Low power, quiet TV?

[Brian]

I'm in the market for a ~40", 1080p television for my HTPC to drive.

There's a 37" LED LCD unit from Vizio that meets my requirements, is "Energy Star 4.0 compliant", and has a max brightness of 450cd/m².

What I'd like to know from SPCR members:

*are Vizio LED LCD's dead silent? How about other brands of LED LCD's?
*how's the power consumption at minimum brightness and medium brightness, or where do I go to find this data?
*will it support APM like a conventional PC monitor? I.e. when the computer turns off the screen to save power, will the television enter standby? I know that Toshibas are unacceptable, because instead of entering standby, they'll draw full power to display the "no signal" message indefinitely.

Also, if there are any other 37-42" monitors you can recommend in the ~$500 price range, I'm open to suggestions.

[CA_Steve]

Two useful sites regarding power use:

CNET Reviews - they always show power usage in their reviews.

Energy Star - you can sort by tech, mfgr, size. See how they stack up using whatever Energy Star uses for power measurement.

[Brian]

I thought LED-backlight TV's were supposed to draw little power, but the Vizio LED LCD TV is one of the worst TV's on EnergyStar's list. It draws much more power than Vizio's CCFL LCD TV's.

Unfortunately, EnergyStar tests with whatever settings the TV ships with. The EnergyStar test is actually perfectly useless by itself. Perhaps Vizio ships with brightness set very high to show off the rich picture an LED TV is capable of? CNET duplicates the Energy Star tests, but with automatic backlight adjustment set to "off", and they run a second test in Power Saver mode if it's available.

What I will be looking for at the store is a TV with an apparently large range of backlight settings.

My monitor is actually annoyingly loud when ambient noise level is low and the backlight is at the minimum setting. Will CCFL televisions have the same issue? How about LED's?

[MikeC]

IMO, it's impossible to avoid some hum/buzz from any TV whether CFL, LED, etc. It's just the nature of the beast. In general, though, the sound of the program should mask the buzz. If not, bad news. Make sure you buy from a store with good after-sale policies. I don't think any reviews are really going to help here.

[CA_Steve]

Unfortunately, EnergyStar tests with whatever settings the TV ships with. The EnergyStar test is actually perfectly useless by itself. Perhaps Vizio ships with brightness set very high to show off the rich picture an LED TV is capable of? CNET duplicates the Energy Star tests, but with automatic backlight adjustment set to "off", and they run a second test in Power Saver mode if it's available.

I think this is unlikely. If it were true, then the mfgrs would cherry pick/ship the Feds pre-set TVs to show their product in the best light. My guess is that Energy Star follows a standard testflow that includes initial calibration. I'd hope CNET does the same.

Just like PCs, TV power consumption for similar technology will vary just due to the effort they put into the power supply design. Cheaper TVs, like Vizio, probably did what they needed to do in order to meet the Energy Star and CA requirements and then no more. Some, like Samsung, went well beyond the requirements.

If you really want to delve into the various quirks and flaws of every TV on the market, visit avsforum. After reading these 100+ page threads per model, you may well lose the will to live.

[Brian]

It means the EnergyStar tests are very arbitrary, but it appears to be true:

http://reviews.cnet.com/green-tech/tv-power-test/

"CNET follows the standards outlined in IEC 62807, the same methodology employed by Energy Star, to test TV power usage. Per these methods, TV power draw is tested in the default picture setting and in standby mode. At CNET, we also test two additional picture-setting scenarios: post-calibration and power saver."



Mike, the program I'm going to be running most is Mozilla, which is silent most of the time. However, your suggestion about shopping for a friendly retailer is a good one. A good retailer will also let me plug in a KaW on the display model, right? Well, it can't hurt to ask.

[wanky]

I use samsung 32C550 as monitor, backlight goes from 0 - 20 , power consumption from 40-110w. I use 2 backlight in my dim room which is only 45w. Also there is no standard for power management through HDMI you have to rely on TV having auto off setting on no signal after certain amount of time. With this samsung least i can do is 15min which is a bit long. through VGA i believe it will work like a monitor but i dont use VGA because it suxors.