After reading in the news that California plans to regulate the power consumption of flat screen TVs, I did a little checking on my setup. My TV, a Sony 32″ LCD, consumes 156W. My DVD player, a fairly simple Sony model, takes a miserly 9W. The power hog is my home theatre receiver. This Yamaha 5.1 channel unit consumes 530W in 5 channel, 230W if only stereo is used! And the subwoofer is powered, drawing an additional 40W. This is likely the maximum power consumption, when the volume is cranked way up. But even at moderate listening levels, the unit gives off a lot of heat. I think the DSPs on board that operate on the compressed digital audio are to blame. The idea of consuming half a kilowatt just to listen to simple movie dialogue is appalling.