Comment # 4 on bug 960474 from Egbert Eich

(In reply to David Comeau from comment #2)
> Well, if you had read what I had said, you would have realized that I had
> said it blanked out as well when in init3. I wasn't using any video player

I did - despite your rather lengthy write-up. I figured the problem you were
concerned was the screen blanking during video playback - which is indeed
annoying. I was not aware that you didn't know about screen power saving. But
even if you didn't, you could have come aware of it through my comment.

> in that init level. So, it's not the media player in any way. And I don't
> know how much more concise I could be. True, I didn't mention which desktop
> (KDE4), but the problem doesn't only happen when I'm in the desktop (init5)
> as has been clearly mentioned.

As Martin mentioned, screen blanking is a general feature to save power when
the machine is not used (ie by mouse or keyboard input). In the days of CRTs
screen blanking was also used to preserve the phosphor of the screen. This is
why the text console also blanks after a while.