I’m tempted to buy one. I had never heard of it before; it was recommended by Amazon when I was purchasing new automatic light timer switches.
I travel a lot, and crime is pretty bad around here (I’ve had two break-ins and numerous attempts).
Why can’t you just turn on the regular TV? Is this for people who don’t have one? Or who don’t want to run up the electric bill?
It says it uses far less electricity. Also, if I’m out of town, I would need it to be automatic. If I were just out for the evening, I’d never be able to leave the tv running.
One problem I see with this…if you live in a one story house, a potential burglar probably would be able to see it if he went up close to the window. That’s a big drawback.
I would use an auto timer on a regular TV.
This thing looks good on paper, but, in real life, I think a burglar would just steal the cool looking light machine.
Best wishes,
hh
An auto timer won’t turn on the TV, it’ll just turn on the electricity to the TV. When my power goes out when I’m watching TV, the TV doesn’t turn back on when the power returns.
Given that, in my last house, I had five break in attempts while I was there and they knew it, I rather think something like this would be useless in some neighborhoods.
What does that mean, turn on the electricity to the TV? How does the electricity turn it on without turning on the TV?
Where was that, so I can cross it off my list? 
Exactly what it says. The fact that there is power to the TV doesn’t mean that the TV is on, and depending on the nature of the on-off switch the TV may not come back on (in the sense of picture and sound coming on) when the power comes back. If you can turn on the TV with the remote control then the on-off switch is electronic, not like a light switch.
You can check:
• Turn your TV on.
• Unplug it (same effect as having a timer cut the power before it gets to your TV).
• Plug it back in again.
Did the TV come on? I’d bet not.
So are you saying that the TV is “on” even when it’s off if there’s electricity there?
On my television in the bedroom, I can set the TV to go on and off whenever I want - for instance, 11:00 PM to 1:30 AM.
I currently use the TV as an alarm clock - on at 7:45 and off at 8:15 AM.
Yes, there’s a draw of electricity which allows the TV to detect your remote control signals or when you press the actual power button.
All a timer would do is turn that draw on and off. It wouldn’t activate the actual signal that turns on the television. A timer would work for an old, old television where you actually pulled the knob or something to turn it on but anything made since the 1980’s or so probably wouldn’t work. A modern television certainly wouldn’t.
There has to be some level of “on” for a TV to sense and respond to a remote control. Actually, I think that is true of anything that has a remote. If you were to put a meter on the powercord running to your TV, it would sense a power usage, even where there isn’t a picture showing.
Now it’s not much. I was just looking at some TVs and the “power saver” setting (read as OFF) takes between .17 and .30W.
Odd. As far as I can recall, with most tv’s I’ve ever owned, up to and including my current LCD tv, it would come all the way on if you plugged it in (assuming it was on when you pulled the plug). My cable box has an AC passthru which the TV is plugged into, so I actually never turn the tv off directly, just the cable box. So, turn cable box off -> tv off, cable box on -> tv on, with picture and everything. Shrug.
Re: the OP, I’m also dubious as to whether it would work. If it did, people would leave their tv’s on all the time, regardless of how much electricity that used – better than getting burgled, right? Yet I’ve never heard of anyone ever doing that.
I rarely even lock my doors.