You've got a great new LCD TV you'd like to keep for 10 years or more? Me too! With just a couple of minor tweaks, you can have great performance, significant energy savings, and at the same time, maximize the lifepan of your new LCD TV!

I recently purchased a new 46" LCD TV. Being somewhat of a geek, I immediately hooked it up to my "watt-meter" to see how much electricity it used and was a bit surprised. I had replaced an old 36" tube tv which used just 90 watts of juice, and the surprise was that my new, high-tech LCD TV (not plasma) was drawing almost 190 watts of power! I guess I was expecting that the new technology would soundly drub the antiquated cathode ray tube, but alas, it was not the case. (to be fair the tube tv screen is 10" smaller - but I still expected the LCD to be in the ballpark)

With the watt-meter still hooked up, I thought I'd try and fool around with the settings to see if there was some way to stop that giant sucking sound I was hearing on my wallet.

My first expectation was that it would be the Brightness setting. I navigated through the menus, lowered the brightness... and no change in energy use. That seemed weird. How about the Contrast setting? Nothing - no difference. Then I moved on to this setting called "Backlight". BAM! Changing the backlight setting had a direct effect on the amount of watts used.

After reducing the backlight setting from 8 down to 5 and increasing the brightness and contrast settings, I was able to get a great picture using less than 150 watts of power! (At the other end of the spectrum, the TV uses a little over 250 watts with the backlight set on 10!)

This has several benefits of course. First is the obvious impact on my electric bill, with the TV using about 25% less power than it was with the factory settings. But less obvious is the effect this will have on the longevity of my TV. To understand that, we've got to get inside the technology a little bit.

Modern LCD TV's use one of two methods for generating their light. Most use standard fluorescent light bulbs which are directly behind the screen (the long skinny bulbs used overhead in many office buildings). The latest model TV's are starting to use LED's for their light (this power saving technique is probably NOT effective for these types of TV's).

For fluorescent bulb LCD TV's (the majority), reducing the brightness of the bulbs (the 'backlight') not only reduces the electricity use, but it also reduces heat (feel the top back of the TV, it can get pretty warm after the TV has been on a while). As most of us have heard, heat reduces the life of electronics in general. It also reduces the lifespan of fluorescent bulbs (due to increasing chemical reactions within the bulb, and by causing increased gas 'leakage' from the bulb itself).

So if you're looking to increase the lifespan of your LCD TV, and save a few bucks at the same time, lower your backlight, and adjust your brightness and contrast to get yourself a great picture, and a pocketful of savings!