Friday, November 18, 2011

"Vampire" update


Bela Lugosi as Dracula

For Halloween, we wrote about stand-by or "vampire" energy-consuming devices that cost American consumers an average of $10B annually.  You might be pleased to learn of this positive development on that front.

WASHINGTON, D.C. and LOUISVILLE, CO – The U.S. cable industry today announced a new initiative dedicated to improving the energy efficiency of consumer set-top boxes and other devices and developing advanced cable-enabled services designed to promote innovative consumer energy conservation measures. A key element of the initiative is the “CableLabs® – Energy Lab,” a new facility within the cable industry’s R&D consortium that will concentrate exclusively on improving energy efficiency, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and CableLabs® announced today.

The energy initiative will promote the development, testing, and deployment of technologies that will enable cable subscribers to reduce and manage energy consumption in the home, including establishing new requirements for both cable video devices and network support systems. Among other things, these specifications will enable the manufacturing of devices that have “sleep” capabilities to reduce power consumption when subscribers are not actively watching television. After successful field testing of set-top boxes with next generation power management semiconductors, cable operators will begin promoting the deployment of these devices as part of their ongoing efforts to provide functional, reliable and energy efficient services.

The resulting increased energy efficiency for new model set-top boxes will improve on the strides in recent years by cable operators to utilize devices with dramatically lower energy consumption than previous generations of equipment. In addition, cable operators providing service to approximately 85 percent of U.S. cable customers have committed to ensure that by the end of 2013 at least 90 percent of all new set-top boxes they purchase and deploy will be ENERGY STAR 3.0 devices....

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