COMMENT: Claims that current plasma TV models would be banned from sale in Australia as early as October next year are pure political garbage and will not happen.
A little known consulting firm Digital CEnergy which has floated the idea to the Federal Government’s Greenhouse Office appears to be totally out of sync with the CE industry.
The idea to ban LCD and Plasma TVs by October next year shows that the Federal Government is dealing with an organisation that is so far out of touch with reality that one has to question the sanity of the whole proposal.
Consumer sentiment on the issue is already being expressed as one reader of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: “This is the same crap that always rises its head in this ‘democratic’ country. Get a life; you cannot regulate serious matters in Australia so how on earth do you propose to regulate a minor issue like this?
“If I want to purchase a device that consumes more or less, petrol, oil, gas, electricity, water, air or whatever – that is my choice because I can it is a free world!
“The author and proposer of such ‘laws’ are just another waste of time, space and just about as much use as used bog roll!” said the reader.
Another reader wrote: “Seems to me like the government and industry body don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve told everyone that analog TV will no longer exist and everyone has to switch to digital TVs yet the digital TVs they’re selling to us won’t be good enough due to the excess power consumption.”
The proposal is mad and not even remotely workable. Why not ban public buses that churn out damaging emissions or motor cars altogether that pollute the atmosphere? The reason is that it is not a realistic proposition.
Big TV vendors like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and LG as well as plasma vendors like Pioneer and Hitachi are in most cases responsible corporate organisations who right now are investing millions into research and development of new environmentally-friendly CE devices such as TVs, washing machines, dryers and home theatre technology.
They realise that in the future consumers will demand and buy devices that use less power because State government and utility organisations are set to double the price of electricity that power devices.
And as such the CE companies that manufacture the TVs are smart enough to recognise that they have to take action to reduce power consumption. For example, Pioneer has reduced power use in its plasma TVs by 39 per cent since the first models were introduced into Australia. However Digital CEnergy has failed to recognise this.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the consulting firm also recommends a second tier of even tougher restrictions that would then ban almost all current LCD models from the market in April 2011.
Digital CEnergy presented its recommendations last week to the Federal Government who are renowned for taking ages to make a decision — particularly one that that will impact millions of consumers who are set to be forced by the Federal Government to upgrade their TVs to digital during the next two years.
So to get a decision to mandatorily ban LCD and Plasma TV’s have no validity or chance of being implanted into legislation to take effect.
In addition Australia is seen as a tiny speck on the bum of a massive manufacturing machine that is churning out millions of TVs every day for global market and to re-tool production lines and redesign a TV system just because some greenies in Australia have demanded a mandatory ban is not going to happen quickly.
Ironically Digital CEnergy is so invisible that they cannot be found in the phone book or via a search of Google.
Maybe the whole thing is a hoax anyway.
