So why not specify exactly how many devices your home theater consists of?

I did: see the links above my chart - the JPG and PDF files have a little more detail. (I tried, but couldn’t make this information easily fit on a web page without horizontal scrolling, so made the extended info available as a separate link.) My system consists of a TV (a CRT), 2 DVD Players, and a Nintendo N64. No other components (no satellite/cable box or powered speakers/sub, for example). When I measured the wattage, the TV was on and one DVD player was playing. The other DVD player was on, but not playing. The N64 was turned on.

My idea of “home theater” is pretty minimal.

I would suspect a faulty Kill-O-Watt power consumption reading. (Maybe it’s defective?)

Perhaps, but based on the results from everything else I tested, I would argue this is not the case.

In order for your readers to draw any applicability to their own situation, it would help to specify what you mean by home theater. For example, are you talking about one of those home theater packages that come with the tiny satellite speakers or are you referring to 4 tower-style speakers for a pro-logic system, or are you talking about a self-assembled 5.1 or 7.1 system (not to be confused with the all-in-one packages with the mini speakers)? You see, “Home theater” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people — from a $199 JVC or Sony to a genuine high current amp built by Harman/Kardon, McIntosh or similar. Moreover, some people may own a separate VCR, DVD player and CD changer, whereas another person might have an all-in-one VCR/DVD/CD/Recorder. That’s one digital LCD vs. three or four separate ones. Others have the DVD player built into the TV set. The variations are so innumerable that it is hard to define “average” in this instance. So why not specify exactly how many devices your home theater consists of?

Yes, this is true, in most cases. But as the detail above shows, the amount of power draw in most all cases is very, very small.

Does this still apply if the switch on the wall socket is turned off as well?

It depends on what that wall switch does. If that wall switch cuts all power to a wall outlet, then anything plugged into that outlet when the switch is off will draw no current and add nothing to your electric bill.

We now know that even though we turn off the appliances, they are still drawing some electricity if plug in.

Does this still apply if the switch on the wall socket is turned off as well?

Andy Kaiser here, the author of this article.

If so, how is it possible that it draws zero watts when turned off (i.e. not cooking)?

Because the power requirements were below the ability of the Kill-O-Watt to measure. Being in a low milliwatt range, this means the cost we’re measuring is fractions of a penny per day. I thought that was close enough to zero cost to just record it as zero.

How long was each device plugged into the Kill-O-Watt?

No more than a couple minutes for most of the devices. The Kill-O-Watt has the cool feature where, if you leave a device plugged into it for a length of time, it’ll tell you how much money that device is costing you. Or, you just use the Kill-O-Watt to get the wattage used, and do the math yourself. Same results, but faster. That’s what I did.

I find it hard to believe that your whole entertainment center including your TV draws only 85watts.

So did I. It’s good that you caught this - I’m surprised no one else did. I remember thinking that it would be a lot higher - certainly in the several hundred watt range. But it wasn’t. And I even tried to bump up the wattage: I cranked the volume. I played DVDs. Turned on the Nintendo …And I got 85 watts. My box fan uses more wattage when turned on “high”. Weird, but true.

If you still find it hard to believe, that’s okay: I designed this test so you don’t have to believe me - you can perform the same measurements yourself and get very similar results. That’s one goal of a good scientific test, right? Make it repeatable and testable by unrelated parties. I believe I’ve done that.

Lets educate smartly with facts not with TV talk show half truths.

I’m with you there.

An important outcome of these types of discussions is to get people thinking about issues that they never considered before. Especially with environmental issues that may take changing peoples living habits to have a positive effect. But why oh why do they have to talk bungus like unplugging the toaster (etc) will save tons of electricity? Maybe it makes more sense to talk about why the industry doesn’t lower the consumption on standby items like TVs, cable boxes, DVDs which are the worst offenders generally. Or why so many office buildings leave all the lights on over night. Lets educate smartly with facts not with TV talk show half truths.

Reference study.
http://standby.lbl.gov/data.html

Yes, Oprah’s show specifically claimed small appliances are the cause for this “vampire power”.

While I’m not even sure the 40% would be achieved by big appliances, that was not the focus of my experiment.

However, the 40% could be true if we’re calculating:
(total power usage of all appliances while plugged in and turned off) / (total power usage).

Of course, this isn’t what Oprah said and she is incredibly wrong in her claim.

Then the changing of light bulbs, it does initially cost a hell of a lot of money, but these bulbs often come with a ten year guarantee and if you look at the saving over a ten year period, it adds up nicely; $1872 to be precise. Then if you do this calculation on a bigger scale again it adds up to $93 600 000 000 saved over the ten year period. 9 360 000 000KWH, in my book, is a lot of coal burning saved!