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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the teaching-to-the-test-yields-a-fail dept.

El Reg reports [theregister.co.uk]

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 [nrdc.org] 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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