Thursday, June 16, 2005
As TVs grow, so do electric bills
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."-- Aldous Huxley
As the prostitute said, "It's not the work, it's the stairs." As told to me by Elaine Stritch, star of stage, screen, & TV, right after she won her 1st Emmy. Ago 79.
Not long ago, Andrew Fanara was shopping with his wife for a new big-screen television. Everything was going fine, until the sales clerk discovered Mr. Fanara was an energy watchdog for the federal government. Pulling Fanara aside, the clerk confessed: His own new 61-inch TV gulped electricity the way a big SUV guzzles gasoline.
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"The month after he got it, he got a call from his landlord, who noticed a big jump in the utility bill," recalls Fanara, team leader of the Energy Star program at the US
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "It was the kid's big-screen television."
Revelations about energy-munching appliances aren't uncommon in Fanara's job. But lately, he's hearing more about big-screen TVs - and that's worrisome. With sales expected to skyrocket - and with only outmoded testing and efficiency standards available to alert people about energy consumption - digital big-screen TVs are poised to generate big hikes in home energy use and pollution, unless manufacturers act swiftly to adopt more efficient technologies.
That's one reason EPA officials are scheduled later this monthto meet with officials of the California Energy Commission, utility company Pacific Gas & Electric, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group. Their goal: to discuss best ways to measure TV energy use - and ways to get manufacturers to adopt energy-saving technologies faster.
"The price of these big-screen TVs is coming down, so more and more people will soon be able to afford them," says Noah Horowitz, a senior NRDC scientist. "If we do nothing, it will lock-in power consumption at higher levels. People keep a TV five to 15 years, so we really need to get started making them as efficient as they can be."
Already, televisions account for about 4 percent of annual residential electricity use in the United States - enough to power all of the homes in the state of New York for a year, according to a new NRDC study. Today there are about 266 million TVs, and that number is growing by 3.5 million per year. By 2009, when half of all new TV sales are expected to be extended- or high-definition digital sets with big screens, TV energy use will reach about 70 billion kilowatt-hours per year nationwide - about 50 percent higher than at present. Throw in a DVD and VCR player, a pair of high-definition set-top boxes, and other household TVs, and the total TV-related energy use for the home rises to about 10 percent, the NRDC estimates.
Bigger screens aren't the only culprits for TV's growing energy draw. The nation's move to high-definition TV, or HDTV, requires sets to deliver more picture clarity, which draws more power. Also, Americans are watching some 16 percent more TV than in the 1980s - if DVD and video-game viewing is included, according to the Nielsen Group.
Using the best available technology, however, could reduce this new generation of big-screen TV "active mode" consumption by at least 25 percent, saving 10 billion kilowatt-hours per year, the NRDC estimates. In addition to chopping residential electric bills by $1 billion, it would prevent 7 million extra tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, the group says.
A solution may happen without federal intervention, industry officials say. "Consumer electronics are vastly different from electromechanical devices like refrigerators and dishwashers," says Douglas Johnson, senior director of technology policy at the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), an industry trade group based in Arlington, Va. "There's already a great focus on efficient design and minimizing excess energy usage that produces heat, which is the enemy of long life for electronics. So there's already a built-in incentive for efficiency."
Digital TV sales have grown from zero in 1996 to about 12 percent of all TV sales today. That's expected to rise to 53 percent by 2008, the CEA reports.
"With the trend toward larger and larger TVs, these displays could use more power, depending on the technology they employ," Fanara says. "So it makes sense for the [EPA] to write new specs that recognize the most efficient products in the marketplace so consumers can at least address the energy consumption in the buying equation."
Electricity use doesn't always register with TV shoppers. Just ask Stephen Baldridge of Providence Village, Texas. When he and his wife, Hollie, bought a big-screen TV last year, they never thought twice about how much energy it would use. And they still don't worry about it. Electric bills don't seem much higher, says Mr. Baldridge, a self-professed "big TV watcher" at about five hours a day. Still, he'd like television manufacturers to keep power consumption to a minimum. "It would be nice if [manufacturers] could do that and keep the electric bill down for us," he says.
New sets, new standards?
America needs a new way to measure the energy efficiency of television sets.
Currently, federal standards measure only a set's "standby mode," when the TV is idle, even though "active mode" accounts for 80 to 95 percent of its annual energy use. This can lead to some confusing results. A television that earns the government's Energy Star rating for its efficiency in standby mode might draw more power in active mode than another model that didn't earn the label.
Including active mode is definitely on the agenda for revising Energy Star standards, says Andrew Fanara, team leader of the program for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But how to test it is a complex question.
The only nationally recognized active-mode test is the US
Department of Energy's nearly three-decades-old process for black-and-white models. It uses a static black-and-white display pattern - even though power consumption in today's models varies widely depending on the activity and intensity of colors displayed on screen.
In its testing of big-screen TVs, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) used a two-minute clip of the hit comedy "Shrek." The results showed considerable variation in power use. Even similar size TVs could consume "drastically different amounts of power" in active mode, the report says. One 50-inch plasma high-definition TV (HDTV) was estimated to use 679 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. A 32-inch liquid-crystal display with HDTV capability was pegged at 387 kWh per year. By contrast, an older analog 34-inch TV was estimated to use just 209 kWh per year, NRDC tests found.
The NRDC's Noah Horowitz hopes the EPA will create a single annual energy-consumption number for TVs, much like those found on today's refrigerators or hot-water heaters. He'd also like the agency to set mandatory minimum-efficiency standards for cable and satellite set-top boxes. These boxes could use more than 20 billion kWh per year, at a cost of about $2 billion, another NRDC study says. In that scenario, five 500-megawatt power plants would be needed to run these boxes, emitting 15 million tons per year of carbon dioxide, a global-warming pollutant.
While embracing voluntary Energy Star standards, industry officials disagree with the idea of mandatory efficiency standards. "When an arbitrary standard is placed on a product, it will constrain use and innovation," says Douglas Johnson, senior director of technology policy at the Consumer Electronics Association.
Power sappers
The average US household used 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2001. What used the most?
• Air-conditioning 16%
• Refrigerator 14%
• Space heating 10%
• Water heater 9%
• Clothes dryer 6%
• Freezer 4%
• Furnace fan 3%
• Electric range top 3%
Source: US Energy Information Administration
MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".
FireFox now 10% of browsers used.
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."-- Aldous Huxley
As the prostitute said, "It's not the work, it's the stairs." As told to me by Elaine Stritch, star of stage, screen, & TV, right after she won her 1st Emmy. Ago 79.
And others are saying that FireFox well be the "Most used" browser soon.
But don't be the last to find and start using Opera at http://www.Opera.com . Check out the security of Opera.
MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Another Extension that is Just Great, webmailcompose
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."-- Aldous Huxley
As the prostitute said, "It's not the work, it's the stairs." As told to me by Elaine Stritch, star of stage, screen, & TV, right after she won her 1st Emmy. Ago 79.
link to webmailcompose
A quick Description
Makes mailto links: load YOUR webmail's compose page and adds a Compose link to the context menu. Also (optionally) overlays the Mail Button, Send Link and Send Image context menu items.
Editor's Review
An excellent extension
This is a top notch extension with plenty of features. It's easy to use and can be configured to do exactly waht you want it to do. Has options for a default mailto: link handler, a context menu for right clicking, ability to decide to use new tabs, current tabs or new windows. It comes pre-configured to handle Gmail, YahooMail, Hotmail, Netscape, Mail.com, Opera, Horde, SquirrelMail but you can also configure manually if you use a different webmail provider.
Just right click on the Mailto link and then on setting and you'll see just how to set webmailcompose to your differant webmail services you use. Chooses are Yahoo, operamail, mail.com, Hotmai, Gmail, as well as a couple of others. I have mine set so that I can choose between Yahoo, Opera and mail.com. So you right click the next time and you'll see your choose to clink on. And boom you'll go right to your default browser and to whatever webmail service you choose.
Others to come well be an Extension that lets you move your tabs around so that they're in the order you want from left to right. (Extension name is miniT)
MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".
Monday, June 13, 2005
OK, FireFox users, the next growth step. Extensions
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."-- Aldous Huxley
As the prostitute said, "It's not the work, it's the stairs." As told to me by Elaine Stritch, star of stage, screen, & TV, right after she won her 1st Emmy. Ago 79.
You know what a "Plug in" is, right. Well, an Extensions is somewhat the samething only Extensions is what FireFox calls 'em.
Extensions
Extensions are small add-ons to Firefox that change existing browser functionality or add new functionality.
Like this one;
Password Composer 1.05
By Johannes la Poutre
Generates a secure, site specific password, based on a single Master Password.
This extension puts a tiny red icon left of a password entry field. If you click on this icon, the password field is overlaid with a replacement input, where you can supply a single, secure password (your Master Password).
Then all password fields on the current page, are updated with a calculated, unique password (one per site). This works for regular logins, as well as most new account signup pages.
The advantages are:
- just one strong password to remember
- passwords are unique per website, so the risk of abuse is limited to the current site only.
- generated passwords are considered "strong" by current standards
- the Master Password can not be reverse engineerd (there's MD5 hashing involved)
Please be sure to visit the Extension's home page, and read the FAQ for more info before using!
New in version 1.05: Display the host/domain name which is used for generating the password. This field is editable, so you can reconstruct a password once a site is moved e.g. from addons.update.mozilla.org to addons.mozilla.org (this just happened). Added an option to use the full host name (+), this is the default, or the domain name only (-). This option is not remembered across page loads, use the Greasemonkey user script version if you want this remembered.
For Firefox:
0.9.x - 1.0+
OK, so how do you find'em, well just click on the "Tools" link in the Toolbar at the top of your FireFox window and look for the Extensions link and clink on that. It's the same way you'd uninstill an Extension.
Uninstalling Extensions
Should you ever wish to remove an extension from Firefox, you will need to access Firefox's Tools menu, then select the Extensions menu item.
At this point you should click on the "Help" link in your FireFox window and then click on "Help Contents" or press F1. Then using the Search feature type in Extensions and everthing you need to know is there. And or call me.
MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".
Broadcom IPTV Box Enables First Live Broadcast of HDTV Over DSL
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."-- Aldous Huxley
As the prostitute said, "It's not the work, it's the stairs." As told to me by Elaine Stritch, star of stage, screen, & TV, right after she won her 1st Emmy. Ago 79.
Broadcam's IPTV set top box was used in the world's first demonstration of delivering a live HDTV broadcast over a DSL network.
By Networking Pipeline Staff Courtesy of Networking Pipeline
Broadcam today announced that its IPTV set top box was used in the world's first demonstration of delivering a live HDTV broadcast over a DSL network. The company's IPTV set-top box reference design platform was used by France Telecom to broadcast the French Open Tennis Tournament at Roland Garros Stadium in France on June 2, 2005.
The demonstration may lead the way toward allowing telecom operators to offer HDTV broadcast and on-demand services over their existing DSL networks, says Broadcom.
In the demonstration, the Broadcom IPTV set-top box reference design platform performed HD MPEG-4/advanced video compression (AVC) decoding and audio/video delivery. MPEG-4 Part 10 advanced video compression is the latest generation of compression technology that reduces the required bandwidth for the transmission of video content, making it possible to offer HDTV broadcast and on-demand services over DSL networks.
The market for IPTV set top boxes is expected to grow significantly over the next several years. In a prepared statement, market analyst Michelle Abraham of InStat, noted "The availability of advanced video compression technology will enable the cost-effective deployment of IP set-top boxes, the market for which InStat is forecasting to grow by 550 % over the next five years."
The Broadcom BCM97398 IP set-top box reference design was used in the demonstration. It features the BCM7411 MPEG-4 HD AVC video decoder/audio processor chip and BCM7038 dual channel HD and personal video recorder chip. The chips enable set-top box vendors to build set-top boxes to support advanced IP-based video and audio services such as high-quality graphical user interfaces, advanced programming guides, built-in Internet browser capabilities, video-on-demand services and digital video recorder features. The BCM97398's scalable architecture also supports hybrid IP/digital terrestrial set-top boxes and a variety of wired and wireless home networking technologies.
MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".
Broadcom IPTV Box Enables First Live Broadcast of HDTV Over DSL
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."-- Aldous Huxley
As the prostitute said, "It's not the work, it's the stairs." As told to me by Elaine Stritch, star of stage, screen, & TV, right after she won her 1st Emmy. Ago 79.
Broadcam's IPTV set top box was used in the world's first demonstration of delivering a live HDTV broadcast over a DSL network.
By Networking Pipeline Staff Courtesy of Networking Pipeline
Broadcam today announced that its IPTV set top box was used in the world's first demonstration of delivering a live HDTV broadcast over a DSL network. The company's IPTV set-top box reference design platform was used by France Telecom to broadcast the French Open Tennis Tournament at Roland Garros Stadium in France on June 2, 2005.
The demonstration may lead the way toward allowing telecom operators to offer HDTV broadcast and on-demand services over their existing DSL networks, says Broadcom.
In the demonstration, the Broadcom IPTV set-top box reference design platform performed HD MPEG-4/advanced video compression (AVC) decoding and audio/video delivery. MPEG-4 Part 10 advanced video compression is the latest generation of compression technology that reduces the required bandwidth for the transmission of video content, making it possible to offer HDTV broadcast and on-demand services over DSL networks.
The market for IPTV set top boxes is expected to grow significantly over the next several years. In a prepared statement, market analyst Michelle Abraham of InStat, noted "The availability of advanced video compression technology will enable the cost-effective deployment of IP set-top boxes, the market for which InStat is forecasting to grow by 550 % over the next five years."
The Broadcom BCM97398 IP set-top box reference design was used in the demonstration. It features the BCM7411 MPEG-4 HD AVC video decoder/audio processor chip and BCM7038 dual channel HD and personal video recorder chip. The chips enable set-top box vendors to build set-top boxes to support advanced IP-based video and audio services such as high-quality graphical user interfaces, advanced programming guides, built-in Internet browser capabilities, video-on-demand services and digital video recorder features. The BCM97398's scalable architecture also supports hybrid IP/digital terrestrial set-top boxes and a variety of wired and wireless home networking technologies.
MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".
