Save Money on Your TV Viewing
Over the past decade, home media viewing options have broadened to include broadcast, cable, satellite, and internet TV programs. But the increase in viewing options comes with a price. More options means more electronics and, usually, higher electric bills.
To help you understand which option might best fit your lifestyle and energy budget, we’ve researched some different media set-ups. Our hypothetical home includes a 50” Energy Star television, which is the current average-sized television in the U.S., and an Energy Star router. The initial cost of a TV and router, at around $600, are the steepest expenses for your media budget. The electricity to operate these two items adds about $17 annually, for a first year purchase-and-operating total around $620.
Subscription services are the next biggest part of many families’ media budgets, with cable, satellite, and streaming services in a range of prices. For this example, we’ll estimate $30 a month for basic subscription services. The cable box needs about $25 worth of electricity per year. Adding that to your TV/router costs would run up your budget to about $1,000 for your first year’s expenses.
If it is important to your family to have a DVR to record shows and view them later, you’ll need to add at least $10 per month, plus about $20 in annual electricity costs. Your budget would then swell to about $1,140.
Finally, some households add a game system to their home theater set up. Assuming a moderately priced game system around $150, plus another $25 in annual electricity, you’re now up at $1,335.
The most energy efficient and least expensive option is to skip the cable, DVRs and game systems and instead use an internet only-set top box. This option eliminates the $30 monthly cable box cost, the DVR and game system costs, and reduces the annual energy bill to about $20, in comparison to the $72 energy bill associated with having all the other gadgets. This streamlined option would cost only around $700 for the first year, about half the $1,335 we estimated for all the bells and whistles.
One way that you could make any of these options more energy efficient is to use an Advanced Power Strip (APS). With an APS, when you shut off your television, all other devices connected to the television shut down too, instead of remaining on standby power.
If you have a game system, an APS is especially beneficial. The average American uses their TV three hours per day. A game system only uses about 40 kWh/year during those active hours. But, when the game system is in standby mode for the other 21 hours of the day, it uses 100 kWh/year. An APS completely shuts down your device during those standby hours and saves you $20 per year. Likewise, a cable box uses only around 6 kWh of energy per year for the hours of active viewing, but 40 kWh of standby energy.
Buy an Advanced Power Strip and help yourself and the environment by saving both money and energy!
