We've said it
before, and we'll say it again -- once a TV has been moved from the store shelf into your shopping cart, the ultra-bright "torch mode" has served its only good purpose. Sadly, however, a study presented at the Ergonomics Symposium on Flat Panel Displays turned up more than 80-percent of the LCDs in the mode favored by alpine skiing fans, and almost 80-percent had the
ambient light sensors disabled. That's bad news for picture quality, but also bad for energy consumption -- the study found that four factors (viewing angle, viewer age, content luminance and ambient lighting) can be used to determine an ergonomically correct display luminance, and we'd go out on a limb to say that the "dynamic" mode disregards what's "correct." Savings by dialing back the display can save energy by a not-too-shabby 20-30-percent. Statisticians can throw stones at the sample of 83 homes, but based on how many times we've found supernova whites and neon greens while visiting homes, it sounds about right.
posted March 17th 2009 12:52PM
Yep, calibrating my 52 inch sammy (turning power save mode to high) reduced the power draw by a lot.
Uncalibated, my Pure AV UPS/Surge/AVR showed the power usage (TV on only) using up 3 power usage bars.
Calibrated, It only uses one power usage bar.
But, when friends come over, I crank up the lcd back light. And you hear ohh's and arr's on how great my tv looks.
Calibrated, my sammy looks like a plasma.
Just curious as to why you would turn up the back light when friends are over... that makes you an enabler!
Wouldn't you want them to just see a properly calibrated set, and perhaps educate them that torch mode is just totally unnecessary and unnatural?
I work at a large retailer, and my default, we go in and turn all the TV's to their 'standard' mode, turn the sharpness way down, and usually disable the picture enhancement modes. First, the picture actually looks real, and second, if NONE of the TV's are in vivid, there is no brightness competition, and they all can work at looking good, not bright.
FWIW, the new Sony S series looks HORRID out of the box (literally, some of the colors are inverting from their true form!). Go from vivid to standard, sharpness at 0, and turn off all the image processing mode, and it looks pretty sweet. This is without calibration, which would make it look even better.
That's why I bought a calorimeter. Nice business expense to tune my customer's TVs, and mine when needed. SpyderTV!
Well, I get more praises about how good my tv looks when it's not calibrated (super bright and over saturated with color).
When it's calibrated it get comment like : "oh, that's a big TV" and that's it. nothing about how good or natural the picture looks.
And I have to admit, I love the praises. So calibration be damned when people are over.
So great you cater to the lowest common denominator. They obviously have no idea about how color should look and you are not helping them. I lowered the backlight on my Sony XBR2 and the picture looks way better than with the light cranked all the way up, also helps with the XBR2 cloudiness issue of uneven backlight.
Every TV install I've done I always turn on energy savings. I've done tests on over 12 TVs and like Kevon27 said makes a huge difference in power consumption. As for Quality I have not found that energy savings mode is a good move or not. On cheep walmart special TVs energy saver makes the already uneven lighting worse. On higher-end Sammys, Sonys, etc I find that energy savings is not the only plus. Near plasma quality with room to move when in a brighter environment.
C
The dynamic setting on my DLP set burns my retinas. I can't imagine how fast bulbs would pop if I kept it on that setting.
I've had it for about 28 months and I'm still on the original lamp. How long do these things usually last?
The average DLP bulb is between 3000-6000 hours before needing replacement, but I've read of people getting 12,000 hours+ with healthy settings.
Use the google my friend, you'd be amazed at how much info is ripe for the picking.
I pretty much taught myself my Samsung DLP's service menu and how to calibrate just using the interwebs... but ALWAYS verify something with more than one source, and for christ's sake- take pictures of your service menu first if you're going to fux with it.
I'm still on my first bulb with my Samsung HL-S6187W. I purchased it in Oct. '06 and it's still going strong.
I estimate it has around 9000 hours on the bulb.
Fuzz: DLP lamps usually run at full power regardless of the mode or brightness settings. The settings just control how much of the light gets to the screen. In that case, you can't increase lamp life or reduce power consumption by turning down the brightness on a lamp-based DLP.
Here's a good article about how to maximize lamp life:
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/articles/2007/02/making_your_hdt.php
have the 5687, about 6000 hours, purchased same time as charles