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

...sadly, still no regulation to require RTFA.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:California Uber Alles

[Trepidity]

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.)

Re:Simple solution

[jbird1785]

"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 Fox News crowd is out in force today.

[Animats]

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:

• Best Buy did comment. What bothers Best Buy is that consumers might be able to purchase non-compliant TVs from out of state over the Internet, making Best Buy look non-competitive. They're also complaining about the label placement requirement.
• Sony has a long list of complaints. An amusing one is that the power requirements at standby prohibit TVs from doing background processing ("download acquisition") when turned off. They also complain about the requirement for power factor correction in power supplies on large units.
• Panasonic wants the measurement procedures harmonized with the Federal standard. They have no other complaints.
• Sharp is concerned about hotel TVs. "Hotel TVs maintain a 24/7 link to the server". (Sending what data, one wonders.) So they have trouble with the standby power limit.
• The Consumer Electronics Retailer Coalition wants a six-month delay because the product cycle for TVs changes models at mid-year, and the regulations change at January 1.

Other than Sony, most of the big players don't seem to have major problems with the requirements.

Re:Tax

[commodore64_love]

>>>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.