Tip: Turn down the brightness, save some money too
March 17, 2009 by Derek
Many TV experts (including us) have said before: turning down the ultra-brightness mode of your HDTV can extend the life of it, and save you money on your power bill too. Many people don’t seem to be following that advice however.
A recent study presented at the Ergonomics Symposium on Flat Panels indicated almost 80% of users ended up keeping their TV in extremely high brightness modes, and 81% had the ambient light adjustment features disabled.
That’s evil for picture quality, but more sinister for energy usage – the study stated that 4 factors determine proper brightness: those are viewing angle, age of the user, content luminance and ambient lighting in the room) are used to help decide how bright the TV should be, and “dynamic” mode doesn’t care about what’s correct, it’s used to sell TV’s.
Moving back display brightness just a bit can save up 20-30% on your electric usage of the TV. Bear in mind this from a sample of 83 homes, but based on my own experience, with far too many homes i’ve visited having the mode set to glowing eye-searing whites and reds around everything, it sounds fairly accurate.
