LCD vs. Crt type HDTV question.

[Lemon law]

Call me a fool or whatever, my wife decided to replace out 8 year old analog 32" crt TV
for a new a LCD 31.5" HDTV.

After reading the fine print in the owners manual, along with the legalise advice not to stick my tongue into electrical outlets, I discovered the operating wattage of the 31.5"
Lcd was 160 watts, and looking at the back of the old CRT 32'', it listed the max wattage at 140 watts. So bottom line, not as I expected, the LCD consumes some 14.28% more power when operating.

But my question concerns what power is consumed when the set is not operating? Its my understanding than in the off state, a crt type television consumes some power to keep its electronics warm, which allows it to come on faster when you press the on switch. Is this also true of a LCD set?

 

[rdp6]

All devices which have a "standby mode" are power vampires to some degree. In fact one of the new Sony televisions was recently outed as consuming 15W in standby mode when allowed to update the program guide while in standby. I don't know if that is the default setting, but it probably is. My 52" TV is rated at 300W, but that is with the backlight set at 10 (way too bright for any condition at my house) and "power save" off. It consumes 190W with PS off and backlight at 5, and 85W with backlight at 1. I leave PS off and set the backlight to 4 for most daytime viewing, 2 for most night viewing (with the room dimly lit) and 0 for total darkness. I'd guess that average consumption is around 160W. Not too bad considering it replaced a 20" CRT which consumed 88W, and the LCD has 4.5x the screen area: http://www.tvcalculator.com/ and looks so much better.

I'd say that it is not likely that your LCD is set to max brightness/torch mode all the time to consume the full 160W.

 

[mpilchfamily]

In stby mode the LCD will consume less power then a CRT. As you noted the CRT keeps things " warmed up" for a quick power on. LCD doesn't have to exspend etra power to keep it warm. It only uses a small amount of power so it can detect the power button or the remote being used. Just like your PC uses power while its off so it can detect when the power switch is pressed.

 

[Lemon law]

Thank you for the replies, but its still does not answer my question.

I suppose if I had a large range home AC watt meter, I could answer my own question, but lacking one of those, I am guessing. Meanwhile I have been looking but can't find any reliable data.

But given the Newton Minnow comment that television is a vast wasteland, our living room LCD TV is typically on for less than one hour per day.

Meaning a standby power of less than 7 watts could double my power consumption per day. And 7 watts x 23 x 30.4333= is damn near 5 kilowatts per month wasted in standby. And in my area of high electrical rates, 5 kilowatts is not cheap times only one of two LCD TV's?

As it is, I am about as God fearing as some, but its Thor the Thundergod that I fear most. And when I shut down my computers, I use a surge suppressor to starve them of any power and disconnect modems at the same time. One month, I lost three modem surge suppressors, and a modem until I learned better.

What happens if I do the same to my LCD TV's? It only takes a half a second to turn a surge strip on or off , I can live with the slightly delayed warm up. Or is there a bigger penalty I risk.