Industry Hopes Coming EPA Set-top Energy Efficiency Specs Account for Newer Products

The boxes are unlikely to be deployed in large quantities to TV subscribers until 2016, because chips that can partly shut down need to first be developed and tested in the field, CE and MVPD executives said. They said their companies are deploying whole-home networking products, often using a gateway unit that can have broadband, video and phone connections, networking outputs, multiple tuners and a DVR and uses more power than a single set-top. Reduction in the total energy used in a household comes with thin-client devices used with every subscription-video-connected TV in a home that consume less energy than traditional set-tops.

Gateway/thin-client arrays can reduce power used in a home’s set-tops by 60 percent, said Evan Groat, senior product management director at Google’s Motorola Mobility. “You're taking a lot of the shared functions that you had in the set-top box before” and “sharing them across the home network,” he said. “A lot” of operators of various sizes have a “significant interest” in moving from set-tops at every set connected to a pay-TV service to thin clients, Groat said. “There are a lot of advantages from power savings.” Executive Director Andrew deLaski of the Appliance Awareness Standards Project sees the “trend toward whole-home solutions” as a good one “that should be encouraged to get better energy efficiency,” he said: “The industry has been pretty responsive to developing new technologies” that let subscription video be seen in residences on devices other than set-tops and/or is stored remotely in the cloud.

MVPDs and the companies selling CE products to them expect a continued rollout of whole-home products for pay-TV subscribers in coming years. They said some smaller operators aggressively embrace the products, as bigger providers start to de-emphasize continuing to deploy large bases of installed, traditional set-tops in favor of letting subscribers also use their own devices like tablets to get Internet Protocol video. “There is an inevitable migration happening toward IP,” said Products and Services Group President Bruce McClelland of Arris. Such products “bridge together the IP pipe” and traditional quadrature amplitude modulation cable networks, Groat said. “There’s a lot of vendor development going on” around whole-home products, said cable lawyer Paul Glist of Davis Wright, representing NCTA. “Multi-service, multi-function gateways are obviously of interest to all of these service providers, as a way of producing multi-room solutions.”

The industry concern is that, unless coming EPA specifications change before taking effect, MVPDs that are Energy Star partners could risk losing that seal of approval if they deploy gateways in addition to light-sleep set-tops, executives said. They said they want the coming version 4 Energy Star specs to account for such whole-home devices, and not just set-tops that are the subject of the existing, not-yet-effective spec. The current v3 “didn’t anticipate the quick rise of these client-server architectures,” said DirecTV Engineering Director Stephen Dulac. The company wants “adequate capability” for multi-room equipment “to allow these very sophisticated, very capable” devices like the DBS provider’s Genie system, he said. DirecTV has told the EPA that in 2016 the company might be able to put power-scaling in Genie thin clients, he said.

Power scaling, which will be included in the coming generation of deep-sleep boxes, is when chips can partly shut down. It’s not been used in set-tops, “but now we're catching up,” said Chief Technology Officer Ralph Brown of CableLabs, which is working with cable operators, chipmakers like Broadcom, Entropic, Intel and STMicroelectonics and other companies on a deep-sleep spec. That work is wrapping up, as cable operators planned, Brown said. The next two years, before field trials of deep-sleep boxes begin at the six largest U.S. cable operators, “are really about that development cycle” of the silicon in chips coming to include power scaling, and updating software and hardware for it, Brown said.

About 10 million light-sleep boxes are in cable subscriber households, Brown said: “From here on out, all the boxes will have that capability” among those with DVRs. As consumer demand for DVRs is rising, multi-room products render “unnecessary” the need “for multiple DVRs in the home,” Brown said. “That is the trend.” CE device manufacturers, chip makers, software makers and other MVPD suppliers need to “collaborate” on energy efficiency, said Groat: There’s “a commitment by industry to work together on both the hardware side of the equation and software."

EPA Delay

The EPA delay setting an effective date for v4 left some executives optimistic the agency will take the additional time to change the specs. The EPA has halted its previous plan to have v4 take effect in July 2013. The specs would require auto-power down products to enter that mode within 4 hours of inactivity, to be certified as Energy Star v4 compliant (http://xrl.us/bn6bvr). “EPA continues to work with stakeholders to finalize the Energy Star Version 4.1 Set-top Box specification, which may take effect late 2013,” the agency said in response to our questions. “If every set-top box in the U.S. met the Energy Star requirements, consumer energy cost savings would grow to about $3 billion per year.” That would reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of emissions from about 3 million cars, the agency continued.

Energy Star “supports efforts that improve products’ efficiency, benefit consumers and better protect the environment,” the EPA said. As more “functionality” goes into a “centralized multi-room box” and less in thin clients, there’s “concern that the multi-room allowance may be insufficient for products to qualify,” wrote Katharine Kaplan, EPA team lead for Energy Star product development, in a March letter to stakeholders (http://xrl.us/bn6b3a).

MVPD efficiency could only be bolstered by v4 release, so providers have specs to base deployment plans on, said deLaski. “We think it’s final and it will be published relatively soon,” he said. “They'll be some tweaks” before the specs take effect, he said. “We would like to see them get EnergyStar 4.0 on the streets,” so MVPDs can decide whether to adopt it, deLaski said of the EPA. “You'll see some pay-TV providers begin to procure those boxes fairly quickly,” since there are set-tops that comply with the draft version, he said. Each successive version of EnergyStar specs is about 30 percent more energy efficient than the last, deLaski and industry executives estimated. Some cable operators have been buying v3 boxes for a while, yet aren’t EnergyStar partners, deLaski said. AT&T, both U.S. DBS providers, Suddenlink, Chattanooga, Tenn.-owned EPB and Verizon are EnergyStar partners, EPA said (http://xrl.us/bn63g2).

More cable operators aren’t certified yet to buy v3 set-tops because the companies would risk losing certification if a successive version has problems that prevent the operator from deploying products meeting it, said Glist. Losing that status is “not very pleasant,” he said. More operators didn’t “jump into the EnergyStar ring” because some updates to set-tops are downloaded from cable networks to boxes, which is “sometimes challenging” when the devices have labeling requirements, Glist said. NCTA has asked (http://xrl.us/bn63hr) EPA to encourage operators to “take the bull by the horns” in deploying more gateways by saying the devices aren’t subject to v4, so operators can “continue developing them,” Glist said. Cox Communications, among NCTA members in the voluntary agreement, sees it as “an important step that shows that our industry is serious about energy efficiency and conservation,” a spokesman said. He said the initiative lets the operator “drive additional energy conservation and savings over the next few years beyond those we plan to achieve through Cox Conserves,” an efficiency program (http://xrl.us/bn63h7).

EchoStar hopes EPA will “give us a better opportunity for the main DVR box, since it does have to be very capable” with multiple tuners to get multiple programming streams, said engineer Gary Langille. EchoStar supplies sister company Dish Network and other MVPDs with video devices. “We're hoping to work with them to create allowances” for such products that are “fair,” Langille said of EPA. The “client-server setup” has “consolidated most of the more power-consuming functions into a central location,” he said. EnergyStar v3 wasn’t designed to support such a “pretty high-performing central server product,” and moving customers to use them “saves a tremendous amount of energy per household,” he said. EchoStar’s energy-efficient Hopper gateway product and Joey thin-client devices (http://xrl.us/bn63p4) are a prelude to power scaling, he said. VA signatory Verizon is pursuing the goals of the pact “in a manner that balances the objectives of both the voluntary agreement and the interests and needs and expectations of all of our customers,” a spokesman said.

DOE Rulemaking to Come

The Department of Energy still plans to release a rulemaking notice on standards for set-top box energy efficiency (CD Nov 5 p9), on which it’s “proceeding ... through our usual processes,” DOE said. The agency had again taken up such plans when the CE and MVPD industries on one side, and deLaski and Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz representing nonprofits backing standards, couldn’t agree on a voluntary path when operators wouldn’t commit to buying not-yet-deployed deep-sleep boxes (CD Nov 2 p8). Both sides in the scuttled talks said they expect DOE to first issue a rulemaking notice on test methods for set-top power consumption, and then pursue the standards rulemaking. The two rulemakings may “move forward on parallel tracks, but separately,” said deLaski. A testing rule could be finalized next year, with efficiency standards in 2014, he said.

To NCTA, “standards may not even be necessary” because of cable’s own efforts, said General Counsel Neal Goldberg. The VA needs to name an independent administrator and steering committee members and come up with bylaws and non-disclosure agreements, he said. “We're going to be reaching out to non-signatory stakeholders as soon as possible after we get organized,” Goldberg said of inviting nonprofits and regulators to take part. “Part of our mission is to make sure we are going in the same direction.” CEA hopes the California Energy Commission, DOE and EPA “will give this agreement a very careful look,” Vice President of Technology Policy Doug Johnson said. “The agreement contemplates ongoing dialogue” with such regulators and energy efficiency advocates, he said.

Advocates seek more details. They want firm commitments to deploy deep-sleep set-tops and to know how much energy the devices will use. The VA makes “no mention of a deployment date or targeted power level” for deep-sleep boxes, said Horowitz. He wants to know how many watts those set-tops will use when in deep sleep, and what portion of MVPD purchases of new boxes they'll comprise once the technology is developed. “The details really matter,” Horowitz said. “They've made some very solid commitments for the next one to two years” of the VA, said deLaski. In the “out years” in 2015-2017, “those commitments get softer and vaguer,” he said. DeLaski would like to see VA participants list energy consumption of each device, although the pact foresees each provider publicly reporting information company-wide, he said: “Hopefully there will be very granular information coming from the VA,” so the data is more useful to consumers.

There could be a “very slight” increase in the cost of set tops capable of deep sleep versus current boxes, deLaski said. MVPDs could widely deploy those boxes, which use 40 percent less energy than v4 set-tops, starting in 2016 or 2017, he said. Standards provide “a level of industrywide efficiency,” as device makers say to MVPDs, “’tell us what to build, and we'll build it,'” deLaski said. Arris, Cisco, EchoStar and Motorola Mobility are the MVPD suppliers part of the VA. Cisco “is actively engaged in support of the Voluntary Agreement and the needs of its customers,” a spokeswoman said by email.

"Practically every customer” of Arris is interested in energy efficient devices with “fast wakeup capabilities,” so pay-TV subscribers don’t have to wait long for equipment to exit a dormant state, McClelland said. “It is an active topic” on home devices and equipment used in networks like cable headends where equipment is often running (CD July 24 p12), he said. Operators “really make it a `buy’ criteria, they look not only a the cost of the product, but also power and cooling. It’s more than marketing.”