Everyone loves their entertainment centers, but even when they are turned off the are one of the primary energy vampires in the home. This refers to the home theaters that have DVD players, HDTVs, game systems, a cable box or any other contraption in that arena. Electrical waste of most modern home theaters is rampant enough that one small addition, like a surround sound system, has the potential to double or even triple your power usage.
According to Popular Mechanics, when hooking up a wattmeter to a typical 37-inch HDTV and cable box the combo will use 172 watts of energy. A 5.1-channel home theatre with a subwoofer almost doubled the consumption, while a PlayStation3 almost tripled the original usage. Furthermore, many home theater receivers use routers that take inputs from multiple sources like a Blu-ray player or a stereo system and input all of them to the TV. Organization is great, but this essentially means that everything is on at once. This leads to electricity being sucked out of your sockets even though you don't have anything turned on.
Taking this analysis a step further, the weather channel doesn’t need the same sound boost as a great movie, so what’s the weapon against useless waste like this? Switchable power strips let you keep only the components you are using on and all other contraptions off. An HDMI cord will switch route signals around the home theatre receiver when not in use, while a wattmeter will identify your biggest power culprit. So there's plenty of ways to try and reduce energy consumption while still having all the entertaining devices in your life.
