Shopping for that new big screen television and overwhelmed by the selection and features available?
It used to be that walking in to buy a TV was all about picture quality, refresh rate, size, and (hopefully) energy efficiency, but that’s slowly changing. Taking a page from Apple’s playbook, most TV manufacturers are now bulking up their product offerings with things like YouTube playback, app stores, video conferencing, WiFi, and 3D.
Many who own a TV with these new features will only watch cable TV channels in the way people have watched them for decades. Nothing new there, but these other features layer on capabilities that many people will seldom, if ever, use.. And these extra features may have an effect on your energy consumption.
How much energy is being used?
In previous blogs I’ve talked about ENERGY STAR qualified devices and how they are the top performers in the energy world for their device class. The little secret you may not know, if you aren’t an energy geek, is that the specifications don’t cover everything.
Take a look at the TV specifications and you’ll see that energy usage applies only to energy used while watching broadcast or recorded video. What does that mean to energy consumption if you decide to fire up that 3D TV channel?
No one really knows since it’s not tested. How about YouTube videos? Again, no one knows. Video conferencing? I think you get the idea.
Features use energy but no one really knows how much. Even information from manufacturers may not be accurate when there isn’t an agreed way to test the energy consumption.
Do those features suck (energy)?
You may think, “I’m not using these features so they can’t be consuming energy.” It’s possible.
But consider how YouTube keeps a list of top videos or favourites from your account. And consider that with video conferencing, that feature has to stay connected to monitor whether someone is trying to contact you.
The end result is that features drive up the energy consumption when the unit is “turned off”.
Need the features? Buy ENERGY STAR
All this being said, if you do watch a lot of YouTube videos or would enjoy being able to Skype with family from the comfort of your TV, buy the TV with these features that has the ENERGY STAR label.
But for regular TV viewing, keep it in the back of your mind that a feature-laden TV is not as “green” as a regular TV. If you recycled a computer because you moved the features to your TV, then great, you probably did lower your energy consumption and it was a good energy choice.
Technology changes quickly these days, but energy standards haven’t moved quite as fast. So there still needs to be some thought on your part if you are striving for efficiency.
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