Your Set-Top Box Is Murdering Your Electric Bill. Here’s What You Can Do

Your set-top box is devouring your electricity bill! Try these methods

A recent study by the Natural Resources Conservation Commission (NRDC) has attracted widespread attention, revealing that the biggest culprit in a home is not a refrigerator, air conditioner or heating, but an incredible TV set-top box. These extremely low-efficiency set-top boxes are often provided by cable companies and have only received attention until now, meaning there is little reason for cable companies to adopt off-the-shelf energy-saving approaches. We put together a list of the pros and cons of existing set-top boxes so that you can at least understand what you are using.

First, some background knowledge. How could that small set-top box that provides countless hours of replay of "Detective Amon" consume more power than a huge refrigerator? The problem is that modern DVRs and other set-top boxes are not ordinary single-function appliances; they are just specialized computers with different shapes. They come with power-consuming hard drives, modern processors, HD graphics cards, and a variety of other components you will find in a regular computer. However, when we don't use the computer, we turn it off (at least we hope). This is not the case with set-top boxes.

NRDC found that "even if consumers neither watch nor record programs, today's set-top boxes run almost at full power" and that the actual use time of set-top boxes accounts for only about one-third of the running time. This begs the question: Why don’t people close the set-top box when they don’t use it? There are two aspects to the answer: first, they don’t realize they should do this; second, the set-top box starts longer—just like computers (they are computers), rather than the instant boot of the TV. Customers are not used to waiting for a few minutes to use the TV, so they always keep the set-top box on, which in turn means cable providers don’t have the power to reduce startup times, let alone improve their efficiency.

The problem is that manufacturers can use various methods to reduce the energy consumption of these set-top boxes. You can use "standby" or "sleep" modes (often seen in some set-top boxes in Europe) to greatly reduce energy consumption when the set-top box is inactive. What’s even more strange is that most US set-top boxes don’t even have a real “close” button – pressing a button marked “close” will only dim the clock in many cases. The only way to actually prevent these set-top boxes from draining power and increasing their electricity bills is to unplug the plug from the wall - maybe it's a pleasure, but not intuitive.

To be fair, cable boxes are not buzzing for no reason, boosting your electricity bills. At least for DVR, the benefit of always turning on is buffering – DVR continues to record, usually recording 1 hour of screens from any channel you are watching, recording and deleting, so only the last 1 hour is recorded. That's why you might miss The Edge of Danger! ” show (we don’t recommend you to take “The Edge of Danger!” so you can go back to the beginning of the show so that you can catch the simple issues in the Edge of Danger. If the DVR is in deep sleep mode and the hard drive stops spinning, it will not be able to hold its buffer 24/7. But there are still ways to solve this problem - for example, you can get it to automatically enter deep sleep during a period when you are at work and are unlikely to require that buffer.

Some cable companies surveyed promise to offer more efficient set-top boxes in the future, but many noted that without public recognition or attention, there is no real motivation to spend money on more energy-efficient and efficient hardware. If a tree falls in the forest and no one cares whether it will increase everyone's electricity bills, why create more efficient trees? (This metaphor may not be as appropriate as it sounds in my mind.)

We looked at NRDC’s data carefully and listed the best and worst options for most major cable companies. To avoid the investigation being completely unmanageable, NRDC ignored small regional operators, but most Americans subscribed to one of these companies—and that’s the information they should have.

If you use Comcast

In terms of energy efficiency, Comcast stands out and becomes the smaller of several "sin" but the gap is not big. Comcast's most energy-efficient set-top boxes are often slightly more efficient than similar products from Verizon, Time Warner and Satellite, and they also offer more options when it comes to hardware. The NRDC data selects the Motorola DCH70 as the best standard definition set-top box (power consumption is 10W when active and power consumption is 10W when standby), and the Pace RNG110 as the best high definition set-top box (power consumption is 13W when active and power consumption is 12W when standby) , Motorola DCX3400 is the best HD/DVR (power consumption is 29W during active and power consumption is 28W during standby).

I spoke to a Comcast representative who told me that the company usually installs any set-top box they want, but if you ask for a specific set-top box they have, they'd be happy to install it for you. They won't order a set-top box for you from elsewhere, and the availability of this hardware will change very quickly, but at least you may have room for choice.

If you use Verizon FiOS

Verizon's most efficient set-top box is just OK, and its lowest-efficiency set-top box is the worst of all the set-top boxes surveyed. Worse, Verizon does not give customers any choice about which set-top box they get—you can’t request a specific set-top box at any time. This is not important for non-DVR set-top boxes, as NRDC’s findings found only one SD set-top box and one HD set-top box, but there is a large efficiency gap between the company’s best and worst DVR. The most efficient is Motorola’s QIP7216, which has an active power consumption of 29W and a standby power consumption of 28W, which is not noticeable, but the older Motorola QIP6416 has an active power consumption of 36W and a standby power consumption of 35W.

If you use Time Warner

Time Warner has fewer set-top box options than Verizon or Comcast, with only one average (ineffective) DVR and an astonishingly inefficient SD set-top box. For HD non-DVR set-top boxes, the Cisco Explorer 4250HDC is most efficient, with 19W of active power and 18W of standby power, but Time Warner told me that this is an older set-top box that can be hard to find. The Time Warner representative (which was surprising given the company's poor reputation in our New York) was very helpful and offered that if I wanted a 4250HDC, he would try to track one of them.

If you use DirecTV

Here, let's take a look at the satellite company. DirecTV products are only slightly less efficient than Comcast or Verizon products. (currently the only) SD set-top box has an active power consumption of 12W and a standby power consumption of 9W. The best high-definition set-top box (DirecTV H24) has an active power consumption of 16W and a standby power consumption of 12W. The power consumption is 15W, the best HD/DVR (DirecTV HR24) has an active power consumption of 31W and a standby power consumption of 31W. DVR is pretty bad in terms of efficiency, but that's nothing compared to the crazy Dish Network.

If you use Dish Network

I don't know what's going on inside Dish Network's DVR. Given the energy consumption, they are likely to be powering nuclear reactors. The "best" DVR provided by Dish, ViP922, consumes 43W of power when active and 40W of power when standby — but the worst one, the ViP722, consumes 55W of power when active and 52W of power when standby.

If you use the Internet

Many are abandoning traditional paid TV services in favor of online services like Netflix and Hulu, and luckily there are a lot of gadgets to play this content (and more) on TV. They are also always more energy-efficient than cable boxes and are surprisingly stunningly. Apple TV (reviewed here), which streams Netflix and plays music, movies and TV shows from the Apple iTunes store, consumes only 3W of activity and 0.5W of standby power. Roku's XR-HD can stream Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Live Video, and many other content, with only 7W of activity and 7W of standby power. Boxee Box is a bizarre-shaped media streaming player that uses open source, powerful Boxee software to play Netflix, stream videos from other computers on the network, play hard drives plugged into one of its USB ports or Media in thumb drives, as well as streaming from many applications (hopefully, Hulu will be available soon). A commentator at Ars Technica tested it and its measurements may differ from the NRDC, but roughly estimated to be 13W of active power and 13W of standby power.

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