That set-top box drains power nonstop

"Even when TV is off, home entertainment devices may hog more electricity than a refrigerator.

"Set-top boxes are energy hogs because they generally run full tilt 24 hours a day.

"Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many U.S. homes.

"Some typical home entertainment configurations eat more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems.

"There are 160 million so-called set-top boxes in the United States, one for every two people, and that number is rising. Many homes now have one or more basic cable boxes as well as add-on DVRs, or digital video recorders, which use 40 percent more power than the set-top box.

"One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.

"These set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are generally running full tilt, or nearly so, 24 hours a day even when not in active use.

"The study, by the Natural Resources Defense Council, concluded that the boxes consumed $3 billion in electricity per year in the United States - and 66 percent of that power is wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. That is more power than the state of Maryland uses over 12 months.

"People in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use," said John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission, now with the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation. "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 currently function in the United States.

"Fixes exist, but they are not currently being mandated or deployed in the United States, critics say.

"Similar devices in some European countries, for example, can automatically go into standby mode when not in use, cutting power drawn by half. They can also go into an optional "deep sleep," which can reduce energy consumption by about 95 percent compared to when the machine is active...

This is an excellent article on a major issue affecting "Green IT," a mindset that should be infused across all ICT courses. IT accounts for 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions today. What can we do to improve this? This is an issue important to everyone in the field.

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/06/26/2408055/that-set-top-box-drains-power.html#ixzz1QUarh7bA