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posted by
martyb
on Friday September 23 2016, @04:27PM
from the teaching-to-the-test-yields-a-fail dept.
from the teaching-to-the-test-yields-a-fail dept.
El Reg reports
The NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] reckons TV makers are configuring sets to perform well on government tests, while in the living room they become energy hogs.
Its specific claims are:
- The TVs perform well on the US Department of Energy-mandated energy use test--but that's based on a clip that doesn't match real-world video content. ([To El Reg,] that seems like a slip-up by the DoE);
- TVs from Samsung, LG, and Vizio are designed to disable energy-saving features if the user changes their screen settings, but there's little or no warning about this. This, the NRDC says, can as much as double the power consumption; and
- UHD TVs turn into energy hogs when they're playing high dynamic range (HDR) content, but HDR isn't included in the DoE's test (again, surely that means the DoE needs to update its tests?).
The NRDC says European testing seemed to match another observation it made: that during the DOE test loop, some TVs seemed to exhibit "inexplicable and sustained drops in energy use". It suggests that software is specifically detecting the test loop and adjusting the TV's performance to suit.
One assumes that "a clip" refers to the standard video loop used in the tests.
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TV Manufacturers Get their Own Dieselgate Over Power Consumption Tests
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2016, @06:32PM
Wouldn't it be obvious that televisions are less power efficient than promised if you tune them to be so? If you turn up the backlit LED or whatever, of course it's going to be less efficient. I'd hope you'd do so knowing full well what is going to happen. I'm worried they'll disable the ability to turn these settings off, if it becomes too onerous to comply. These "energy savings" settings can make the devices less useful in some environments where energy savings aren't the primary concern.
This doesn't just apply to televisions. Lots of devices with some seal of achievement for how power efficient they are, can be modified to be less power efficient. This includes printers, laptops, scanners, monitors, and other things I'm surely forgetting. None of them warn you, generally. A few OEM softwares I've seen now and again will warn you on laptops, but only on consumer models (that I've seen, so far anyway). Were you going to turn off sleep mode, then complain to the manufacturer you're not your getting power savings?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday September 23 2016, @06:56PM
The problem is the multiplication of modes, which provide multiple valid test points. But the most common ones should be enough to agree to test. It's not like the power draw is currently the biggest item on the marketing list (in the US)
- Off
- Standby
- analog-input HD and native resolution
- HDMI-input max-resolution
- Ethernet/Wifi streaming - Max resolution
There. You have your typical and relevant numbers. Which the customer will ignore anyway
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday September 23 2016, @07:22PM
That is the simplistic thinking responsible for this article. Switch on/off some of the advanced processing and power consumption is going to change. You want to take 24 frame movie content and have software/dsp magic make it into 240frames with motion compensation? Power consumption goes up. You want fancy tricks to increase contrast? That means more DSP magic that sucks energy. The vendor enables the tv's camera to spy on you and send marketing data, like what percentage of the time you are actually looking at the screen, how many people are in the room not looking at the screen, etc., back to the mothership? More signal processing.
In a sane world an appliance like a TV would list power consumption in the 'as shipped' configuration, the 'as displayed in the store mode' consumption, power consumption in 'max power saving' mode and finally for 'full performance mode.' Assuming there are more than 1% of customers who consider it a purchasing decision bit of information in the first place, which there probably isn't.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday September 23 2016, @09:16PM
The other solution, since companies optimize like crazy these days, is to force them to put on the box the power consumption corresponding to 80% the AC fuse size.
The obvious reaction will be to say: wait, then they'll put a smaller fuse!
Sure, but when that fuse blows up the first year in half of their product under warranty, making news and bad reviews pop everywhere, they'll have to raise it to keep alive, or reduce the power consumption.
Mission F___ing accomplished