Inside Scoops on the Environment

Sherry Seethaler

Entertainment Budget

How much does it cost to watch TV? What “gotchas” should I be aware of?

It depends on whether your set rivals the wall-dominating models in Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 or is a more modest old-fashioned type. The average power use per square inch is 0.36 watts (W) for a plasma TV, 0.27W for an LCD TV, 0.23W for one of those vintage cathode ray tube sets, and 0.14W for a digital light processing TV, according to a study by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).

For an average-sized model, PG&E estimates that power use ranges from 101W for a cathode ray tube TV to 361W for a plasma screen. If you spend 5 hours per day glued to the set or with the TV providing background noise, ...