Home audio & video forum: Concerns over Plasma panel heating room

I have a 50" Panasonic Plasma. Its great, I don't have to turn the heater on as much during the winter. As for problems, all the pannys have fans built in so as long as you give them ample breathing room they are fine.

If you want to test it, leave an iron on in the room for an hour at a med-low setting. That puts out probably the same amount of heat as a plasma would.

Yes, plasmas use more power than other techs. I still wouldn't regard them as supplemental room heaters. As to the guilt factor of using those extra watts, ordinary peoples lives have sufficient other outlets of energy conservation to compensate.

For instance, I usually fill my smaller recycling bin to overflowing, but I can easily see lots of neighbors don't do much any recycling (it is currently voluntary here.) Yes, I am retired & they are not, but they have a big gap they could close by participation if they would only do it. On an ordinary week, I feel I recycle over half my trash volume. If others would pitch in, a lot of landfill volume could be avoided.

This from one who is writing this on a computer with LCD screen & I our secondary set is an LCD. From personal observation, it is obvious to me that overall satisfaction is highest, for a primary set, with a plasma.

Let's do some maths.

A tiny 1,000 watt heater can heat around 10 square metres. The plasma uses about 580 odd watts. That means that, if that amount of power were going into heat production, it would heat a very small room of two metres by three metres.

But that power is being used to run the digital tuner, image processing chips, embedded computer, amplifier, and finally the panel which is intended to spit out visible light. If you think a 500 watt heater is barely a heater at all, just imagine how little power is really going to be wasted as heat in your plasma.

As an aside, we're not likely to see plasma computer monitors any time soon. The smallest plasma TVs are 32 inches, typically with 480 lines of resolution. Monitors are typically smaller than TVs; let's say 24 inches; so even if you managed to reduce the pixel size, you're still looking at a resolution of maybe 600 lines.

Nobody wants a 24 inch computer monitor that can only display 800x600

Responding to first part of your post; "just imagine how little power is really going to be wasted as heat in your plasma"

Obviously you don't own one. I point you to my side note to NM_Bill

Some of that must have been used as light energy or we might have a blank screen. So hopefully more are use for light then heat.

Im surprised Nick (ns) has not seen this, one of the resident display gurus.

If I remember reading his posts correctly, the wattage on a plasma is basically MAXIMUM. But, who watches a blazingly bright white screen for entertainment?

The differences in energy consumption are not THAT great when you consider how much better performance you get, at lower cost as well.

If I was looking for a performance car, I wouldn't be buying a hybrid. But in this case, the energy consumption is much more comparable, than a hybrid vs normal combustion would be.

as for rmf:
its not the size of the room, its far you sit from it.

viewing distance calculator
http://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html

distance VS resolution
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/tha_trixta/resolution2.png

This is old and I'm sure nobody cares, but I wanted to state for the record to all those that 'think' they know what they're talking about, but don't.

I have had a 46" plasma in a 8' x 10' bedroom. With the door closed & the TV running, in a few hours, that bedrooms temp can get up to 81 or 82 degrees, while the rest of the house is at a comfortable 78 degrees. Just for the record...