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By Joshua Frank, AlterNet
Posted on July 13, 2011, Printed on July 14, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151595/why_the_biggest_energy_suck_in_your_house_may_have_to_do_with_your_tv
Note to TV-loving couch potatoes: That little box sitting atop your television set that transforms a signal into your favorite show is likely the largest single source of electrical waste in your entire household. These so-called set-top boxes are bigger electrical suckers than new refrigerators. Who knew such a small box could be such a huge power drain?
In the United States alone there are over 160 million set-top boxes perched inside entertainment centers and on television sets. That's one for every two people in the country or 80 percent of U.S. households. The problem is largely due to the fact that modern set-top boxes operate at near full power even when nobody is even watching or recording a program. A new study reports that consumers in this country alone spend over $2 billion in electricity per year to run these little machines.
"The average new cable high-definition digital video recorder (HD-DVR) consumes more than half the energy of an average new refrigerator and more than an average new flat-panel television," reports the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Ecos in a new report called Better Viewing, Lower Energy Bills, and Less Pollution. "Even more troubling, when not displaying or recording video content, U.S. boxes draw nearly as much power as they do when in use."
To put it in perspective, U.S. set-top boxes require as much energy to operate as the annual electricity consumption of all the households in the state of Maryland. That's 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from boxes owned and installed by service providers like Comcast, Time Warner, DISH Network, Verizon, DirecTV and the like.
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