Sunday, May 15, 2011

One hidden master switch for TV, PS3 and surround sound

Kill your standby losses with a master switch.Below our TV we have a decoder, HDMI switch, PS3, Wii, and a sourround sound amplifier. First I tried to use a smart strip to turn off everything when the decoder goes into standby, but it was difficult to adjust the sensitivity, because the decoder used almost the same amount of current in standby as in normal use! So I simplified and made an easy to access master switch placed behind the TV screen (blue arrow). It turned out real good. The kids love it since it is much faster than using all the remote controlls. On an average day our family uses 1.2kWh on our entertainment centre. Our plasma screen uses about 170W on an average bright picture when set in standard display mode. When set to dynamic it uses almost twice as much. So keep the brightness down, and turn everything completly off when not in use.