Box study casts doubts on energy enforcement

摘要

Recommendations on the acceptable amount of energy consumed by basic digital set-top boxes were due to be presented to the European Commission this week, despite doubts over whether such limits could be enforced effectively. The "Ecostb" study, commissioned and financed by Brussels, will make recommendations only for "simple" set-top boxes - decoders without conditional-access modules or a hard-disk drive. The business models of many manufacturers of such boxes -which compete on price with very low margins - meant that enforcing new guidelines would prove challenging, said Robert Harrison, whose consultancy, Robert Harrison and Associates conducted die study alongside German firm MW Consulting. The study determined that the current average energy consumption by simple set-top boxes is 7 Watts per hour when in use and 6.1 Watts in standby. Harrison would not confirm his recommendations before submitting them to the Commission, but said around 70 per cent of decoders currently available were likely to exceed the recommended levels. "This will need good policing, especially OEM [original equipment manufacturer] products, as by the time many are identified they have already been sold - if you test 50 products in the market, within a month 40 will have gone," he said. The kind of silicon used is the most important factor in the energy consumed although software for decoding and error correction is also a major consideration.