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Posted by: Liliam Huckeberry

Is The DTA Converter Box Energy Efficient?

I like many of the millions of people who leave in the United States, have not purchased the Analog-to-Digital converter box. Why haven’t I switched? After all, Digital broadcasting promises to provide a clearer picture, more programming options, and apparently will clear the airwaves for the use of emergency responders for airports and hospitals. I am not sure. In any case, I must switch to the converter box before the deadline is up again.

I went on line to see how I could get one, and more importantly to find out if they are energy efficient devices. Well to my surprise, not all of them are energy efficient. I am not going to lie; I was a bit disappointed that the government is making us switch from analog to digital TV, and not providing us with the Energy Start Label converter boxes. When I was researching about the converter boxes I found some pretty interesting facts.

According to The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it is estimated that the conventional converters boxes, or the regular converter boxes that do not have the Energy Star Labe on them, will consume more than 3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) per year which equals a cost of more than $270 million annually in electricity, which is quite an astonishing amount of money, in my opinion.

If you have not purchase your converter box like me, you may want to look into buying one that has the Energy Star label. According to Energy Start Label (ESL), the converter boxes that have earned their stamp are 50% more efficient in electricity saving than the standard ones, the ones that do not get their label. Using an Energy start label converter box, you are guaranteed to not use more than 8 Watts in On mode and only 1 Watt in sleep mode. These converter boxes also come with a cool feature, and that is, that if the converter box is not in use for four hours or less it automatically powers down. Here a nice statistic, if all converter boxes sold in the USA were to get the Energy Star label we would save13 billion Kilowatts per hour and $1 billion in energy expenses over the duration of the converter box. https://www.dtv2009.gov/

So why should you care to get an Energy Star Label product? Well the Energy Star Label was created by the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States. The Energy Star was created, for the public to make the public aware of how much energy their products consume daily. To bear the Energy start label the product must work significantly more efficiently than its competitors. The products that do get the Energy Star label must reduce energy consumption by 30 to 50 percent http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/solutions/energy_efficiency/energy-star-label-saves.html