In article ,
Timothy Murphy writes:
Andrew Gabriel wrote:

I recently bought Aldi's power meter,
which I have found quite instructive -
I was surprised that my Sky box and TV
took 20 watts each in standby.

Set top boxes are imfamous for not reducing power consumption
in standby mode, and are probably largely resposible for the
current standby hysteria. Most modern TV's reduce their standby
power to negligable levels in standby mode or they can't be
sold in a number of countries. How old is your TV?

It's a Sony 26in TV (not flat screen), about 8 years old I think.
On re-checking I see that it only takes 12 watts in standby,

Just checked a 2 year old Panasonic LCD, and it's 0.5W standby.
It doesn't have a TCO'03 sticker on it, but this brings it within
the TCO'03 requirements (1W max standby) and thus able to be sold
in some countries where that's a requirement.

while the Grundig Sky box takes 30 watts.

That seems an awful lot, or the power meter is not handling
loads with power factor 1 correctly.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]