Saving Power?

Over the holidays we brought a new TV and I thought I’d best check the power consumption since saving power was part of the justification for the purchase. The old TV was a 3rd generation Plasma (from 2005) and the new one is LCD LED so it will use less power, right?

I’ve already posted about the smart power board we purchased in No more vampire devices but what if the TV was better then the standby power used by the power board? Why would I think this could be possible, well since we swapped TVs around I have had to manually activate the power board as the IR sensor is still attached to the old TV. Each time I’ve noticed that the power board is warm, this means that it is consuming a significant amount of power. Time to attach the power meter!

So what were the result?

The power board, old TV, Wii, and PS3 in standby consumed 7 Watts
The power board, new TV, Wii, and PS3 in standby consumed 4.5 Watts

I measured the new TV by itself, it didn’t even register a reading! That means that my based on my power meter it consumes less than a milliwatt!

What about the smart power board? It measured 2 Watts! So now I’ve just unplugged the Wii (2 Watts) and replaced the smart powerboard with a plain old normal power board and now the standby power is 0.5 Watts. A saving of 6.5 Watts in standby!

Oh and the TV also uses about half the power when it it turned on as well but it does have a 7 star rating!

Technology Prediction – Next Generation Games Consoles

Well with E3 almost upon us I had better get this prediction out in the world.

Say goodbye to DVD and BluRay disks for your next games console. Removing the media drive will allow the consoles to be smaller than ever before, think Apple TV size.

Bluetooth is here to stay for the controller.

Wireless N will allow those games in the cloud to be downloaded with greater speed. All three (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo) will come with HD Video cameras for gesture based control, think Kinect, and also video chat, Microsoft will use it’s newly acquired Skype.

All will be HD display with 3D and include movie downloads and social media interaction. HDMI, DisplayPort, or Thunderbolt?

Since everything in now in the cloud your games and scores can follow you to your friends place. DRM and other craziness will have some impact to how useful these features will be but the console with the least to loose will set the standard and the other will have to follow if they want their slice to the market.

On the other side will be the TV companies adding their own functionality to the smart TVs of the future. Once Android is built into TVs and the apps store full of games designed for that platform casual gamers may no longer require a console, this prospect will hurt Nintendo the most so I’m sure they’ll be looking to combat that with their next generation console.