Hello Everyone,

This mail is not meant to create any controversy or flaming. It is to simply highlight the FUD article that was printed in today's Mumbai Mirror under the title "Shock in the box". A PWD certified electrical engineer has stirred up a FUD against the Conditional Access System and DTH set top boxes by claiming that they consume high amount of power. The vested interests are trying their level best to scare people from migrating to CAS which will empower them with the freedom of choice. This engineer goes about with a tong tester and has measured a current of 500 mA in his set top box while another reader claims to have measured 1 A. This translates to 110 Watts and 220 Watts. The paper has even produced photographs of the engineer using the tong tester. They claim that this will increase electricity bills by 150/- per month.

The first stupidity of this engineer is that he is using a tong tester to measure currents in mA. Tong testers are meant to measure high currents in thick power cables that cannot be disturbed, not domestic appliances. For normal current measurements, an ammeter is connected in series with the power cable and the unit is powered on to measure the current flow. I measured my DTH box's current and it was only 35 mA which means a power of 7.7 watts at 220 volts. I have been using DTH since 2 years and never had any increase in power bills.

So those who want to switch over to CAS or DTH in Mumbai need not worry about the power consumption. Signal processing does not consume too much power.

Regards,

Rony.

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