I hear Plasma TVs are power hogs

The largest commercially available direct view CRT was a 40" made by Mitsubishi. I fixed one once, it was immensely heavy but the picture did look pretty good.

Sure they do, we have a number of them at work as well as I have a HD CRT rear projection set at home, the only reason I got it was because it was free, nice set though and looks nice for watching DVDs at 640p which is all I ever use it for, I quit watching broadcast TV years ago.. It supports

1080i as well, which I'm sure I'll use at some point once the HD format war is over and prices come down on players. The 56" 16:9 screen makes movies look great, it is bulky but I've got plenty of space. You can display HD content on a standard SVGA computer monitor as well. HD vs SD is independant of the display technology.

Even a cheap set looks good for SD, it's quite a testament really to how refined CRT technology really is.

The resolution could have been artificially lower on the SD side, but the comparison is still not really fair since the screen is still running at the HD resolution.

Another gotcha is that SD content looks really poor on most HD sets, much worse than it does on a good SD set.

I was thinking the same thing. I'm in WI, not far from MN, and with the severe cold we have had the last few weeks, I finally removed most of the CF bulbs in my garage. They were so dim when I turned them on, I could not see the tools in my toolbox, and they never got to full brightness. That's when I removed over half of them and put in incandescents. Much of the time I go to the garage to get a tool to bring in the house, I'm half frozen, and I got to stand there till the damn things get sort of bright so I can see my tools. It's too cold to be standing there, and I have better use of my time than waiting for them damn things to get bright.

Then too, when will they ban them because of the mercury in them? They might save some energy, but they are highly polluting. Incandescents are just glass and metal, and aside from the tiny bit of lead solder on the base, they are not a pollutant. (maybe they dont use lead on them now, I am not sure).

One other thing. I have now had two of them literally blow smoke and sparks. One was in my bathroom, and the whole room became filled with some really stinky smoke, and I could see sparks inside the plastic base. I shut it off, but still wonder if it could have started a fire. Worse was one in the garage that actually blew sparks out of it, and not far away on the floor under the light, I had a gasoline can. If I had just poured some gas and there was some on the outside of the can, that could have been a disaster. Since then, I do nto trust them, and have not bought anymore of them. I'm just using the ones that were still there.

Halogen bulbs are notorious for being extremely hot, and are far more able to start a fire than an incandescent. They are not all that more efficient than a incandescent anyhow, so they are not a good solution if you ask me.

I trust the old florescent fixtures much more than these CF bulbs and they do save energy. But again, in cold weather they are helpless.

I think if there is any hope for energy saving bulbs, it will be the LED. But for now, they are too blue and not bright enough. However, I think they have potential.

They're not highly polluting. They have very little mercury, and it's elemental rather than organic.

If you hardly ever go into the garage, and/or for short periods, CFLs don't make much sense.

Could you please explain the elemental VS organic part.

I am beginning to realize that. Whiel on occasion I do spend hours in there (usually only in warm weather), the rest of the time I am only in there for a few minutes at a time. About the only time I spend any extended time in there during cold weather is when the car breaks down.

What is a Metal Halide bulb? Do they use standard fixtures or need a ballast or other special fixture?

The halogen bulbs in question have the quartz capsule contained inside a glass outer bulb. They run no hotter externally than a standard incandescent, they're not a lot more efficient, but enough more to be legal.

LEDs do have potential, but they have a long way to go for general illumination. I'd guess that in a decade or so they'll be quite mature.

It's a high intensity discharge lamp, a modern close cousin to the mercury vapor lamp widely used in street lighting for decades. They require a special fixture and ballast, though a rare few screw-in internal ballast replacements are available. Modern ceramic metal halides are fantastic, CRI in the 85-90 range depending on color temperature, 8K-12K rated life, very compact lamps with a nearly point source emission and higher efficiency than fluorescent. I use several 39 and 70W versions around my house with a combination of fancy electronic and conventional magnetic ballasts but I'm a lighting geek. CMH is used mostly in high end retail displays right now but will probably be more common as prices drop. If you see a window display in a clothing store lit by bright warm white light of almost incandescent with perhaps a slightly pinkish tinge to it, you're probably looking at 3000K ceramic metal halide. Philips Mastercolor and GE ConstantColor are the two lines I've worked with.

Caveats include high cost, relatively long warmup time compared to CFL (but they will warm up fully in sub zero temps), and when you shut one off, it has to cool for several minutes before it will fire up again, but this is not a problem for dusk till dawn or timed applications where I use them.

has a whole ton of great info.

Here in Duluth, we have a number of large LED billboards that appear as bright at -30F as they do at 70F which testifies to the potential of LED illumination across a mil-spec temp range.

Michael

cut

Well, my CFLs did almost nothing below freezing. And it is quite inconvenient to have to wait 5 minutes after switch on, before you can see enough. And leaving them on, sort of contradicts the purpose of energy saving. I replaced them with ordinary FL tubes.

For very cold areas, garages, sheds etc.How about those Quartz Halogen lights? They could/might supplement CFLs/Incandescant lights.The Quartz Halogen lights used only for very cold areas.I don't know if that would work so good though. cuhulin

Ban them all.

Its easy to put your hand around the vents and judge effectiveness.

greg

Yes. Mercury is poisonous, regardless of its form. But my understanding is that pure mercury is not as poisonous as organic compounds containing mercury.

Several years ago, a member of rec.antiques.radio+phone told the group that, as a child, he'd drunk almost a pound of liquid mercury -- and lived. (Well, yeah, duh...)

I'm a bit skeptical about THAT one...

lived.

So was I, but he was a regular member of the group, and I saw no reason to disbelieve him.

JW wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

It is good to be skeptical, but the story is probably correct.

Mercury has a laxative effect. It has been used for one.

Metallic mercury is most hazardous when you are exposed to the vapors. Heating it can be rapidly deadly. Do NOT try to repair a PCB that has had mercury spilled on it! [I scrapped a computer because it had had a mercury manometer laid down on top of it. There was mercury EVERYWHERE inside.]

Having mercury spilled in your work area can be deadly over an extended period of time as even at room temperature, mercury has a high enough vapor pressure to expose you to a hazardous level.

But brief (like days for the mercury to pass through the digestive system) exposure to metallic mercury is unlikely to kill you.

--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an 
infinite set.

bz+nanae@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu