Facial recognition is getting more and more popular in electronic devices. For example, many digital cameras can now recognize faces in a scene, and some will even recognize a smile and snap a picture automatically when they see one.

Now facial recognition is being put to good use in TVs to save big money on electricity. This works because a large LCD or plasma HDTV might use 500 watts of electricity. This video shows a plasma screen’s power consumption in real time (note how it changes based on the image on the screen):

If electricity costs 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, 500 watts means a nickle per hour. If the TV is on 10 hours a day, that’s $162 per year.

What if you could make a TV that had facial recognition, so that if no one was sitting in front of the TV, or the person sitting in front of it was not actually looking at the TV, the display would go dark and stop sucking power? You would have this:

Save energy – just look away now

One particular TV set is fitted with a small camera and equipped with facial recognition software.

It is looking for a viewer’s full face looking at the screen.

If the viewer looks away from the screen for a couple of seconds the image slowly fades out but the audio continues to play.

If they turn back to the screen, the image immediately returns.

Even better would be to combine facial recognition with a lower power TV technology. The video shows a laser TV that uses only 100 watts. Or perhaps the TMOS screen coming out next year.

[[[Jump to previous invention - TMOS is a completely new TV technology]]]