DVRs, Cable Boxes Top List of Home Energy Hogs 324
Hugh Pickens writes "Elisabeth Rosenthal writes that cable setup boxes and DVRs have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, causing an increase of over $10/month for a home with many devices, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator. The set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are running full tilt, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use. 'People in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,' says John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission. 'Companies say it can't be done or it's too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn't cost much, if anything.' The perpetually 'powered on' state is largely a function of design and programming choices made by electronics companies and cable and Internet providers, which are related to the way cable networks function in the United States. Similar devices in some European countries can automatically go into standby mode when not in use, cutting power drawn by half and go into an optional 'deep sleep,' which can reduce energy consumption by about 95 percent (PDF) compared with when the machine is active. Although the EPA has established Energy Star standards for set-top boxes and has plans to tighten them significantly by 2013, cable providers and box manufacturers like Cisco Systems, Samsung and Motorola currently do not feel consumer pressure to improve box efficiency."
Re:Not in use? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that kind of the point? If their drives and tuners weren't running then they couldn't record stuff while you were away. (I mean how else would it build up a buffer of the last 30 minutes of a show or record suggestions if it wasn't running.)
A scheduler running in low power mode can wake up the device (including hard drive) shortly before the scheduled recording. Depending on how long it takes the STB to get its shit together this could be a few minutes or as little as a few seconds.
Consumer Choice (Score:5, Insightful)
DVR boxes are evil (Score:3, Insightful)
- respond immediately to a button press (blink a light, actually do what I want, something else)
- or only act on the first button press if it is too busy doing something else, not all of the presses because it was tied up doing god knows what
And that's all I have to say about that.
Re:Not in use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like lazy programming.
"Hey, don't you think it would be nice to turn off the unit to save energy and turn it on before it records a show?"
"Well John, that's a nice idea, but I just can't imagine a use case where that's necessary. Besides, it's not our problem."
Re:Not in use? (Score:4, Insightful)
they go to sleep, and wake up when its time to record something.
My lovely Topfield [superfi.co.uk] box does this quite happily, sends itself into a low-ish power (8W) state most of the time when its not being actively used. When it wakes up, it runs at 25W (apparently). However, even when running it will put the drive to sleep after a while, which can be slightly annoying when you click the button to view the recordings and it takes a couple of seconds to spin it up. I can live with that.
8W in standby can be further reduced by turning off the pass-through mode though, so its still not so bad.
I think the problem is that many of the cheapo PVRs don't do this kind of thing and run, even in standby, with a large power consumption.
Name brand set top boxes? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about heating and airconditioning? (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference in energy cost between getting the oil to a power plant and delivering it to someone's house is not that great. My mother's house is heated by oil, and they get deliveries once or twice a year. The amount of oil that the delivery tanker burns is pretty small compared to the amount that it carries - well under 10%. Getting the same level of efficiency with electricity is very hard.
Oil is close to the worst case though. My house is heated by gas, which comes in via pipes. The amount of energy required to keep them pressurised is really tiny. I'm not sure how much the prices are skewed by tax, but electricity costs me about four times as much as gas, per kWh, so I'd be crazy to heat my house with electricity.
Re:Probably because it makes it more complicated. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about heating and airconditioning? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't think power, because Watts are really not the unit to be using. You should compare energy; Watt-Hours.
Let's say you have a typical refrigerator that uses ~150 watts average for 5 minutes total operation every hour. That's 150 * 5/60 = 12.5 watt-hours of energy. Your STB uses 25W on standby, which is constant. So that's 25 * 60/60 = 25 watt-hours of energy. Fully twice as much as your refrigerator.
YMMV of course but it's quite plausible a seemingly minor appliance uses more electricity over the course of a day than a major appliance. Those "Vampire Loads" can be a real killer!
=Smidge=
Re:How about heating and airconditioning? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, of course not. Of course, if you're trying to air condition your house, the energy that the set-top-box uses not only adds to your bill that way, but it also adds to your air conditioning bill due to the heat generated. Same for all the other electronic devices that are on in the house.
More simply, if people aren't actively using the electronic device, any power used is an unnecessary waste.
Also, as someone else pointed out, the cable company/satellite company doesn't care about power use, because they're not the ones paying the power bill.
Just another reason for me to cancel the cable.
Re:Probably because it makes it more complicated. (Score:4, Insightful)
The government regulation ought not to be making the boxes use less power; it should be breaking the cable and satellite companies' control over them!