Top Ten

Re: Top Ten

The 46" Samsung UN46C5000QF is listed with an 'On' power of 48 watts.

That is just too good to be true. Maybe with no backlight. I have three large Samsung LCD's and that is about the power with backlight turned all the way down.

These ratings can play so many games. Some LED backlight TV's actually modulate the backlight in sub-segments of the display in concert with the brightness of the image.

If you play a video that has generally dark scene with only a small section of picture with any significant illumination you have a condition where there is almost no backlight power.

The sub-segment LED backlight is a good power conservation scheme but having a near totally dark scene for a power statement is stretching the truth.

Re: Top Ten

RCinFLA wrote: »

I notice all the large refrig's have bottom freezer drawer.

This is an intuitively obvious help as the cold air does not get dumped out every time the freezer drawer is opened.

Unfortunately I cannot sell the wife on having a bottom drawer freezer.

I love my bottom freezer drawer in the Whirlpool I got on the AZ Energy Star rebate program. (I needed a new one anyway as the old one was 13-14 years old). The only thing I could suggest the manufacturers should do is make the drawer have sides on them to prevent even less cold escape upon opening.

The wife likes it as the sliding baskets inside allow easy access to all the contents without a big digging session in the freezer. The grand kids can get their ice cream out without assistance!

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RC, get a wife that is shorter than 5 ' , as is mine, and she will love the drawer type. I being 6'2" DON'T...

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I have a 15 " LCD made by electrohome, it can be DC powered and draws only 27 watts when powered through the walwart that comes with it. Also can be used as a computer monitor.

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Problem is about one third to a half of the power consumption is backlight. As earlier mentioned LED's have the speed to do more with modulating the level based on scene brightness.

Even for EL backlighting, many LCD's have brightness adjustments based on ambient light level. This opens the spec's game allowing a lower level backlight power level when referenced against a darkened room.

I did some searches of various monitors and there are quite a few 19" sized that have a real use case power consumption in the 15-20 watt range and less then $150.

For monitors, LED doesn't have that much better power then EL panel. LED's are probably better for long term reliability in turn-off, turn-on cycling. This may be good for keeping a short display timeout standby setting on the computer.

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Dave, There are other items to think of too and what you expect from the tv. I have a Nice big 63 inch DLP samsung that is very good on power consumption. If I remember right it uses about 90 watts on a bright picture. It has a great picture but a poor excuse of a tuner if you want to watch tv off an antenna. I called Samsung and they told me most people don,t watch offair and not too important to them. It is to me as I can get tv from all directions and have a good antenna and a rotor. The tuner isn,t sensitive enough and misses a couple of channels my LG and Sony gets. Everytime you move the antenna you have to do a channel scan and it loses the channels you had before unless they are strong enough to stay in. There is no way to manually tune them in. Even otherwise I think the Samsung is great if you don,t watch off an antenna. I probably won,t buy another Samsung because I watch more off air antenna than I do satelite. Samsung could do a software update if they wanted and they told me when I called about it they said there wasn,t enough demand for it. I picked up a little 22 inch Lg last winter to put in my Pc room and It has a great tuner. All channels stay in when you move the antenna and the tuner is very sensitive. If I was going to buy a new tv I think I would get one of those Infignia Lg sets. I have the LG front loader clothes washer and gas dryer and really like them. I use to think Toshiba tv was good till my budy started haveng problems with his. It is a 2008 model and blew a dlp bulb with low hours and when he put in a new one it won,t stay powered up. He was told the power supply with the ballast was probably going bad. Toshiba doesn,t have parts anymore for that tv. They claim it is obsolete. About all you can do is try to get the power supply rebuilt as you can,t find new ones. There was a class action against Toshiba and they lost. So enough Toshiba for me If thier tv,s are obsolete in three years. :DSolarvic:D

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Niel, I get pittsburgh 2-1, 13-1, 13-2, 13-3, 19-1, 52-1 and 52-2 full time. 11-1 and 11-2 part time, very seldem get 4-1 and 4-2. Get wheeling 7-1,7-2 and 7-3 part time, stubenville 9-1 and 9-2 fulltime. Youngstown 21-1, 21-2, 27-1. 27-2, 33-1, 33-2, 33-3, Western reserve, 45-1, 45-2, 45-3, 45-4 full time, Get erie, 12-1, 12-2, 12-3, 24-1, 35-1, 35-2, 35-3 and 66-1 without moving antenna. Have antenna pointed slightly west of pittsburgh. It is stuck there until I lay down the tower to fix the pipe. Before I got it stuck there I could get the cleveland area stations to the west and Johnstown to the east. Even now sometimes Johnstown will lock on my Lg set. Have a preety good channelmaster antenna. I have cleaned the snow off of panels yesterday and today many times. Isn,t hardly worth the effort as I got 2 kw yesterday and 3 kw today. Oh well I got the dirt washed off the panels using the squeege on them :Dsolarvic:D Forgot to say some of those channels my Samsung don,t receive as reliably as my other sets.

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Well I've been trying to get my hands on the Hitachi TV mentioned in the top 10. No luck, so finally called their 1-800# asking for names of Canadian dealers.
Their response: "Unfortunately we no longer sell Hitachi televisions in Canada, thank-you for calling Hitachi and have a nice day"!
OOOooooK!

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niel wrote: »

so wayne, what does that tell you of the tv at a minimum, let alone the company?:roll:

Good point Niel!
Guess when I do go shopping for a new TV, I'll have to take along my Kill-a-Watt
I find myself feeling along the upper back of TV's whenever I come across a bunch on display, and notice some people giviing me rather strange looks, obviously suspecting that I'm perverted and enjoy feeling up televisions. Truth be known, I'm checking the amount of heat given off, AND finding some big differences! Came across a no-name at Wall*Mart the other day and it wasn't much above room temperature, while some of the brand names could be used to supplement my winter heating bill. And there's no need to fondle the plasma units, or even stop to look, I can feel the heat of the sun on my face just walking past them.

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niel wrote: »

maybe,
you should invest in an infra red thermometer as you'll get more accurate readings than feeling and although you still may get looks you could then tell them to back off or you'll fry them with your ray gun.:p then again people are sometimes stupid or over reactive and the next thing you know you'll either have the police swat team on your butt or some guy in a white coat trying to net you.

Hahahaha Good one Niel
I do have one of those IR thermo's, so might give it a try sometime, but it does indeed look like some sort of ray gun, so considering the mentality of today's society, perhaps I should leave it home. I might want to fly sometime in the future, and in the meantime, I'd kind of like to stay out of prison. That statement would be a joke if society wasn't so screwed up

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zeuspaul,
for what it's worth, when i was in the market for a tv i decided to talk to an employee at wally world and she told me of the return rates on various tvs they have. the vizio i was told had the least returned with lg a close second. samsung was 3rd, but it wasn't a close 3rd. keep in mind that this was 1 employee's opinion from 1 store. i went for the lg, but i thought about the vizio.

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I have two of the Vizio TV's. I bought them for the RV because they will run directly off the battery. No need for an inverter.

I think only the 23" and smaller are 12v.

Combined with a Zvox Mini which also runs on 12v. Makes a really nice low voltage setup for watching movies.

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Thought I'd add this chest freezer item here:

http://manuals.frigidaire.com/prodinfo_pdf/StCloud/FFN09M5H_0710.pdf

We bought this 4 months ago and it is an overperformer. We keep it in the basement 3/4 full and it uses around 12KwH per month.

It's easy on the solar as it only requires 5A, 115V at start-up. And at $300.00 it was priced well below it's value IMO. I'm running this on a 350W inverter recently. We'll see how it holds up to the start-up current cycling.

I have a second one to convert to a fridge but haven't done it yet.

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beboxe wrote: »

Wayne, do you know anymore about this Hitachi-model # or any thing else. How do you know it pulls 13 watts? Where is this top 10?

Sorry "beboxe", I only saw your post this evening. The top 10 list was given by the poster who started this thread way back on what's at the moment, page 3 of this thread.
That's where I got the info on the Hitachi, unfortunately, Hitachi has decided some time ago not to bother selling their products in Canada any more. Are they in the process of going out of business?
Regardless, I have some new info for you.
I've been looking for a small TV for the bedroom and picked up one today at WalMart, a "GPX" 13 inch LCD HDTV. Made in China of course, but considering what it is, has an excellent picture, and get this- - - - - - plugged it into the Kill-A-Watt and - - - 9 whole watts! That's right, just nine watts! I nearly fell over. For anyone with a limited power supply, or anyone who wants to sit up close like you do with your laptop and save power, it's awesome! Best I've seen yet and was only $58.00 Cdn.
It's AC only, but when I get a chance I'll open it up and see what it has for a power supply, just in case it actually operates on 12 volts. Unlikely that it does, but who knows for sure till we check it out.
One thing I knew was wrong was the unit on display said 30 watts, but when I checked it's temperature, unlike one I knew used 30 watts, this one was running basically cold. 9 watts is awesome!