Major Cable Operators Target Energy Star 3.0 Devices; NCTA Hopes to Avoid Rules

The plan’s goal is to reduce the cost of semiconductors and other components, to bring down the price that the top cable operators must pay for devices meeting the U.S. standard, NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg said. Energy Star 3.0 took effect in September, he noted. The hope is that once costs come down because many more 3.0 set-tops are produced, other operators will be able to take advantage of the less expensive devices, he said. Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Cox Communications, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, with a total of about 49 million video subscribers, have initially committed to the goal, NCTA executives said. AT&T and Verizon said they're among other multichannel video programming distributors also reducing energy usage.

The CableLabs Energy Lab facility and the cable industry’s efforts toward deploying Energy Star 3.0 devices will be cited in conversations with energy regulators, Goldberg said. NCTA will keep trying to show that set-tops shouldn’t be considered covered products under the standard, after the Department of Energy tentatively found they should be covered. “We're certainly going to discuss doing the new initiative with DOE,” Goldberg said. “We're going to show them that based on this trajectory” of the 90 percent by 2013 plan, he continued, versus “the usual length of time for a rulemaking proceeding to go from start to finish,” the association hopes to “be on the right track well before any rule could be implemented."

The procurement plan is limited to the biggest cable operators for now, “because you need to hope to get the scale that the top-six operators can give you to bring the cost of these components and boxes down,” Goldberg said. “And then we would hope that all cable operators that use boxes like this can” in turn get the benefits, he continued: “We hope that will be the natural consequence of this.” The CableLabs Energy Lab may develop more than just set-tops that use less energy, Goldberg said: The goal is for the initiative to develop other products and services, including some of the infrastructure used by operators.

Chipmakers probably will help back the cable plan, and “will naturally respond” to it with products, said CEA Senior Vice President Brian Markwalter. Semiconductor companies are “always pursuing power and efficiency improvements in chips,” as “it’s always cheaper and more reliable to produce” those that consume less energy, he said. Better still are devices other than set-tops that can get subscription video and use less energy than the boxes, such as tablets, Markwalter said. “It would be better to have one set-top box” used per household “or simpler set-top box architecture, to do the simplest set-top box infrastructure you can,” he said. “To the extent that cable is also trying to accommodate tablets and other streaming technology, those things are already efficient.” Of the CableLabs Energy Lab, “it’s great that they are turning it into a specific project, which means it will get some horsepower behind it,” he said.

The EPA called the NCTA initiative an “exciting commitment to deliver greater efficiency to the millions of Americans who rely on cable set-top boxes.” The initiative’s focus on deployment of boxes that drops to a “true low power sleep mode when not in use offers particular promise for consumer and environmental savings,” Katharine Kaplan, EPA lead for Energy Star product development, said in a written statement. “EPA’s ENERGY STAR program will look forward to supporting this effort in the the ENERGY STAR program’s ongoing push for more energy efficient set top boxes of all types.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who in September wrote MVPDs asking them to develop more energy efficient devices, is “pleased,” she said in a statement provided by NCTA. “I plan to monitor the progress of this initiative closely. Moving toward cable boxes with ‘light-sleep’ and ‘deep-sleep’ technology is an important victory for American consumers who stand to save substantially on their utility bills."

CableLabs Energy Lab will be fully up and running by Q1, and already the “vast majority” of set-tops bought by operators are qualified under earlier versions of Energy Star, NCTA and CableLabs said. It targets “utilization of ENERGY STAR 3.0-qualified high-definition DVRs that consume less than half of the energy but provide more processing power and home-networking capabilities than the 40+ Watt HD DVRs introduced ten years ago,” the groups said. “In cable markets that have converted to all digital systems, operators are providing customers with small digital transport adapters (DTAs) that use less than four Watts.” New services are being introduced to decrease the home’s “overall energy profile such as: digital-only tuners; home networking and whole-home DVR; network- and cloud-based delivery that allows the processing and storage power of the network to be shared across many consumers; and video services delivered via Internet Protocol (IP) directly to tablets and gaming stations without the need for a set-top,” they said (http://xrl.us/bmiysi).

Verizon is among MVPDs “working towards alternative methods for delivering video that will reduce the number of traditional set-top boxes” a typical household needs, “if not eliminate them altogether,” a spokesman said. “Our work is already paying off.” The telco-TV company was the first “significant video provider to offer whole-home DVR service,” he said. Such DVRs allow a set-top to access what’s been recorded on a DVR elsewhere in a home, which “reduces the need for subscribers to employ multiple DVRs” that have “relatively higher energy usage” levels, the spokesman said. He said the telco introduced last year “green” set-tops using 30 percent less energy than traditional ones (http://xrl.us/bmiysr).

"Energy efficiency is of special importance to AT&T,” a spokeswoman said. “Unlike most other video service providers, currently our full line of set-top boxes is Energy Star qualified,” which has been the case since the telco began selling its U-verse pay-TV service, she added.

EchoStar, which makes most of sister company Dish Network’s set-top equipment, is a member of Energy Star and CableLabs, a spokesman for the DBS company said. DirecTV and the American Cable Association had no comment.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is “pleased to see that the cable industry is finally acknowledging that they have a problem and are beginning to take the right steps to try to address it,” said Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz. “Antiquated designs” mean existing cable and satellite set-tops consume a “whopping” $2 billion per year and six power plants worth of electricity when not in use, he said. “Hitting the off button on many of the boxes merely dims the clock and the device continues to consume near full levels of power 24/7.” The industry needs to adopt some of the “smarts” already in place in smartphones and tablets which use “a trickle of power when in standby mode and boot back up instantly,” Horowitz said. The cable industry must “pick up the pace and accelerate their efforts,” he said. “You can bet the industry would be all over this if they had to pay for all the wasted electricity their installed boxes cause instead of the consumer.” Some current DVRs use more electricity over the course of a year than the big-screen TVs they're connected to, Horowitz said.

The NCTA initiative “starts the industry down the road of reduced energy use in these products,” and “it will be crucial for this effort to sustain itself over many years,” said the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership. “For far too long, efficiency has taken a back seat in the development of more functional cable boxes, with consumers paying an untold price,” said David Lis, NEEP appliance standards project manager. “We are particularly glad to see the initiative’s emphasis on low energy standby modes reducing cable boxes energy use when the units are delivering no service to the consumer.” If the industry wants to demonstrate “real leadership” in the area of energy efficiency, he said the NEEP encourages the six cable operators “to aim for a significant market penetration of Energy Star 4.0 units.” Those standards are projected to be effective in July 2013.