BenQ Announces WEEE-Compliant LCD TV
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 01.16.06
Great news for television enthusiasts and couch potatoes everywhere: BenQ recently unveiled a new 32-inch LCD TV model that complies with WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronics Equipment) Directives. The WEEE directive encourages reuse, recycling and recovery of (you guessed it) consumer electronics, and became UK law this past summer (it also has teeth elsewhere in the EU). Its main aim is to reduce the amount of WEEE going to landfill (and, really, who wants more WEEE in the garbage?), by requiring all manufacturers and producers to take responsibility for what happens to the products they sell at the end of their service lives. Accompanying the WEEE Directive is the Restriction of Certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive, which restricts the use of certain toxic substances, such as lead, in printed circuit boards. What happens if you don't help keep WEEE out of the trash? The WEEE Man will haunt you, and nobody wants that. Trust us. The WEEE-compliant TV has a HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) input, a contrast ratio of 800:1, resolution of 1366×768, and a brightness of 500 nits, for anyone who likes to keep track of such statistics, and retails for US $1,339, which isn't that outrageous in the LCD TV market -- BenQ has a non-WEEE-compliant version that goes for $1,299. ::Digi Times via ::Newlaunches.com
If you aren't already, pay attention to SEDs aka Surface conductive Electron emissive Display.
Compared with comventional thin & flat displays, it will uses less energy, consume less materials and energy to make, and have qualtity equal or better than CRTs.
http://tinyurl.com/bsaz8
i wonder if it costs them exactly $40 to make it WEEE compliant or if they mark that up a bunch...knowing that us damn bleeding-hearts will cough it up.
Graham
I doubt they "mark it up a bunch" they probably even tried hard to make it cheaper. There aren't enough bleeding hearts to pay for the research costs to try to mark it up. Its sad.. that someone ALWAYS has to try to make company's look bad nomatter how hard they try.
Dig it!
http://digg.com/technology/BenQ_Announces_WEEE-Compliant_Green_LCD_TV
The WEEE directive hasn't actually been put into play here in the UK and instead has be delayed over and over again, for an interesting comment on the issue see; http://www.brass.cf.ac.uk/news/index.html