Response To California's Large-Screen TV Regulation

An anonymous reader writes "It's great that unelected bureaucrats in California are clamoring to save energy, but when they target your big-screen TVs for elimination, consumers and manufacturers are apt to declare war. CEDIA and the CEA are up in arms over this. Audioholics has an interesting response that involves setting the TVs in 'SCAM' mode to meet the energy criteria technically without having to add additional cost or increase costs to consumers. 'In this mode, the display brightness/contrast settings would be set a few clicks to the right of zero, audio would be disabled and backlighting would be set to minimum. The power consumption should be measured in this mode much like an A/V receiver power consumption is measured with one channel driven at full rated power and the other channels at 1/8th power.' This is an example of an impending train wreck of unintended consequences, and many are grabbing the popcorn and pulling up chairs to watch."

Comments

Ludacris

[oldhack]

Shut the hell up, all you fat asses with your ludakris-size TVs. Fat ass.

Re:Hilarious

[mcgrew]

Are you sure you're taking into account the power consumption by the frickin' crane that you need to hoist a 50" CRT into position?

Indeed; at 215 pounds one of the features of my TV is it's damned hard to steal!

Re:Why the uproar?

[mcgrew]

With the price of electricity in California, I know I look for the Energy Star label

Your TV doesn't use a lot of electricity. If you have an electric water heater it uses massive amounts more. Central air TONS more.

Note to all the free marketers who somehow think the free market has anything whatever to do with utility monopolies: My city (Springfield) has the cheapest and most reliable electricity in Illinois. Electricity is so cheap here that an electric water heater is cheaper to run than a gas one. The city owns the power company, the gas company is a corporate monopoly. What's that you say about how government is always the problem and never the solution?

Of course, if your government leaders agree with you that government is always the problem, it will be.

Re:Simple solution

[mcgrew]

asplode

Re:Hilarious

[mcgrew]

Wow, I had no idea plasma was such an energy hog. If I get a hidef I'll be sure to get an LCD; another poster said his fifty inch LCD used 75 watts.

Re:Hilarious

[mcgrew]

My house isn't huge, in fact it's quite small, but the footprint of my 42 inch Trinitron isn't any bigger than the 27 inch console I used to have. I have a book shelf that's much bigger.

Re:Hilarious

[mcgrew]

Noone's going to subsidize it. noone's saying "you must replace your TV".

Wow, I didn't realise he had so much money! ;)

More seriously, I was being sarcastic. Would this help? </sarcasm>

The space bar is the biggest key on your keyboard. No one could miss it, and "noone" is annoying to the literate.

Re:Hilarious

[mcgrew]

I'd worry more about the cost of electricity (cheap as it is here I still use CFLs) than global warming. I paid $1k for my TV, but it's about 7 years old. My sister has a 52 inch LCD hi-def; they bought it about the time I bough mine and they paid $3.5k for it.

By the time my TV craps out I'll probably be able to get a 200 inch for fifty bucks and it'll probably use like ten watts of power. Or I'll die of old age first.