenda on the rest of us.
If California wants to be crazy, fine, to each his own. But don't force ME to have to pay for it.
Corporatism != Free Market
Tell me about it. My parents have a DVR and, even on standby, the whirring of the hard drives is noticeable from the other side of the room. Seems it can only distinguish between completely off and 'vroom vroom'.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
My Motorola DVR unit supplied by my cable company already reboots itself on a regular basis. Usually it's after I queue up about a hundred channel requests because it's a sluggish piece of crap and it doesn't respond in a reasonable amount of time. I can't count the number of times when I had to wait for the screen to refresh to be able to do something else. (even to power it off)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I agree. More devices should have low-power states.
For instance, the PlayStation 3 and XBOX 360 use maximum power whether you're playing Oblivion at full HD resolution or just downloading something.
I have a bad feeling about this...
How banning pointless encryption of signals? Encrypting the signal in the Bluray player then decrypting in the TV is a complete waste of power, why not just ban the use of HDCP?
My TV is probably very inefficient. It's moved zero miles since I filled its tank with gasoline. But I'll have to wait until the tank is no longer full before I can measure its MPG.
It's possible over HDMI at least to have the DVR know if the TV is is on or not.
Even if there is a hdmi switch box between them?
. I know some newer TV+Blu-Ray player combinations can even have the Blu-Ray player turn the TV on, and turn the input to the correct one, all automatically when you insert a disc.
That's cool as long as it can also be turned off. I routinely throw movies in while my kids are playing games, or watching a show, in anticpation of watching it shortly thereafter. They'd be pretty pissed if the moment the disc slid in the TV switched inputs on them.
You're lucky you can reboot your boxes. The boxes Cablevision use require you to call the service department for them to click a button to make the headend spit out the data the box needs to operate.
Meh. At least Scientific Atlanta boxes don't screw up and queue ten million button presses.
Do we really need another (government funded [aka my tax money]?) organization to dictate that TV manufacturers should place bigger energy stickers on their boxes?
Is it not the responsibility of the buyer to determine if this new TV will:
a.) work with their house/stereo/room/cabinet?
b.) not burn out their fuse box?
c.) not add to their electric bill significantly?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Where do they get these numbers? from TFA: "LCD -- liquid crystal display -- sets use 43% more electricity, on average, than conventional tube TVs; larger models use proportionately more." Is that true?
I find it a little saddening that nearly everyone complains about this type of legislation while at the same time demanding that something be done about global warming.
The fundamental problem we have is that we aren't currently being billed the true cost of (most of) the power we are using. The energy companies have been getting away with polluting the environment on a massive scale for at no cost to them.
We can tackle that problem in two ways: 1) force power companies to pay to clean up their pollution. 2) Increases taxes so that Government can clean up the pollution. Either way it means that things are going to get a lot more expensive. Government isn't about to raise taxes to clean up the atmosphere and they certainly aren't going to try to make energy companies fix the problem so the only really option is to bring in strict guidelines on how much power devices can consume and hope the problem goes away.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
...These new rules will have one good effect: all the flat-screen manufacturers will have to start investing in building LCD display panels with LED backlighting, which uses a lot less power than today's LCD panels with florescent backlights. It may also mean a lot more money poured into OLED development, since OLED displays have the potential to use a small fraction of the amount of power that even an LCD panel with LED backlighting uses.
A friend just gave me a 50" plasma HD TV, about 5 years old. The lights flicker when I power that thing up. I have no idea if that's normal, or it means I have lousy wiring, or if my TV is using more electricity that it should.
I don't think they can do it. This falls afoul of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
No it isn't. Planet Earth is everybody's business.
Step up and be a man, not a spoiled brat.
No sig today...
Saving $18.48 of energy isn't all that much energy saved doesn't help the environment that much. If anything, it may hurt the environment more due to more resources being consumed in producing the TV using a less efficient production method.
To put this in perspective, in 2008 the average price of residential electricity was 14.45 cents/kwh. So saving $18.48 in energy means you saved 123.6kwh over the year. You could save that much by turning off one 100W bulb on only one day out of the week.
While it is our duty to take care of our environment, it is crazy laws like these (and people who push for these kinds of laws) that give environmentalism a bad name.
Does anyone think that these TVs are built in CA? Even that might not matter, based on the Supreme Courtdecisions that anything that affects interstate commerce is covered by the interstate commerce clause.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
My Scientific Atlanta 8300HDC cable box does this. When it is sitting there doing nothing with the television off, I hear the hard drive spin up every evening exactly 5 minutes before a scheduled recording start.
The downside of the drive powering down is that I can be watching one channel live for hours, then I miss what someone says and click the go-back-a-few-seconds and that causes the drive to spin up (which takes usualy 5 to 15 seconds) and start recording from that point, defeating one of the purposes of the DVR.
~Phil
However, if you've turned off the cable box (I have Time Warner Cable, and use their DVR - the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. The box has both a power button and power light) it's not recording so it can rewind anyway. So why not spin down the hard drive, or enter into some kind of lower power mode?
Side note: the 8300HD box that TWC provides does spin down the hard drive on a regular basis. I can hear it spin up the drive when I either: A) Turn it on, or B) periodically as it performs self maintenance, records shows, or installs updates.
1. wait till after Christmas. - DONE
2. Buy up all the LED Christmas Tube Lights I can get my hands on - IN PROGRESS
3. String them all up along the ceilings of my rooms.
4. ?????
5. Profit!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Except making some people in power the thrill of being 'better' than 'you'. And in this case, 'you' means everybody except them.
Saving the power needed to run 86,400 homes? The Census reported 11,502,870 in 2000. So they want to save about .75% of total power generation? Maybe? Their power consumption numbers are so far off they may end up saving a tenth of THAT...
What an utter waste of time. More impact would be realized if they required datacenters to be located further north, requiring less demanding cooling systems.
Dammit, now I'm giving them more cockamamie ideas. I hate when I do that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
And that's all it does, placate some greeny somewhere that still thinks a Toyota Prius is a clean car. Instead of all this silly shit why don't they post the efficiency ratings like they do for white goods and let the consumer decide. Oh right we're stupid sheeple that they must herd.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I seem to remember the economy of California, taken by itself, would be ranked in the top ten countries in the world. Sure, you could ignore it, but you do so at your own financial peril. See, somebody will sell to them; eventually many ideas from California are co-opted by other places. Then instead of having your product ready to go you find your market shrinking with each added jurisdiction. Eventually you have very little market or you have to do the R&D to comply, and the others who did it before you have already retooled.
There are some advantages to being a laggard, but often the big strike is made early - everybody else ends up just pushing commodity products.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Is run by a bunch of idiots and are out of control.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I measured my DirecTV HR20 DVR with a KillAWatt. On: 41W Off: 40W
...and your KillAWatt lived up to its name :)
here is a link to a Sony Bravia 32 inch TV on Amazon I don't know if it's a good TV, I don't know if it's a bad TV. It's a TV, chosen somewhat at random
The technical description is as follows:
16:9 HD 720p Resolution (1366 x 768 ) LCD Panel /NTSC tuner with QAM
HDMI Input
HD Component Input
PC Input
ATSC
If you expand the technical details, you'll find
Power
Power Requirements: AC 120V 60Hz
Power Consumption (in Standby): Less than 1W
AC Stay Off: Yes
Regulation and Standard Compliance:
Energy Star® Compliant: Yes
VESA® Hole Spacing Compatible: Yes
VESA® Hole Pitch: 200 x 200 mm
How much power is consumed during operation? I don't know.
The manual, however offers a clue
Power consumption in use: 155 W.
But I had to go beyond the product literature, beyond what amazon offered me to find this little figure-- which might be high, it might be low.
Multiply this research process by 20 or 30 models and a customer starts to question their "responsibility" to the environment-- which means that the aggregate effect of "environmentally responsible television buyers" becomes rather small.
Even a labeling requirement would be helpful.
This is just another trick from Arnold making sure Skynet (TM) has enough power to run when plugged in...
I'm amazed that it even makes 1W difference. These devices don't really have an on/off state, they're constantly on, always recording. The only real way of turning them off is to unplug them.
... I wonder how these technologies compare like-for-like... Folks complain about 'power hungry' LCDs, and I'm like "WTF?!".. Find me a 65" CRT and compare it against that 65" LCD, not a 65" LCD vs 32" CRT..
Anyway, I bet all you California tree-botherers will be sorry when we get Snowball Earth..
The LA Times is now an official nanny state propaganda source.
Their power ratings define the average size for a CRT as smaller than the average of the LED. While this is true, it is using statistics to tell a lie in favor of the regulation because the arrangement of the chart gets to show LEDs with higher power consumption.
Back in reality, most LEDs take less power per square inch than a CRT. But they get to raise the "power hog" scare because LED TVs tend to be bigger.
If you think this is bad, wait till you see the tax they put on the electric cars once they get done forcing everyone to get one. green = money
I seem to recall that the Netherlands mandated something like a 20% increase in efficiency for household appliances (hair dryers, coffee makers and such) which are generally the heaviest power users in the house.
It worked, the power used by each device went down, but the total power consumption went up because they were so much cheaper to run.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again. Buy energy efficient devices and you don't have to think about how much energy you use so you use more. Buy a car that uses half the gas and you might drive 2.5 times as often.
Now one could aruge that the TV is already on 24/7/365 so its a net improvement. But as a general rule, if you want people to use less, make it cost MORE not less, or make them see what they're spending as they spend it. So manditory KillaWatt-like devices would be more effective, though still reprehensible for a government.
I'm pretty sure the standard SCART does something similar too.
This is being proposed by the California Energy Commission. These types of proposals is part of there job.
Can there even be a discussion until a Bill is purposed?
How much will they cut? is it based on size of the unit?
That article is clearly written specifically to confuse this issue.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
DRV's that spin down the HD when they are off and have no planed shows coming up.
Your DVR doesn't know if your TV is on. How useful is a DVR which doesn't offer rewind, but only records scheduled programs?
In the case of satellite/DVR boxes like smprather mentioned, the box knows if you're pulling a signal through it (though admittedly it doesn't know if the TV is actually powered on). When you've pushed the "power" button to turn it off and there are no upcoming events, I don't see why it still needs to consume 98% of the power it uses in regular operation.
Regarding Your DVR doesn't know if your TV is on. for other DVRs (an area where I have little knowledge), don't you tune the TV signal through the DVR? Obviously it couldn't tell the difference between watching the exact same thing for 6 hours without touching any buttons versus being idle for 6 hours because you're not watching TV. But it should at least be able to tell between actively watching TV (changing channels and such) and not doing anything. Perhaps going into a standby mode like the satellite boxes do after a period of inactivity?
I honestly have to wonder - they say that the new TV's will save about $18 per year. How much more expensive might these regulations make TVs in California? If I save $18/year, but the TV is $50 more expensive, then it takes about 3 years before I even break even. This is my problem, right now, with Toyata Prius and similar hybrid vehicles - they tend to be so much more expensive that I might as well buy a conventional car and just put the difference towards the extra gas I'll need.
My other problem with the idea of hybrids is that, I suspect, in the long term, the added efficiencies won't help much, because more people are going to drive (think about developing nations, where a lot more people drive now than they did 10 or 20 years ago, and they still have a lot of people who don't drive now, but probably will in the future). Plus, I suspect people will drive more miles if they use less gas per mile (I for one, would love to do more weekend road-trips, but the cost of gas makes me curb that, but if I had a more efficient vehicle, I would probably use the 'savings' to travel more), so the savings achieved through efficiency will, probably, disappear pretty quickly.
We can't, really, solve our energy problems, through increased efficiency, though efficiency isn't bad. Long term, we just need more energy. Or fewer people.
Our local car club here has a special Earth Day show and cruise at the drag strip. We burn a lot of rubber that day.
Good times.
So why aren't they considering regulating the excess of so-called wall warts? How many of the critters do you have in your house, continually sucking juice unless you make an executive decision to yank them off the hose?
Many years ago I read an estimate that AC adapters accounted for up to EIGHT PERCENT of the average household electricity bill. How much worse must that figure be now in 2009, given that so many manufacturers abuse them as a cop-out for better design? It's one thing to have an AC adapter for a device that MUST be as tiny as possible, can't dissipate heat, or is intended to be active all the time, like a router or cable modem... but does an HP or Lexmark printer or scanner need an AC adapter? Does a recharging station for a cordless Black and Decker hand vacuum need one? No!
The energy level of your television is known to cause cancer in the state of california!
Then find a site that lists the operating specs and buy from them. Make sure you tell them you like that feature and that's why they got your business if it means that much to you.
Heck, a simple Google search of "KDL-32M4000 power consumption" tells me you should be shopping at:
shopping.msn, Crutchfield, or I'm sure many other locations.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
For those in the UK, it's interesting to note that the Sky+ HD box uses 36W in standby (well, mine does as measured by my power meter), which at UK energy prices works out somewhere around £36 / year to leave it in standby.
Extremely annoying since it you turn it off it can't record the programs you've scheduled to record. All my other consumer electronics stuff registered as either 0.1W or 0.0W in standby mode.
How about using these amazing inventions known as *buttons* that tell machines things?
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Think about this. Generally excess power consumption is given off in the form of waste heat. During the cooler months, many people are heating their houses to stay warm. Since the TVs do give off a lot of heat (stand near a flat panel TV display at your local store and you will feel it) they are actually saving energy that would be used to run a furnace for instance. If you have forced air heating this is actually saving energy in terms of the power needed to run the blower. I would however agree in summer months this would reverse and add to cooling expense. Then you have to consider when the flat panels are normally used. Evening and night hours and not normally during the warmest part of the day. I believe the energy waste is not more than half of what they are claiming based on this line of thinking. CRTs are not exactly all that efficient either when you take into account how much power needed per screen area. LCD monitors for PCs are far more energy efficient that their CRT counterparts. The same should hold true for TV units. Those trying to shame us for energy use are going to skew their calculations for their benefit not ours. They want to make us feel guilty for enjoying modern conveniences.
by the CEC:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2008publications/CEC-400-2008-028/CEC-400-2008-028-SD.PDF
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If people would step up and act responsibly, regulation wouldn't be necessary. But they don't, so what can you do?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I'll pay the extra $18.48.
If my next TV just happens to be more energy efficient, cool, if not- hands of my TV!
Typically DVRs only disable the display drivers when power is off. Not a lot of power usage there. Going into a true low-power standby state requires a decent amount of work - you want the thing to be awake enough to record your programs, download the latest guide, etc. - and also to turn on fast when you want to watch the tube. Why spend the time doing that design when most consumers have no idea how much power the device uses at any point?
I'm actually coming around to the idea of regulating something regarding power use of always-powered devices. At least (as I posted above) something akin to the yellow tag you get on a dishwasher, boiler or other household device. It shows how much power the device uses in a year of typical use and its annual cost, and compares to "similar" equipment. (I can never find the items on the low end of that scale, though). For most equipment, a scale showing how the device compares to its competitors for power use in operating and standby modes could certainly sway me when buying a new TV or DVR. Assuming all else is equal, that is.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
the energy subsidies themselves are stupid and should be dismantled as well, allowing the market to build clean and efficient nuclear power plants
I don't have a problem with using nuclear but there is necessarily a lot of regulation that comes with it because of the potential danger. I have zero faith that market forces alone will ensure safe operation of a nuclear fission plant. Are people unreasonably scared of nuclear? Probably but that isn't going to change either. Nuclear accidents, however unlikely, are scary things and unless you can convince people that coal is scarier or that they have no alternatives they aren't going to get built.
We subsidize because if you want alternatives that is the *only* way to ensure timely development. Energy is a fungible good. I'm not sure you realize the consequences of that fact. The money will never get invested in new "clean" technologies because there is no money to fund their development so long as we have cheap coal and cheap oil. I don't like subsidies as a rule any more than you do but sometimes they are a necessary evil. We subsidize infrastructure precisely because of market failure for that sort of investment. Pure economic self interest will inevitably lead consumers away from clean energy, not towards it.
and work towards technological solutions for a cleaner, power-efficient future without propping up worthless old technologies and inefficient and impractical ones like solar and wind with subsidies.
Exactly what are these "technological solutions" you propose? You ruled out solar and wind. What's left? Geothermal, hydro, nuclear, coal, oil and gas are the major options left. The last four are powerful but not clean - and yes nuclear is not clean. Hydro has environmental consequences too and geothermal is not available everywhere or in sufficient quantities.
If people want greener TVs, the market will make them available -- just look at the Toyota Prius, which Toyota can't churn out fast enough!
Toyota makes virtually no profit on the Prius even with the help of government subsidies. They make about $100 per vehicle net. If demand for hybrid vehicles was so great, don't you think they would account for more than 3% of total vehicle sales by now? Fact is that most folks aren't willing to pay the premium for hybrid vehicles yet. I think hybrids are the future but don't get ahead of yourself proclaiming them a market success.
Translation from nut-speak: "This doesn't fall in line with my ideology. It therefore is a terrible idea and is somehow preventing me from having the opulent lifestyle I am entitled to."
It's utterly absurd. Under my TV I have a DVD player, a Wii, a DVR and a cable box. Out of those, only the DVR needs to be on all the time. The DVD player is the only device with a proper off button. It was also the cheapest. The rest of them (including the TV) offer no alternative but to switch them off at the wall. The EU is supposed to be doing something about this though...
You can't do A beacause it's bad for the Planet!
You can't do B beacause it's bad for the Planet!
You can't do C beacause it's bad for the Planet!
Everything that is not compulsory is forbidden.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Ok, but if the majority of people say "We don't want this" and would like to make it law then laws are what we get. Government is for the people by the people after all and majority rules. If this is what the majority wants thats what they should get.
"We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free." I'd say that applies to the market just like any individual.
Your whole majority rules speech is missing the part about minority rights...
because they only care about what the average person buys. It doesn't matter if per inch of viewing area an LCD uses less power than a CRT if the average consumer buys 2 inches of LCD for every inch of CRT.
I'm fine with my 24-27 inch CRT. But I'm not going to buy an LCD that's less than about 34 inches.
So if the government wants to reduce my power consumption they need to make sure that the 34 inch LCD uses less power than the 24 inch CRT I already have. It doesn't matter if the 24 inch LCD uses less power because on average, nobody buys a 24 inch LCD to replace a 24 inch CRT.
Work Safe Porn
Energy efficient TVs are those that turn off by themselves after 5 minutes of use.
We can get our Motorola DVR to reboot by trying to add "Spongebob Squarepants" to our series recordings. Every time. And if you try and add "Wizards of Waverly Place", it not only reboots but resets to factory defaults (i.e. removes your recording schedule AND your recordings).
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
My DVR knows very well. It is a Dish VIP622 and I can turn each of its tuners off. All I loss is the ability to rewind when I first turn the tuner back on (since it only queues up what I am watching from then on).
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I have found that my PS3 seems to be a less capable space heater (and runs quieter) while running Linux, than while using GameOS functions.
If you want to reduce power consumption, you do it by raising electric rates. They're a republican state; why the socialist solution?
Did you miss the part where the GP said when they are off?
California won't let electricity prices rise to market price, and we end up with both overusage and 3rd world country style blackouts. Then there's this stuff to take away customer choice in a feeble attempt to limit power reduction. Why can't they just raise electricity rates and let the market limit usage? Maybe then people will actually turn off their TVs or open windows rather than run the air conditioner.
Ok, so the primary concern about using excess electricity is pollution from burning coal. The effective implementation of energy efficient TV's will drop that by maybe 1% at best, meanwhile about 100 times more pollution is generated due to the lack of effective public transit systems in LA.
I know it's not the CEC's job, but the disproportionality of using legislation to bring about such a minor benefit while such a greater problem exists is like chasing a thief that stole the wallet of someone who's being attacked by a bear.
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Nothing could beat complete denial
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They'd be pretty pissed if the moment the disc slid in the TV switched inputs on them.
Man you sound terrified of change, i think you could put it ontop of the player for a whole two minutes. Or just get the disc as you send the kids away w/e.....
I've seen devices that "know" when an RCA/S-video/etc cable is plugged in. I'm guessing this might be adaptable to whether the device on the other end is on as well, depending on whether there is any noticeable change in power usage?
Televisions making up 10% of total residential electricity use? A savings of "$18.48/yr"? These numbers are just asspulls. The 10% for televisions appears to be derived from a report based on a 50-home survey which showed that "plug loads" accounted for 15-19% of electricity use and "entertainment" (including TVs, but also set-top boxes, DVD players, etc) made up 60% of that.
If AT&T U-verse is available in your area, then you can get a box that does that today. IIRC the DVR uses ~20W when running and drops to 13W in standby. Not fabulous ... but a whole lot better than 40W all the time that my old Comcast set top box used to use.
I see 52" LCD TVs that just over half the power consumption per square inch than a 27" CRT, using only a little more than twice the power. I see 32" LCD TVs that have less total power consumption than a 29" CRT. If they are talking about twice the power consumption, they are comparing an average-consumption 42" LCD to that much smaller CRT. It is simply not fair, especially since the price point of that LCD is higher than the CRT, making it not equivalent as the "average" that people would buy. The basic fact is that LCDs save power. If you want to use the same power as your CRT then buy only a marginally larger LCD. But they want to demonize LCDs in order to have more control over the populace and expand government to administer that control. And as usual the media helps them do it.
Your DVR doesn't know if your TV is on.
It could, via HDMI handshaking or impedance measuring or remembering which the last power command the universal remote sent to the TV set was.
How useful is a DVR which doesn't offer rewind, but only records scheduled programs?
Um, about 98% as useful as a DVR which does offer rewind?
I rarely if ever have a need to rewind a live TV signal. Pause, yes, but rewind? Most of the time if something was awesome enough to merit an instant replay, the program's director will replay it for me.
The obvious solution to issues like this is to not ban any products, but to mandate adequate labeling such that the consumer knows how much damage the product does to the common good, then charge the consumer for that damage. In this case, TVs should have a label that lists toxic materials and estimates annual electricity consumption (similar to that of appliances), then charge an upfront tax for toxic material disposal and an electricity tax for power plant emissions. Problem solved.
While resistive dimmers were used at one stage in the theatre industry I don't think they were ever used in homes. If they were you would notice it because of the heat output.
All modern dimmers (both domestic and theatrical) for incandescent lighting are phase cutters. That is they reduce the average power to the filiment by only allowing current through for part of the waveform. This means very little power is dissipated in the dimmer.
The issue with efficiancy when dimming incandescents is as the GP says that light output goes down far quicker than power disipation.
Of course none of this has any relavence to dimming TVs since those use totally different technologies for producing light.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Man you sound terrified of change, i think you could put it ontop of the player for a whole two minutes. Or just get the disc as you send the kids away w/e.....
I don't fear change at all, but I dislike automation technology that inevitably just gets in my way.
I have some vague recollection of it being a 20th century device that was a limited purpose monitor. I'm not sure I have space on my desk for a display device that can only be used with one source. It strikes me that running a separate display device just for this "television" service is inherently somewhat energy and resource wasteful. A truly energy efficient "TV" is a monitor that is also used for non-TV purposes.
The California legislature has decided what is best for Californians. But that does not equal a free market. People do not always choose what other people feel they "need." That's the nanny state, not the free market, whether it's TVs, lightbulbs, or cheeseburgers.
Left to their own devices (no pun intended) in the free market, Cal-eee-for-nee-yawns would likely choose more power sources, and an improved grid. And while the preposterously bloated $140B CA budget is not covering basic services, how about some more freeways to reduce gridlock? Some of us in California feel that the answer to limited public services is to create more to meet demand, not reduce demand!
Not all of us are greenies that want to revert to a pre-industrial society. Some of us want progress, not regress. Put a label on the TV that it saves energy and let people choose to buy it if they want. That's a free market. Mandating is not.
Build a better lightbulb that uses less power - and that doesn't release mercury into my house when it breaks - and I'll buy it if it saves me money. That's the free market.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Just because you can doesn't mean you should, or even that it is acceptable to.
You aren't looking at the whole stack. Walmart having marginally more efficient trucks does nothing for the fact that one of the consequences of Walmart in general is an additional 1,000 (some huge number) of extremely dirty coal plants in China where the regulations aren't near as strict as the US, plus moving all the goods from China to the US on ships, and those ships have hardly any regulations at all while running on bunker fuel, which is downright nasty again.
Any savings in energy or cleaner air here are offset to a tremendous degree just by the business model of offshoring the manufacturing (let alone the hit to the wallets of all the out of work factory workers here and lost tax base). And air knows no boundaries, what was air pollution a week ago in China (remember when they had to almost close China down just to run the olympics so they could have tolerable air for the athletes?) has now traveled the Pacific and is hitting north America.
All you did was move the problem to the other side of an imaginary dotted line, plus cost tens of million of jobs domestically plus exported cash by the boatload and taken it out of the internal economy where it stopped being a force multiplier. That's why China is sitting on huge reserves of cash and is able to go around the planet and buy up the next 20-50 years of critical strategic minerals like they are doing in Africa right now, and the US is sitting in the debtors seat wondering where all the new jobs are going to come from.
So we still got way more air pollution in general, plus a lot of lost jobs that paid better than Walmart "associate" pay. The big trade was one generation of cheaper gadgets, and we got to play "make believe" that we cleaned up the environment when we didn't, we made it worse actually (looking at the planet as a whole), and now the US economy is partly collapsing from it.
Instead of banning incandescent bulbs and high-power TV's, how about the federal government impose a tax that is proportional to the average energy use per year. No... better yet! Just tax electricity.
The "facts" cited in the story are ludicrously wrong. For example plasma TVs consume no more power *on average* than LCD TVs of the same size with florescent backlighting (yes, I know you've read the opposite many times, and it was wrong every time you read it - it's a myth caused by a lack of understanding of average power consumption versus maximum power consumption). This is another example of feels good/accomplishes nothing legislation.
EAT BEEF?
A FACADE
And please note: hexa-pinoqachole has no psychotropological benefit.
Governator walks in with heavy metal boots:
Governator: Whazzat black thing on my monitor!
BOFH: It saves energy by showing black.
Governator: So now Google knows I've always appeared in black clothes.
BOFH: wtf! no!
Governator: Asta la Vista Brightness...
That is the problem, and right now, its a major bitch to get a new power plant built. Natural gas is now obviously foolish given all the price variance, coal and nuclear are both politically impossible, and windmills and solar can't yet even fill the role of a good peak demand unit. So, there is no more electricity to buy, and therefor, the government rations it.
This is my sig.
Working on it. See http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=revisions.settop_box_spec STB OEMs who don't power down will have a tough time making the tier 2 spec. As it is, in tier 1, DVRs and other ancillary functions need to get shut down to make the grade. We designed it that way.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
The LA Times lost all credibility with me when they said this:
I'm not aware of any means through which they could possibly be more wrong. They mention size as an additional factor in the next sentence, so that's not it. To be clear: an LCD uses less power than an equivalent CRT, period.
What has been driving the power demand for TVs has been (a) plasma, (b) bigger screens and (c) any kind of projection screen.
www.wavefront-av.com
How does it know the TV is off... duh, if I haven't pressed any of the remote control buttons for a while, it assumes the TV is off... works a charm.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Gonzales v. Raich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
The Supremes have ruled that pot grown in California and only consumed in California (regardless if there is a 'sale' or not) is "interstate commerce" on the logic that such cultivation might theoretically have wider impact on the overall marijuana market that exceeds the borders of California. By that logic, one could say that since the proposed regulations by California will have a definite impact on the wider television market outside of California, that it IS interstate commerce.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Using HDMI, the Xbox 360 won't switch on and send images to the TV unless the TV is on. Not on my setup anyway.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
The casinos on the Calif/Nevada border will build colossal Best Buy and Fry's selling the good stuff. It would be just like those mammoth liquor stores and sales-tax-free malls on the New Hampshire border.
Most of the CEC enabled players allow you to selectively enable or disable CEC support. And if the software is written correctly (and the path to the TV is not too deep), the source can tell if the sink is on or off, regardless of the connection topology. Of course, most of the CEC and HDMI implementations I've come across are half baked at best.
Oddly, while the 8300HD does spin down the drive (though it does not spin down an ESATA connected drive), it doesn't ever turn off the video output - it just changes the video data to black (at least on the HDMI port).
then they just need electricity to cost more.
Look at gas efficiency. For decades, we have been told we should conserve fuel, but SUVs sold like hotcakes, and very few bought economy cars.
Then gas hit $4 a gallon, and suddenly used car lots are full of SUVs.
If electricity was 10 times as expensive, then even the average joe would worry more about the electric usage.
There are several reasons that manufacturers like to use wall warts
I don't like having to pay for the electricity that keeps a wall wart warm to the touch. The problem is that there are significant advantages for a manufacturer to use a wall wart.
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I can't tell you how many times I've turned on the TV, and used rewind on tivo to go back to the begining of what's currently showing.
I'd prefer SSD (that is, a version of it that doesn't wear out too quickly for this purpose) for the live TV buffer.
Power usage for different types of TVs is not closely related to the 'averages'. See
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6475_7-6400401-3.html
I even question the 'averages' of this article.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-010309-fi-tv-g,0,3697326.graphic
It seems to imply that CRT televisions are more efficient.
The numbers also disagree with the 'averages' of Cnet's quick guide. If I'm going to buy a flat screen I will look at the power consumption and the performance of each candidate, regardless of the type. Trying to generalize which is 'best' just isn't valid at this time. If you are really concerned about the energy consumption, go to the Energy Star site
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=find_a_product.showProductGroup&pgw_code=TV
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
You forgot part of the equation: the financial incentive.
If you have ratings "AAA", "AA", "A", "B" and you get a credit on your energy bill by sending in a receipt or proof of purchase, then you get back $50 on an "A" rated TV, $75 on an "AA", and $125 on an "AAA". When I bought a fridge several years back, it had a "AAAAA" rating (didn't know they went that high), and I got back $350.
You don't have to make things illegal to change usage -- just provide "incentives" and you'll get most of the way to your energy goals...
I'm not into the idea of "banning sales" of different types in CA. With the incentive program, it gets pretty clear to all the players what the cost of a cheap TV is vs. an energy efficient one.
Each year, the ratings are recalculated and set based on a 'curve' based on where the technology is -- so "B" rated
TV's might be at the 25th percentile, A: 50%, AA: 60...etc...
Your corrected comment is much less awkward.
And yet does not address the simple fact that some people write the way they speak. Sometimes you (rhetorical) may plan the sentence correctly, or sometimes you real-time correct the clumsiness, with the case in question being with the phrase "no pun intended."
You're essentially enforcing formal writing in an informal forum.
You would do well consider what's wrong with that. Or at least recognize that you've elevated beyond Spelling, Grammar and Metaphor Nazi up to Structure Nazi. (No ad hominem, no Godwin. As a self-confessed Metaphor Nazi, I can call you that - accurately.)
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I have a DVB-S DVR which records to USB devices, so I can use an external hard drive which I can manually switch off or record to a silent USB thumb drive.
I suppose you could use one of those time-programmable wall switches, but that takes the ease out of selecting the programs to record I guess.
That's part of the trouble with the broken market of cable boxes. If they could just agree on standards, then there would be no need for people to put up shitty hardware any longer.
Gonzales v. Raich is a constitutional dodge created to help the war on drugs. It should have never been decided that way in the first place.
Add to that the fact that creating something new is not the same thing as preventing something old from being sold. Cultivating Marijauna(aside from the fact that the decision was bogus in the first place) involves the cultivation of a substance prohibited in other states, that cultivation creates a source for that product which cannot be controlled by those other states(it's legal) and which can provide a source for external markets.
A restriction on sale on the other hand, does nothing to prevent people in other states buying tv's that don't meet the standards, the regulation has no impact on them. It's been done a million times in other states with various and sundry things(for example Wisconsin doesn't allow 18 wheelers, if you want to transport goods through Wisconsin by truck, even if they're not destined for Wisconsin, you have to change trucks).
The fact that because California is such a large market the TV companies will probably introduce said features into all their models for the purposes of cost savings doesn't make any difference. The behaviours of the tv manufacturers(beyond certain limits) are outside the control of federal government, and saying California can't do what dozens of other states have done just because it's california violates equal protection under the law.
Rosenfeld noted that a number of television makers already produce models that meet the proposed commission efficiency standards and that 87% of current stock complies with the planned 2011 threshold
Somehow I think the difference between the compliant and non-compliant TVs is the cost of the power supply. IE, the 13% non-compliant TVs might need to use a power supply that costs $1 more.
No, I will not work for your startup