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Old 08-25-09, 03:58 PM   #6
maxcooper
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Here are some areas where I found some potential savings for audio/video things that are ON:

* adjust the backlight level on your LCD TV (watch how much the power consumption changes on the Kill-A-Watt as you do this)

* if your surround sound receiver has a setting for speaker impedance (measured in ohms), it will likely use less power on the "low ohms" (usually 4 or 6 ohms, depending on the receiver) setting. However, it will also deliver less power to the speakers. The "low ohms" setting is probably fine for watching TV, but you'll most likely want to switch back to the "high ohms" (usually 6 or 8 ohms) setting for watching movies, listening to music at moderate to high volume, etc. This may not be worth the savings, but if you are trying to save every last kW it can help -- it will also keep the room cooler, which is nice for casual TV watching in summer.

Some tips for reducing energy usage of AV stuff while it is OFF:

* This isn't really a tip, but DVRs use a lot of power (50-100 watts) even when they are "off". There usually isn't much you can do about this.

* Measure your subwoofer. Unless you manually flip a switch to turn it on, it probably uses 10-25 watts when it is "off". You can automagically cut the power to the sub when the stereo is off by using a "smart power strip" (like the SCG3, 4, or 5 -- amazon has them all, and the 3 is not always the cheapest one). Plug your receiver into the control outlet, and plug the sub into a switched outlet. That will reduce the power usage of the sub to 0 when it is "off" with no change in convenience (it will turn on automatically). However, some subs do make a noise when they turn on or off using this method -- my sub does, but I can live with it. Fancy home theater power centers can do switching like this, too.

* Measure your receiver in the OFF/STANDBY state with the Kill-A-Watt. If it uses more than a few watts, try some settings changes or search the web for your receiver model for settings changes that will reduce the power usage. As an example, my receiver (Onkyo 805) uses about 2 watts in standby mode, but that shoots up to 70 watts in standby mode if you turn on the HDMI Control feature.

-Max
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