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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."
"In fact, by the time the first wave of CEC regulations enter into effect in 2011, Energy Star 4.0 will be in place."
"In short, the differences between the two are not dramatic--the CEC's requirements are ultimately not any more stringent than the Energy Star guidelines."
"According to its analysis, many popular HDTV models already meet the CEC's requirements for the year 2011, and some LED models--which have made a selling point of their energy efficiency--already meet the CEC's Tier 2 standard."
Stay calm, people. The Governator is not coming to steal your teevees.
The standards are not only necessary (its a suprisingly large fraction of the household power consumption in CA), but imminently doable.
Roughly 25% of the TVs on the market ALREADY meet the 2013 specification, with 50% meeting the 2011 specification.
The key is "LCD with LED backlight". Such TVs easily meet the spec and are of good quality.
LCD's with conventional backlights needs to change the backlight technology, but they are doing this anyway: LED backlights are better for longevity as well as power consumption.
Who this hurts is those who have bet on Plasma technology, as plasma can effectively not meet these requirements, but plasma is dying anyway, as LCD screens keep getting bigger and faster reacting while being cheaper than plasma TVs.
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Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
That's no longer permitted in the US.
(Apart from being a good ruling for civil liberties and privacy, Kyllo's also interesting for its strange 5-4 split: the majority, pro-civil-liberties, opinion is by Scalia, joined by Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"If you want people to use less electricity charge" We all saw how well this worked when gas prices hit $4. People are not willing to drive less or even willing to drive sanely.
"Motorists drove 112 billion fewer miles during the 13-month period between November 1, 2007 and November 30, 2008 compared with the year-prior period, the U.S. Department of Transportation said"
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/22/news/economy/gas_use/?postversion=2009012215
The other factors the strongly affect birthrate are education, equality for women, and availability of birth control. All of which are probably more important than prosperity, and many of which are not present in some prosperous countries (like the oil-rich middle-eastern countries).
Too many of the comments seem to come from Fox News viewers. All rant, no facts.
First, here are the actual regulations. All comments submitted (including e-mail rants) are on-line. Some of the better ones:
Other than Sony, most of the big players don't seem to have major problems with the requirements.
And it is not even a real problem for manufacturers, since (from TFA):
According to the CEC, nearly 1000 HDTV models on the market today already meet the Tier 1 standard for 2011, and some 300 meet the 2013 standard (Tier 2).
"The disease is overpopulation - there's just too many people on planet earth, and even if you do cut back energy usage, you can't economize fast enough to keep up with geometric population growth."
The inevitable collapse from overpopulation is always just around the corner. And we face dire consequences (this time for sure!) unless we immediately institute arbitrary and draconian measures to control even the most basic human actions.
Your premise is based on two incorrect assumptions:
- Available resources are in constant decline
- Population always increases geometrically
Both are wrong. They've been wrong since Malthus proposed them. They've been shown to be wrong so many times that it's difficult to understand why otherwise intelligent people keep repeating them uncritically as though they're unassailable facts.
>>>the entirety of the American people are helping to prop up this '8th largest economy'.
That's not really true. According to a study from 2005, for every dollar paid to the IRS in taxes, California only gets 81 cents back. If anything it's CA and other rich states (i.e. the northeast) that are propping-up the rest of the continent.
1. New Jersey ($0.62)
2. Connecticut ($0.64)
3. New Hampshire ($0.68)
-4. Nevada ($0.73)
5. Illinois ($0.77)
-6. Minnesota ($0.77)
-7. Colorado ($0.79)
8. Massachusetts ($0.79)
9. California ($0.81)
10. New York ($0.81)
-Why do these states get back so little? Surely Las Vegas, Denver, and Minneapolis/St Paul don't generate that much wealth? Also with military bases and parkland, I'd expect them to get lots of U.S. handouts.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
No, it's 2009 and really... nothing's changed since 1967. They're still pigs.
I certainly hope an 11 inch $2500 TV could meet the standard.
I'm not sure where you shop, but for well under $2500, you can get a 55" LED-backlit TV.
Those modern LED TVs are what informed people call LCDs.
Informed people call them LED TVs because it's shorter than saying LED LCD or LCD with LED backlighting. LCD, for better or worse, refers to the first LCD-based displays which do not use LED backlighting. And while LED TVs use LCDs, we need a different term to refer to them, since the ownership experience is very different...both viewing, form factor (LED TVs tend to be very thin) and when the utility bills come. So we can either spit out a long-winded and technically correct string of words, or we can pick the one feature that differentiates them from all other TVs and use that term.
Guess which one the product marketing departments chose?
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"