TVs That Voice Can Wake Use More Energy, NRDC Finds
TVs that users can power on by voice can use many times more energy while resting, reported the Natural Resources Defense Council. Sony, Vizio and Westinghouse TVs that can be awakened and controlled via voice commands had standby power levels…
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above 20 watts in tests with smart speakers, NRDC found. TVs from LG, Samsung and TCL that users could control, not wake, via voice had standby levels under 1 watt. The higher-energy-using sets that had updates after the fall tests used less power in standby, the green advocate found. LG Electronics Senior Vice President John Taylor emailed us: “NRDC and LG Electronics are both looking out for energy-conscious consumers.” He said that underscores NRDC’s tests showed “very low standby power levels -- approximately 1 Watt.” The combined feature of waking and controlling a TV by voice is in early stages, but NRDC expects it to become more prevalent in 2019 models due on the market this half. “If this trend continues and manufacturers fail to optimize their televisions for low standby power levels when linked to smart speakers, we could see large increases in national energy consumption,” it said. The extra electricity use would add $1.3 billion-$2.5 billion to U.S. household electric bills, it said. The group cited Amazon’s Fire TV dongle as a low-standby power engineering solution that can act as a network proxy waking the TV from low-power sleep via HDMI-CEC. Acknowledging increased cost that would mean for TV makers, NRDC hopes manufacturers add the capability on a chip “for little cost in the system as smart speaker use gains market penetration.” Amazon provides low-power reference designs manufacturers can leverage to develop Alexa-enabled products with low standby power, and other voice assistant developers “may provide low-power reference designs as well,” said NRDC: “The ball is in the court of the TV manufacturers.” Sony and Vizio didn’t comment. A Westinghouse spokesperson emailed that the WA50UFA1001, which used the Amazon Fire operating system, was an "old model developed in 2016/17 that is no longer being produced." Westinghouse's newer products have "improved dramatically" on power consumption in standby mode from when the Fire TV was developed, she said. Also Monday, a cable study showed that industry making progress on green goals (see 1908120051). Tuesday, another report showed set-top box progress on similar aspirations (see 1908130030).