It has been claimed that TV's use more energy than when on, I just measured 3 old tv's of different makes that I am looking at replacing (admittedly small - around 15inch average):
standby power (full operation power)
2 32
2 42
2 61

This compares to a claimed operation power of a new phillips 26inch "green" LCD tv which uses <1W on standby but a rated power of 120W operational.
I thought LCD's were supposed to use less energy than an old tv?
Does anyone have any comments?

Keep the old ones. The programmes don't get any better with a new set and we don't want to encourage the Chinese to send us any more consumer crap.

Hotelrefurber, I think you have used the wrong term here. LCD, liquid crystal display, these use a very small electric field to twist the polarisation of light. This means they do not emit any light at all so can not be seen in the dark. They are used for cheapo thermometers, calculators watches etc, and normally come with a button to switch on the back light so you can view them them in the dark.
Frank

You are comparing the measured consumption of the old TV with the rated consumption of the new one. So not like with like. The rated power will probably be with the backlight on full brightness as well.

You've just got me to do something I've been meaning to do for months.

My 11 year old Sony 29" 4:3 CRT TV uses between 40 and 110W depending on whether the screen is showing a dark scene or something really bright.

I've also got a year old 26" panasonic LCD, which has pretty much the same width screen but isn't as high. Just tried it out and it uses between 60 and 110W depending on which display mode it's in. Dynamic is the power hungry mode, down to Auto which is the low power mode. Cinema and normal fall in the middle. Changes in the scene brightness don't appear to change the power use. Even if I adjusted the brightness setting no power change, so basically the LCD pixels act as a shutter to the backlight. Frankly the picture is good in the low power mode - so that is where it will stay.

I believe there are a new generation of TVs out, which use LED's as backlights for the LCD pixels. The idea being that there's control over the amount of backlight needed for each pixel. This saves power, gives better contrast, and increases the panel life as LEDs last longer than the fluorescent backlight they used till now.

I bought a maplin plug in power meter last year for £15 and it saved me £150 a year in electric bills. I found several hifi's and videos and microwaves were using 5-11 watts each just displaying a clock. As a rule of thumb 1W = £1 a year. So they now all get turned off at the plug. Even the freeview Harddisk recorder - which really objects to being powered down. I was up late one night and I could hear it "defragging" itself for over 2 hours! Also found out my freezer was using 14kWh a week! So that's on the "delegate to garage/party use only and replace with a A++" list.

Simon.