the blog quebecois

Times Online:

Now, in addition to their often murky powers of illumination, low-energy bulbs have been shown to bring another inconvenience in their wake - they disrupt television remote controls.

Scientists have found that the infrared waves given out by some models of the bulbs are almost exactly the same frequency as those from the hand-sets. Sometimes this means the controls fail altogether. On other occasions the channels may be spontaneously switched by the “impostor” rays of the bulbs.

[ . . . ]

Nick Flynn, 46, who runs a project management consul-tancy in Exmouth, Devon, replaced his light bulbs with CFLs two months ago.

Then he discovered the remote control for his 27in Sony flatscreen television had packed up. Flynn sent it to a repair shop, which found nothing wrong but charged him £100 for the check.

He phoned again to tell them the remote control was still not working. It was only then that the guy on the phone said, "Have you recently changed your light bulb?" said Flynn. "Now every time I need to change the channel I pull the plug on the lamp."