*Dec 6, 2012 6:42pm*
*Your TV Set-Top Box Never Sleeps, and It Costs You*
*By Lisa Stark*
*ABC News*
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/12/your-tv-set-top-box-never-sleeps-and-it-costs-you/
Not many of us watch television 24 hours a day --- but we might as well.
Even when people's TVs are turned off, the set-top boxes from our cable
company, telephone company or satellite provider keep on running,
gobbling energy and jacking up our electric bills. The worst offenders
are digital video recorders (DVRs), which are essentially always on.
Today the industry announced avoluntary program
<http://www.ce.org/CorporateSite/media/ce_news/FINAL-PUBLIC-VOLUNTARY-AGREEMENT-%2812-6-2012%29.pdf>to
try to rein in those power-hungry devices.
"It's really an unprecedented agreement," said Doug Johnson, Vice
President of Technology for the Consumer Electronics Association. "We
estimate that consumers are going to *save* once this agreement is fully
implemented over the next five years *$1.5 billion dollars annually*, so
it's a significant agreement in terms of its energy savings."
The move comes as federal regulators debate whether to impose national
energy standards on the box-top sets.
Also, last year, theNational Resources Defense Council
<http://abcnews.go.com/US/vampire-appliances-higher-electric-bills-energy-waste/story?id=13846388#.UMDSu8XAe5I>,
an environmental group, released a report citing the boxes for energy
waste, estimating they consume $2 billion dollars a year in electricity
when they are not in use.
NRDC Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz today told ABC News, "The industry
is taking some initial, modest first steps which we support, but they
are not going far enough." He said most consumers have no idea that "new
DVRs typically consume as much or more energy than the 42-inch TVs that
they might have connected it to."
The industry insists that today's announcement is a "significant" move.
Big cable providers, including Comcast and Time Warner, will take the
first steps. They'll send software changes to the 10 million cable boxes
they already in homes, to put them in a "light sleep" mode when they're
not in use. That could cut power use by 20 to 30 percent.
Under the agreement, cable companies will also develop and test "deep
sleep" devices to see if they are feasible. The industry also promised
that starting next year, at least 90 percent of the new boxes it buys
and gives to consumers will meet tougher EPA energy savings standards.
Fifteen companies that have signed onto the agreement: Comcast, DirecTV,
DISH Network, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Verizon, Charter, AT & T,
Cablevision, Bright House Networks and Century Link; and the
manufacturers Cisco, Motorola, EchoStar Technologies and Arris.
According to the CEA, the consumer electronics in your home today
account for about 13 percent of your energy bill. The top three
offenders: the TV, computer, and those set-top boxes.
The NRDC's Horowitz said pay-TV providers need to take a page from
today's smartphones, "which sip rather than gulp power when not in use."
He said he sees today's move as an industry attempt to head off
government regulation. He said mandatory energy standards would be "the
best way to ensure that these new boxes will be more efficient."
The CEA's Johnson disagreed, arguing that "the voluntary agreement
really represents the best way to meet the government's goal of saving
energy" by protecting "innovation, competition and consumer choice."
The industry promises to release regular reports detailing the future
energy savings generated by the new agreement, something the NRDC will
be keeping a close watch on.
For consumers, there's little they can do to stop the energy drain on
their own. The only way to "reduce the stand-by powers in the middle of
the night is to unplug (the boxes)," said Horowitz, "and that's not an
attractive option for most consumers."
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