Free Republic

After weeks of being limited to takeout and delivery, struggling restaurants in Los Angeles were allowed to reopen for outdoor dining Friday with new restrictions in place. Restaurants must require employees to wear a face mask and shield, tables must be eight feet apart and seat no more than six people, and televisions are not allowed to be turned on. "Televisions or any other screens that are used to broadcast programming must be removed from the area or turned off," the order from the Los Angeles Department of Public Health says. "This provision is effective until further notice." This no-TVs...

The amount of homes that don't own a TV has at least doubled since 2009. According to the USEI survey, 2.6% of American homes didn't have a TV in 2015. That's a huge increase from the 1.3% of American homes that didn't have a television in 2009. In fact, from 1997 to 2009, the percentage remained stable at 1.3%, except for 2001, when the percentage was 1.2%. The huge surge in homes without TVs proves that companies making TV content can't ignore that viewers are turning to other screens, such as computers and mobile devices, ... The survey also shows...

On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission on Wednesday required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, and only a quarter of all TVs on the market currently meet that standard..... Industry representatives have said the standards would force manufacturers to make televisions that have poorer picture quality and fewer features than those sold elsewhere in the U.S..... Some manufacturers say implementing a power standard will cripple innovation, limit consumer choice and harm California retailers because consumers could simply buy TVs out of state...

Eight of the flat-screen TVs removed from a Minnesota sex offender treatment facility on Gov. Tim Pawlenty's orders will go to Minnesota National Guard facilities. The state Department of Administration said Wednesday that Camp Ripley, near Brainerd, will get six of the 50-inch plasma televisions that prompted Pawlenty's ire last week. The Guard's Minneapolis and Duluth airbases will also each get one. Pawlenty called for discipline for whoever authorized buying 26 TVs costing $1,500 each, plus $700 mounting brackets, for the Moose Lake sex offender facility. The Department of Human Services is investigating. The governor previously announced that 14 TVs...

The big screen, flat panel TVs that so recently hung on the walls of the Moose Lake sex offender program will soon be enjoyed by patients at veterans homes across the state. In a move designed to put an end to an embarrassing episode for a cost-conscious administration, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Friday that at least 14 of the two dozen sets will go to veterans homes in Minneapolis, Fergus Falls, Hastings and Silver Bay. Jon Skillingstad, the administrator of the veterans home in Fergus Falls, said the new televisions will be a welcome addition. "We can easily make use...

Governments should tax plasma screen televisions because of the large amount of energy they consume, according to a leading expert on climate change. Professor Paul Ekins, who studies the economics of climate change, said taxing plasma screens would reflect their "greater climate change burden". This would encourage development and take-up of more energy efficient diode screens, Professor Ekins said. He said government could label energy hungry appliances as a first step. Plasma televisions, which are 50% bigger than their cathode-ray tube equivalents, consume about four times more energy, according to the government-funded Energy Saving Trust.

CLEVELAND — Buying an antenna for a high-definition television seems as out of place as using a rotary phone to make a call. But some consumers are spending thousands of dollars on LCD or plasma TVs and hooking them up to $50 antennas that don't look much different from what grandpa had on top of his black-and-white picture tube. They're not doing it for the nostalgia. Local TV channels, broadcast in HD over-the-air, offer superior picture quality over the often-compressed signals sent by cable and satellite TV companies. And the best part? Over-the-air HD is free.

A $59 million jail featuring art and flat screen TVs in Portland, Ore., has been sitting unused for more than a year as the city can't afford to open it. The Wapato Facility took two years to construct and can house 525 inmates at a cost of $20 million per year, .... The county spent more than $600,000 on art for the jail, including a sculpture out front by the circular driveway. There are 30-foot vaulted ceilings and private showers. "I love coming to an empty $59-million jail," Giusto told the Los Angeles Times. "I get tired of telling people...

'Intel inside' comes to flat panel TVs 14:05 09 January 04 NewScientist.com news service Computer chip giant Intel is to enter the consumer electronics market for the first time with a chip specifically designed to power cheaper, better flat-panel TV displays. Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Thursday that his company’s new liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) chips would yield displays priced below $2000 and provide crisper images than rival technologies. These include the digital light processors (DLP) pioneered by Texas Instruments - those displays sell for between $3000 and $6000. Philips, Sony, Mitsubishi and Toshiba...