The biggest energy hog in your house is probably sitting right under your TV. That little ol' set-top box could be using up more electricity in your house than your refrigerator or central air conditioning, according to a new study by the National Resource Defense Council.
The 160 million devices combined use up $3 billion in electricity a year, 66% of it when no one is watching and no shows are being recorded. That's because it's cheaper for cable companies to have them designed to run full-blast all the time, rather than waste money making ones with power-saving modes.
In the short-term, you can cut your power drain by plugging all your media producing boxes - TV, DVD player, cable, etc - into one power strip and turning it off when not in use.
And in the long-run, you can also lobby your cable company and the FCC to add power-saving modes to cable boxes.
Better Viewing, Lower Energy Bills, and Less Pollution [National Resource Defense Council
via MoneyTalksNews]
6 comments:
Another reason to rebel and can the cable.
Does this include Satelite Boxes too?
and now with their new little boxes required to watch cable without a settop box, it needs electric to operate.
Only problem with that is, it takes so long to boot up when powered off and with Satellite if unplugged when the company sends out signal the box gets deactivated. Don't know if cable is the same way or not.
RP
I would strongly question the science/accuracy of this story.
Most of these environmental stories are made up.
Wow, i bet it's the Decoding chips that need to decompress the high def signals. I wonder what type of processor them cable boxes use.
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