New TV!

OK, sometimes saving energy can just be awesome.  

My old apartment was very small, and my couch was therefore only ~6 feet from my TV.  So my 32" LCD worked just fine.  My new living room is pretty large, and a 32" TV is just too small for me.  

I'd been looking around for a new LED backlit TV, but wanted the prices to come down a bit.  I got an early "Black Friday" deal on a 46" Samsung LED LCD, and it looks great.  It's a brand new model that came out the day I bought it.

This new TV has just over double the area of my old TV, so one would naively expect that it would take twice as much power to light it.  But LEDs are very efficient, so I had hoped that the power use wouldn't be any higher.  I did a test, with the exact same picture and similar brightness levels.  The new TV actually uses about 25% less power than my previous TV! (75W vs. 100W).  Awesome.  In addition, the vampire power is essentially non-existant (0.07W) and it has additional features that can decrease power consumption even further without affecting the picture much (which I'll use when I'm not watching sports).

Check out the Energy Guide sticker that came with it.  The estimated energy costs per year is so low ($12) that it's off the range in the sticker ($18-$51).  Awesome.