On Friday, 6 December 2019 09:17:04 GMT PeterMerchant via dorset wrote:
> The question that has been raised at home is whether it is better to turn
> off (Standby) the TV when you leave the room for a short period. The one
> opinion that I have found on the Internet is that leaving it on only costs
> an small amount of electricity. Happy with that.
>
> But is there a cost in terms of stressing the components and reducing the
> lifetime for modern TVs? We have a Samsung and a Toshiba LCD TV. And does
> any answer relate to computer screens?
The qualified answer is that there is no doubt that far from reducing the
lifetime of components, leaving an electronic device turned on increases
reliability. Just try switching an old fashioned tungsten light bulb on and
off rapidly and see what happens.
I said that it was a qualified answer and I will try to explain:
1. Repeated on-off cycles stresses components.
Back in the 1970s, we found that most military kit would fail fairly
regularly. Out of a squadron of 12 aircraft an average of two would land with
faults in the Avionics after each sortie. However, during exercises, when
aircraft were not shut down between sorties, the failure rate was much lower.
Having said that, modern electronics tends to be designed to provide a 'soft
start'. One of the major problems was the inrush current that occurs when
equipment is switched on; modern PSUs tend to increase the applied voltage
relatively slowly, thus limiting the current until all the capacitors in the
device are fully charged and any temperature sensitive devices are warmed up.
2. *Some* electronic devices will have lifetime hours.
Most modern electronics have Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of many
thousands of hours. The exception tends to be things that output something to
the real world, such as a display screens, speakers (and to some extent the
associated amplifiers). With LCD TVs, this can be seen most readily in older
devices that exhibited strange whorls and distortions due to the heat of the
backlight stressing the screen. Theoretically, faults in OLEDs are possible
owing to pixels failing. However, the jury is out on this because OLED
displays are still relatively new.
Personally, I leave TVs etc on Standby most of the time (day and night), but
with older sets that used a fluorescent tube as a backlight, I turn them off
overnight because of the increased standby power consumption.
--
Terry Coles
--
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