Proposal: Cash for Shitty Energy Inefficent TVs.

You should add a requirement of "made in USA".

But isn't the point to get rid of shitty TVs?

And which one would that be?

I really do think that the less clunkier of the cars turned in under the Cash for Clunkers program should be shipped over to poorer parts of the world where people have a need for them and would appreciate them. Seems like an awful waste to junk hundreds of thousands of cars because they're not good enough for some americans.

Also, as of three minutes ago, this program has now been expanded to give Cash for Clunker Computers as well. You can get an energy star rated netbook computer for around $200 nowadays.

$3 billion isn't a lot of money. It's actually chump change if you think about it. I mean we spend that much on Iraq every single freaking week.

If more of the kids fighting over there had nice hdtvs in their bedrooms, they probably wouldn't have signed up for the army in the first place.

Exactly. There area a few I know of assembled in the US, but I can't think of any reputable TV that is even mostly made in the US.

I am not sure if there should be a cash for TV's based on energy efficient but I have a house of TV's that are not HDTV and work fine until the government changed it so they didn't work unless you got a $60 box cause no one took the coupon. Yeah, give me a $200 rebate so I can watch TV without having to pay for it

I remember this SNL skit with Garrett Morris.....1976

Mark Mbutu: Hello. I'm Mark Mbutu from the newly emerging African nation of Namibia, a former German colony located in southwest Africa. Namibia is an undeveloped nation, and we are appealing to you as world citizens. We need your fondue sets. Many people in the United States received these fondue sets as gifts for anniversaries, birthdays and housewarmings, and often put them up on a shelf and forget about them. There are thousands of Namibian housewives who could cheer up an otherwise dull dinner party with one of these sets. Oh, please think, please give, please send. We already have enough of the little sterna cans for underneath the sets from when the Germans were here, so only send the fondue pots themselves, and the long fark--forks if you have them. [Dissolve to address on green background] Our address is: Fondue Sets For Namibia, Box 180, Namibia, West Africa. [Dissolve back to Mbutu] Oh, and we would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Norman Prager for sending us the Water-Pik and the deluxe toaster oven. [Raises fist] Thank you!

i've read that the new tvs are more less energy efficient than the old tvs

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=130514

Plasma TV the new energy hog of the home

Prices for big-screen television sets are dropping, but the cost of home entertainment may still be headed up. That is because the fancy screens consume far more electricity than their old-school predecessors.

Consider that a 42-inch plasma set can consume more electricity than a full-size refrigerator -- even when that TV is used only a few hours a day. Powering a fancy TV and full-on entertainment system -- with set-top boxes, game consoles, speakers, DVDs and digital video recorders -- can add nearly $200 to a family's annual energy bill.

Most consumers aren't made aware of extra energy expenses when they are shopping for a TV. Energy Star tags, a government program that identifies the most energy-efficient models, won't begin flagging the greenest televisions, when turned on, until late this year. Currently, Energy Star judges energy consumption only in standby mode, limiting its usefulness.

While most new types of TV sets use far more electricity than the old-fashioned gadgets they replace, some upstarts are bigger energy hogs than others. In general, liquid crystal display, or LCD, screens use less power than plasma sets of comparable size. And in the largest screen sizes, projection televisions typically use less electricity than LCD or plasma models.

A 28-inch conventional television set containing a cathode-ray picture tube, or CRT, for example, often uses about 100 watts of electricity. A 42-inch LCD set, a typical upgrade item, requires about twice that amount of electricity. But the real beast is the plasma set. A 42-inch model often sucks up 200 to 500 watts, and a 60-plus-inch plasma screen can consume 500 to 600 watts, depending on the model and programming, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In the biggest screen sizes, a projection television is a better option from an energy-use standpoint because it consumes about 150 watts to 200 watts, far less than a plasma or LCD screen.

Assuming each screen is on five hours a day, the annual energy bill for the conventional 28-inch television set would be about $30 a year, compared with about $130 for the 60-inch plasma model, assuming power costs 12 cents a kilowatt hour.

By the time other devices are added -- including game consoles, speakers and DVDs -- the cost to power the whole works can top $200 annually. (How to do the math: Something that draws a constant 100 watts of electricity uses 2.4 kilowatt hours of electricity in a 24-hour period or 876 kilowatt hours in a year. At 12 cents a kilowatt hour, the annual cost would be $105.12.)

"What scares us is the prices for plasma sets are dropping so fast that people are saying, why get a 42-inch plasma set when you can get a 60-inch or 64-inch one," says Tom Reddoch, director of energy efficiency for the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute's laboratory in Knoxville, Tenn., an independent organization that advises the utility sector. "They have no idea how much electricity these things consume."

Doug Johnson, senior director of technology policy for the Consumer Electronics Association, says the industry is working to improve disclosure and energy efficiency. He says comparing television energy use to refrigerator energy use is "hackneyed," adding, "when was the last time the family gathered around the refrigerator to be entertained."

But consumers making an effort to go greener at home -- and who also want to ditch their bulky old TV set -- can be in a bit of a bind. The energy savings gleaned from swapping out incandescent light bulbs for energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights, for example, can easily be canceled out by the pileup in entertainment gear.

Currently, 11 percent to 13 percent of the average American household's electricity bill stems from consumer electronics. But that is projected to rise to 18 percent by 2015, according to the EPA, part of the Department of Energy.

At a Western Appliance & Television store in San Leandro, Calif., salesman Mike Lemos says customers often seek energy-saving appliances but seem less focused on electricity use when it comes to entertainment gear. "Televisions are a more emotional purchase," he says. "You look at a high-definition TV, and it's hard not to get excited."

Just inside the entrance of a nearby Costco store, retiree Pat Brown paused to look at a riveting display of plasma and LCD screens stacked up, billboard-style, to seize the attention of shoppers. Many stopped dead in their tracks to take in the noisy display. Ms. Brown, who lives in nearby Oakland, said she always looks for the blue Energy Star tag when buying appliances, but she was unaware that Energy Star, for now, doesn't cover sets when they are turned on.

"I'm retired, so my TV is on pretty much all the time," she said. "I definitely would want better information before buying one of these, especially if there's a lot of difference between them."

Set-top boxes, which deliver programs and movies through the Internet, cable or satellite dishes, also can be energy hogs. In fact, they typically consume about the same amount of power whether they are being used or standing by. An older-style box that functions as a standard receiver for cable-TV viewing usually draws fewer than 25 watts of power, but a more robust version that offers high-definition viewing and includes a built-in recorder may consume three times as many. According to a calculation by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a typical high-definition cable box with a built-in digital recorder consumes about 350 kilowatt hours of juice annually, more than a conventional television set and clothes washer combined.

It can be tough for shoppers to know how much energy a TV set will consume. While the EPA's Energy Star program covers TV sets only in standby mode, the Federal Trade Commission's "Energy Guide" labeling, which tells how much electricity an appliance consumes and estimates the annual energy cost, isn't used on TV sets.

The FTC says "it has not made a determination it will label TVs," says Hampton Newsome, an FTC staff attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection and Enforcement. In the past, the agency didn't think there was enough difference between television sets to warrant Energy Guide labeling. Now the FTC is in a holding pattern waiting for the EPA to finish work establishing the proper test methods for comparing sets when turned on.

This isn't as straightforward as it sounds, because energy use differs according to the complexity of programming content.

For its part, the EPA appears to have settled on a process that will allow consumers to compare sets of the same size, across technology types. The agency expects to have improved Energy Star labels on television screens and to get them on set-top boxes, also in active and standby modes.

Thanks. I have heard rumors of this, but no confirmation till now.

Any idea how much power my computer uses when it's asleep, but not turned off?

There are virtually no TV's manufacturing or assembly plants in the USA, except a very limited brand of small screen, poor quality monitors and some extremely expensive large screens including front projectors (exception is that all of the parts are pre-assembled boards and display screens from foreign countries -- mostly Asian -- that are simply installed into a chassis with snap-ins or screws). Most of the large front projection screens are USA manufactured.

Plasma's do have an energy saving setting which can kick in for night viewing when the screen is actually too bright. Problem is that they are inefficient in bright daylight and gobble up extra power to give any kind of viewable pic. It's almost down to only Panasonic manufacturing plasmas in their Japanese plant, at such a rate on the popular size screens that they are now cheaper than anything but a bare bones LCD.

Front and rear DLP projectors have been using arc lamps that are very high energy (300 watt plus). Samsung and Mitsubishi are going to LED and Laser light sources with much lower power usage.

Still, for price a reliability, the LCD TV is still the green choice -- I haven't seen one from any manufacturer that doesn't have an energy saving settings, again appropriate for low light levels but not in bright light. The light source is, after all, flourescent, although Samsung is also experimenting with flat LED back lights (so far, so bad -- an uneven picture).

The future for very low power consumption yet even a brighter, better contrast and vivid colors than ever before is electroluminescent which SONY already has on the market in a small screen monitor. They're dubbing it "organic" which doesn't mean there really is any organic material in the device but that it is environmentally friendly. It will be the first truly flat "fasten it to the wall" large image the industry promised many years ago.

This technology is also the future of interior lighting (could also be used architecturally), where it would be an entire ceiling that would light up and one could actually change the color temperature with a remote control.

Anyone for an indoor moonlight swim?

CNet's Energy Efficiency Guide:

http://reviews.cnet.com/green-tech/tv-consumption-chart/