[hugh]

All new televisions will soon include labels that estimate the TV's annual energy cost, and compare its consumption to that of other models, the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday.

The rule will go into effect for all TVs made after May 10, 2011. The requirement is an expansion of the FTC's appliance labeling rule, which previously applied to other consumer electronics like washing machines and refrigerators.

 

[Bplayer]

This is excellent news, as there will be strict standards for measuring the energy usage across brands. These estimates may not necessarily reflect real world usage. For example, a TV left running "torch" mode could use up to twice the amount of energy compared with a calibrated TV used in low lighting conditions.

It will be interesting to see how plasma TV's fare with this, as it is my impression that their energy usage varies much more than other types of TV's depending on the amount of white content being displayed.

 

[Danster]

The amps do change when the plasma displays brighter images. I've connected a gizmo that tells you how much wattage a certain product takes and my 50 inch would jump from 120's to over 400's in just a matter of going from dark night to blue skies.

 

[hugh]

Plasma is self illuminated so dark scenes use significantly less power than bright scenes. LCD is back lit where the light is blocked to create black so the power consumption is constant.

The result is a bright scene on a plasma uses more energy than an LCD and vice versa for dark scenes.

 

[scotta]

LCD is back lit where the light is blocked to create black so the power consumption is constant.

Except for LCDs with a local dimming backlight system.

 

[Francois Caron]

That's assuming the local dimming function is active. Not everyone likes the effect it produces.

But the new labelling, regardless of the measurement protocol, is definitely great news for those who care about how much power a particular TV set consumes when compared with other TVs of comparable size. I've seen some pretty startling differences just shopping for a bar fridge for my office!