Herein, and on the record, I want to admit I have a conflict. No, nothing that'll cost me huge sums with a mental health professional. But an issue nonetheless.
How do I reconcile my love of technology with an ever broadening awareness of energy abuse? Technology lovers more and more are finding themselves in this same dilemma. All those terrific gadgets we love use lots and lots of energy.
Personally, it's a puzzlement. How do I become more environmentally sensitive and still use the toys I love? Take my computer as the major culprit. I rarely shut the thing off. Want to know why?
No, I'm not merely lazy. There's a school of thought (quite common among television professionals) that turning your device on and off creates a great deal of wear and tear on the device. It's a habit hard to break after more than 20 years. But, I have to confess I'm beginning to revisit the wisdom of my ways.
Take for example our friendly digital video recorder (DVR). Would you believe that set-top high-definition DVR of yours can use the same amount of electricity as your typical refrigerator? Well it does.
That's because DVRs use hard disks. And hard disk drives like the kind we run in our personal computers are constantly spinning. And all that spinning makes your DVR one power- hungry machine. The 'standby' mode of a typical DVR doesn't really reduce its power consumption when compared to the normal mode you regularly use.
Recently a cable industry publication reported that set-top boxes in the U.S. use $2 billion worth of electricity annually, which produces 15 million tons of carbon dioxide. The source of these estimates is the nonprofit advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Unfortunately, HDTVs, are special offenders in themselves. You'd never know it by their thin profiles, but HDTVs are gorging themselves. They're power guzzlers — using as much as four times the energy of standard-definition sets.
But before you go back to a CRT (cathode ray tube TV--the old fashioned sets of the 20th century) know that there's hope. A new set-top software has been developed to cut the DVR's guzzling ways. In the wee hours of the night the boxes spin down going into a standby mode that uses less than 1 watt.
Across the Pond, in the U.K. a satellite provider began deploying the spin-down feature to 2 million HD set-tops. The feature monitors whether people are using their box between 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. If the box hasn't been used for a period of two hours, an “auto standby” warning pops up on screen for 3 minutes; if nobody touches the remote, the box's hard disk stops spinning.
The key to the program: Subscribers don't necessarily even know their DVRs are putting themselves to sleep at night. The software switches the system back on if there's a scheduled recording.
Some DVR makers, including Scientific Atlanta, have also developed auto-shutoff features. Self-interest is also served here. Disk drives last longer if they're not churning continuously. The U.S. government's voluntary Energy Star program, which sets energy-efficiency guidelines for household appliances, is now working up new standards for digital set-top boxes and DVRs.
It's a bit early for New Year's resolutions, but with the oncoming holidays it's worth considering less passive pursuits and a bit more exercise. A good way to save energy, while energizing oneself in the process.
Comments