[Special Award: Green IT Technologies]
Hitachi, Ltd. - Various energy-saving technologies for LCD displays

Consumers overwhelmingly have said they want greener products that consume less power without compromising quality or features. Hitachi has developed a number of technologies that seek to balance these sometimes conflicting demands.

The company’s Looking Away TV technology will send at TV into a sleep mode that cuts active power consumption from 200 or more watts to just ten. When consumers get up from the couch or fall asleep, their TV will allow them to curb energy passively.

Hitachi also showed off a 32-inch LCD TV that only consumed 32 watts of power. The TV contains two hot cathode fluorescent lights. Commercial TVs mostly contain cold cathodes. A few manufacturers have put out hot cathode bulb TVs, but have to use ten or so bulbs. With a new bulb developed in its lab and some clever engineering, Hitachi’s prototype only needs two bulbs.

Additionally, Hitachi is working on and LED-based LCD that can dim the LEDs when dark images are on the screen, rather than blocking the light with filters, as well as a TV with an integrated energy efficient hard drive.

For the business world, the company has a plasma TV with a digital pen that can replace bulliten boards and large-scale sheets of paper, thereby saving resources.

While these technologies are only in development, they seem promising and likely will one day come to market.

Michael Kanellos