20th June, 2008
Why home theater lighting has to change—right now
Brent Butterworth
Four days ago, the lamps that have for years anchored home theater lighting systems became illegal. And that means the way you light your home theaters will have to change. Immediately.
We heard this news from Gary Meshberg, business development manager for Lightolier Controls and also president of the Home Lighting Control Alliance. According to Meshberg, Federal regulations outlawed manufacture of incandescent reflector lamps as of June 16.
Incandescent reflector lamps have long been popular in home theaters because they fit readily into a wide variety of recessed lighting fixtures now on the market, because they work with standard light dimmers, and because they’re available in a range of flood and spot patterns. Many theaters use an incandescent reflector spotlight to provide perfect reading light over the couch without washing out the screen. They’ll be missed.
What’s more, Federal standards set to take effect in 2012 may effectively ban all incandescent lamps. “The law doesn’t specifically outlaw incandescents,” Meshberg explained, “but it imposes a lumens-per-watt standard that no incandescent bulb can meet.”
A replacement for incandescent reflector lamps is readily at hand: the screw-in halogen bulb. Meshberg said these bulbs are dimmable, produce a pleasing shade of white, and deliver a more focused pool of light that’s well-suited for home theater illumination. And of course, their power consumption is lower. The downside? A survey of websites by The Integrator found the cost of these bulbs is about double that of incandescent reflector lamps.
New theater designs can use smaller, cooler-running halogen bulbs, such as the popular, readily available MR16. Many of the theaters we’ve seen in the last couple of years already use MR16s.
No answers are on the horizon for 2012, though. “It’s the first time I’m aware of that they put an energy law in place without a go-to,” Meshberg commented. “Only one screw-in lamp, the Philips Halogena, can meet that standard.” [Editor’s Note: Lightolier is owned by Philips.]
The increasingly popular compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb is one obvious replacement for incandescents, despite nagging environmental and safety questions related to their mercury content. Many recently designed CFLs emit a warmer, more reddish light than the bluish hues of the original CFLs, so in most household applications, replacing incandescents with CFLs is no problem.
In home theaters, though, CFLs are a lousy choice for now, mainly because home theater lights are almost always connected to dimmers. “You can dim CFLs,” Meshberg says, “but that doesn’t mean you should. When you dim an incandescent, the color temperature gets warmer, more like candlelight. But the opposite is true with fluorescents—they get more blue, and it’s uncomfortable. One blog I read said it makes a room look like a late-night bus terminal.”
“Another problem is performance,” he added. “The CFLs of today tend to flicker when you dim them, and below about 30 percent brightness they often just turn off.”
Bulb manufacturers are working to address these issues, and we’ll report on solutions as we find them. Meanwhile, it’s a frightening situation indeed for integrators, but Meshberg does see one upside: “I think that it’s going to spur more thought into lighting design.”
Posted at 12:00 pm | Comments (3)
6th June, 2008
Will new energy standards kill the plasma TV?
Brent Butterworth
A proposal by Pacific Gas and Electric for updated Title 20 energy-consumption standards may force dramatic changes on the entire TV market.
The proposal was made to the California Energy Commission in a paper titled Codes and Standards Enhancement Initiative for PY2008: Title 20 Standards Development, Analysis of Standards Options for Televisions. (Clearly, PG&E’s marketing department had no hand in this one.) The version of the proposal that The Integrator was able to obtain is dated April 2 of this year. It highlights a problem that may surprise even TV engineers: Average power consumption of TV sets is going way, way up.
From 2005 to 2008, total power consumed by TVs in the United States rose by an average of 7.6 percent, a rate of growth exceeded only by commercial office equipment. Meanwhile, the total power consumption of appliances usually regarded as power hogs—air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers—has actually fallen. According to PG&E, the increase in TV power consumption is a result of four factors: larger screen sizes, new display technologies, new TV capabilities such as high definition, and more per-capita hours of TV watching per day.
Apparently, PG&E doesn’t want to expand its power grid just for the sake of The Hills and Hannah Montana, so it has proposed power-consumption rules for new TVs are even stricter than those stipulated by version 3.0 of the Energy Star standards. PG&E’s proposal is that energy consumption (measured in watts) of high-definition TVs be limited to 0.20 times the screen area in square inches, plus 32. According to test results included in the proposal, few current flat-panel TVs can meet the proposed Title 20 spec. No plasma TV even comes close to the spec. LCD flat-panels fare dramatically better: A few sets meet spec and many others come close. PG&E’s measurements indicate that the most power-hungry LCD flat-panels roughly equal the energy consumption of the most efficient plasmas.
If the CEC enacts PG&E’s proposal or something similar, it could have a major effect on the fate of today’s TV technologies. As the saying suggests, “As goes California, so goes the rest of the country.” It’s likely that, as has happened in the past, other states will adopt California’s standards. Even if they don’t, it’s unlikely that manufacturers will want to build an energy-efficient TV for 11% of the U.S. population and a comparatively gluttonous TV for the other 89%. Of course, it is possible that plasma’s few remaining stalwarts could continue selling plasma TVs in other states and limit their California sales to LCD models, but we doubt that would happen.
PG&E takes pains to point out that its proposal is not intended to favor any technology over any other. It cites recent press releases from Panasonic and Samsung that claim power consumption rates as little as half those of current plasma models. The proposal includes a more lenient standard for TVs that include automatic brightness adjustment as a factory default, which could help some plasmas squeak by. PG&E also contends that the proposed standard brings significant economic benefits—i.e., it would reduce power cost by an average of $84 over the 10-year average life of a TV, and it could actually reduce the cost of TV manufacturing because decreases in raw materials costs usually accompany increases in TV efficiency.
The good news for plasma TV makers is that there’s still time to wring more efficiency out of their designs. A CEC spokesperson told The Integrator that the Commission is currently at work on new Title 20 standards for battery chargers and lighting, and hasn’t yet examined the topic of TVs. And PG&E’s proposal is just that—a proposal. Before it enacts any new standard, the CEC will open up all proposals to public comment. As the spokesperson told us, “It’s a long, involved process.” Still, with even stricter standards now under consideration in Australia, it seems certain that LCD will be the easiest path to energy-efficient home entertainment systems.
Posted at 12:01 pm | Comments (2)
1st June, 2008
The One-Page Proposal
Michael Verity
If you write as little as one client proposal a year, then it’s worth your time and $11.53 to pick up a copy of Patrick G. Riley’s book, The One-Page Proposal.
Based on a lesson given to Riley by the billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, The One-Page Proposal reminds us that influential people are busy people. They don’t need a long proposal full of small details when a well-constructed single page is enough for them to make a decision. In this concise, 100-page book, Riley outlines the six components that “get your business pitch onto one persuasive page”. There are no shortcuts around knowing your clients and doing good research. But, using Riley’s simple process, you can produce better proposals in less time.
Riley also shows how this method can be used develop civic projects and put ideas into motion within a company’s internal structure. Buy one for each of your employees; the sample proposals alone are worth 5 times the price.
Posted at 3:57 pm | Comment (0)
