Can you explain why does a TV's power fluctuate so much? What does peak load look like for a TV? Does watching NFL draw more power than playing Factorio?
I have a 42" 4k LG OLED. With a pure black background and just a taskbar visible (5% of screen), the TV draws ~40W because OLED pixels use no power when displaying black.
Opening Chrome to Google's homepage in light mode pulls ~150W since each pixel's RGB components need power to produce white across most of the screen.
Video content causes continuous power fluctuation as each frame is rendered. Dark frames use less power (more pixels off/dim), bright frames use more (more pixels on/bright).
Modern OLEDs use Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) for brightness control - pixels switch rapidly between fully on and off states. Lower brightness means pixels spend more time in their off state during each cycle.
The QN800A's local dimming helps reduce power in dark scenes by dimming zones of the LED backlight array, though power consumption still varies significantly with content brightness. It's similar to OLED but the backlight zones are not specific to each pixel.
Dark mode UIs and lower brightness settings will reduce power draw on both QLED and OLED displays.
Traditional LCDs without local dimming work quite differently - their constant backlight means only brightness settings affect power, not the content being displayed.
This explains those power fluctuations in the QN800A measurements. Peak power (429W) likely occurs during bright, high-contrast scenes - think NFL games during a sunny day game, or HDR content with bright highlights. For gaming, power draw is largely influenced by the content being displayed - so a game like Factorio, with its darker UI and industrial scenes, would typically draw less power than games with bright, sunny environments.
I was under the incorrect impression the power consumption would related to the rendering of the image (ala CPU/GPU work). Having it related to brightness makes much more sense.
RTINGS measured the Samsung QN800A as consuming 139W typical, with a peak of 429W.
Your numbers aren't even close to accurate. 8K TVs do not have 200W CPUs inside. The entire Samsung QN800A uses less power during normal operation than you're claiming the CPU does. You do not need as much power as a mid-range GPU to move pixels from HDMI to a display.
> There's a reason why European regulations banned 100% of 8K TVs
This is also incorrect. European regulations required the default settings, out of the box, to hit a certain energy target.
So large TVs in Europe (8K or otherwise) need to come with their brightness turned down by default. You open the box, set it up, and then turn the brightness to the setting you want.
> until the manufacturers undoubtedly paid for a loophole
This is unfounded conspiracy theory that is also incorrect. Nobody paid for a loophole. The original law was written for out-of-the-box settings. Manufacturers complied with the law. No bribes or conspiracies.
> If everybody were to upgrade to an 8K TV tomorrow, then I think it would throw away all the progress we've made on Global Warming for the past 20 years ...
The Samsung QN800A 8K TV the author uses, even on high settings, uses incrementally more power than other big screen TVs. The difference is about equal to an old incandescent lightbulb or two. Even if everyone on Earth swapped their TV for a 65" 8K TV tomorrow (lol) it would not set back 20 years of global warming.
This comment is so full of incorrect information and exaggerations that I can't believe it's one of the more upvoted comments here.