MVPDs Generally Favor EPA’s Proposed Energy Star v4.1 Changes

Many of the changes -- other than typographical or mathematical errors industry wanted changed to the Jan. 23 iteration of Energy Star v4.1 for set-top boxes -- center around thin clients, based on the comments we reviewed. Thin clients use less energy to connect to TVs throughout a home than central gateway devices, which receive encrypted MVPD video and distribute it to the smaller devices. Thin clients should have more accommodative specs, so that they can render newer forms of video including Ultra HD and send broadband signals throughout the house through standards such as Wi-Fi, said DirecTV, Dish Network, its EchoStar sister company and NCTA.

EPA is expected to release the final Energy Star v4.1 for set-top boxes next month, said industry officials in interviews this month. That’s in keeping with the time frame set out last month, when EPA released the latest revision. The spec will take effect Dec. 1, wrote manager Katharine Kaplan of the Energy Star Product Development and Program Administration (http://1.usa.gov/1oXo5ns). The changes from an earlier v4 proposal to the current one increased power-consumption allowances for thin clients, so they can have better picture-rendering capabilities than over-the-top video boxes, said cable lawyer Paul Glist of Davis Wright, representing NCTA, in an interview Thursday.

Now, NCTA and other MVPDs want EPA to increase energy allowances so thin clients can render video in Ultra HD, according to Glist and comments to the agency. EPA’s January revisions didn’t “go the next step and recognize that thin clients, like other devices in the home, are going to have to do things like Ultra HD,” said Glist. “You can’t set up something so that a thin client is hobbled at birth” because it can’t render in Ultra HD, he added. EPA should also increase power-consumption allowances so thin clients can serve as Wi-Fi distribution points throughout a household, said Glist, NCTA and the DBS interests.

"The Ultra HD allowance should apply to a set-top box that outputs in Ultra HD, even if it upscales the content,” wrote NCTA. “EPA should permit a Thin Client to qualify for Ultra HD and High Efficiency Video Processing (HEVP) allowances, and to qualify as a WiFi access point, in order to promote energy savings in gateway/whole home architectures.” The agency also shouldn’t sunset an allowance for CableLabs’ DOCSIS 3.0 broadband transmission standard, which the agency wants to do prematurely in 2015, said NCTA and Glist. “D3 is the foundation technology for meeting the FCC’s goal of expanding the capacity and reach of high speed Internet access,” wrote the association.

The Natural Resource Defense Council, one of the energy efficiency advocates taking part in a set-top box energy reduction initiative among many CE companies and top MVPDs (CD Dec 24 p1), agreed with EPA’s tentative decision to not allow thin clients Ultra HD and HEVP allowances. “While the industry has been doing a good job bringing down the on mode power of thin clients, there continues to be small differences between their on and standby power levels, and thin clients continue to have much higher standby power levels than necessary,” said NRDC. “To prevent further increases in thin client energy use we urge ENERGY STAR to resist efforts to further increase the allowances for thin clients and to continue to encourage industry to work to bring down the standby energy use of thin clients, which represent in many cases 50 percent to 75 percent and more of their annual energy use."

It’s likely consumers will use thin clients in remote parts of a household to both get video from the gateway device and extend broadband through Wi-Fi in the dwelling, said the DBS interests. “The single thin client serves a business need by eliminating the need for a second box in that portion of the home by delivering the service provider’s video service and extending the reach of data connectivity.” EPA has been “bringing all of these fierce competitors, their trade representatives and the advocate community together” since 2007 under Energy Star, said the DBS companies. December’s expanded voluntary agreement on set-top box energy reduction among MVPDs added as VA participants the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP) and NRDC. The VA began among cable operators a few years ago, later expanded to satellite- and telco-TV providers and then added efficiency advocates.

Cable set-top boxes can have lower-power states that meet Energy Star requirements “in a number of ways,” said Debbie Fitzgerald, CableLabs principal architect-application technologies, in an interview last month. “We're not boxing in what we can do on these platforms in the next five years” through gateway devices, network DVRs and VoIP functions, she said. “There’s a lot of opportunities on a platform that is this capable” and “we're not constraining innovation,” she added. The coming, final v4.1 set-top box Energy Star spec likely will have sufficient allowances for thin-client functionality industry seeks, said a CE executive. EPA officials said on a webinar last month that some of the proposed changes in the latest iteration are to harmonize the spec with parts of the expanded VA, noted NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg in an interview.

EPA should change its proposal letting MVPDs test set-top box energy consumption on a network of their choice, so companies must test on their networks, said ACEEE, ASAP and Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships. “As written, Version 4.1 allows industry to simply pick the most beneficial network from which to test a particular model in order to meet the specification requirements.” NRDC backed a similar change. December’s expanded VA “left little time to incorporate test method differences into Version 4.1 while still maintaining the specification release schedule,” but EPA should make changes on set-top box test procedures,” said the groups. “No additional burden will be placed on industry (as they will already be testing models on their own operating system) and the risk of consumer confusion regarding energy consumption values will be mitigated.” (jmake@warren-news.com)