Cable/satellite boxes also frequently draw multiple watts in standby or "off". If every bit of consumer electronics were as thrifty with standby as your TV, it wouldn't be a problem anymore.
(I'll add: my iPod Touch can "wake up" instantly when I interact with it after days sitting unplugged, and that's drawing from a tiny battery. Even 120 mW is far above the lower bound of what's necessary to build a complex device with fast wakeup upon user interaction.)
(Second edit: the power converter that started this discussion is obviously targeted at much lower power applications than even an iPod, so it's not really relevant to anything that can be plugged in at home.)
Just TVs, not monitors, not computers, not audio receivers, not game consoles, not microwave ovens, not etc. I doubt the cost of designing this converter even approaches the yearly cost of a power plant.
Is this really a problem anymore? I have a five year old 50" plasma, and it draws 0.12 W in standby. That's not "excessive", it's a rounding error. It's 1 kWh per year, or roughly 0.6 kg of CO2; the same as idling your car for an extra 2 seconds every day.