{"id":1936,"date":"2011-09-30T00:54:16","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T04:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1936"},"modified":"2011-09-30T01:09:33","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T05:09:33","slug":"little-boxes-big-waste-of-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1936","title":{"rendered":"Little Boxes, Big Waste of Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Elizabeth Rosenthal, NEW YORK TIMES, June 25, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

\"dreamstime_xs_7646415\"<\/a> Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 recent study, by the Natural Resources D<\/a>efense Council<\/a>, concluded that the boxes consumed $3 billion in electricity per year in the United States \u2014 and that 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,\u201d said John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission who is now with the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation. \u201cCompanies say it can\u2019t be done or it\u2019s too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn\u2019t cost much, if anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The perpetually \u201cpowered on\u201d 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. Fixes exist, but they are not currently being mandated or deployed in the United States, critics say.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cdeep sleep,\u201d which can reduce energy consumption by about 95 percent compared with when the machine is active.<\/p>\n

One British company, Pace<\/a>, sells such boxes to American providers, who do not take advantage of the reduced energy options because of worries that the lowest energy states could disrupt service. Cable companies say customers will not tolerate the time it takes to reboot the system once the system has been shut down or put to sleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue of having more efficient equipment is of interest to us,\u201d said Justin Venech, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. But, he added, \u201cwhen we purchase the equipment, functionality and cost are the primary considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n

But energy efficiency experts say that technical fixes could eliminate or minimize the waiting time and inconvenience, some at little expense. Low-energy European systems reboot from deep sleep in one to two minutes. [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like a clock that’s just giving you the time of night, but actually it’s a vampire sucking $3 BILLION dollars as well as tons of electricity and fuel while you’re sleeping or at work. Your cable box is more costly than you ever dreamed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,1],"tags":[1413,1415,1416,735,1412],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1936"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2171,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions\/2171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}