Yorkshire-based set-top company Pace has set out plans to cut power consumption in this notoriously wasteful product sector.

The firm designs and makes many of the set-top boxes that are bundled in pay-per-view deals. Its customers are the big TV operators.

“Two years ago customers didn’t want to pay 20 cents for lower power consumption. These customers are now very much in the minority and most demand products meet EnergyStar or other efficiency standard,” said the firm’s energy efficiency specialist Robert Turner told EW.

Operating power in set-top boxes is important, but most boxes spend most of their time in standby mode - where some consume almost as much as they do operating.

They are officially divided into ‘simple’ and ‘complex’, where simple boxes just decode free-to-air transmissions, and complex boxes add facilities including pay-per-view and programme recording.

“We have been working on this for a long time and are not just jumping on the bandwagon,” said Turner. “Years ago we were doing a free-to-view set-top box with a 1W standby.”

The industry has a voluntary code of energy consumption practice.

The advent of Europe’s Energy-Using Products Directive has suddenly made this code much more important amongst set-top box makers as it is a ‘framework’ Directive.

This kind of directive allows legislators to quickly enact laws that force energy consumption limits on product sectors that do not self-regulate effectively - and forced limits will be tough - set close to the real values achieved by best-in-class products in that particular sector.

It is the fear of tough limits that explains set-top box firms’ renewed interest in their own code of practice.

The Code sets a ceiling of 2W standby for simple set-tops. This is the sort of power that would be lost by a transformer-based phone charger left unused, but plugged into the mains.

This makes Turner’s legacy box look pretty good, and there is no excuse for consuming over 2W as everything in the box apart from the remote control receiver can be shut-down.

However, it is a different matter with complex boxes where, due to network constraints, a large proportion of the electronics have to remain functioning at all times if instant switch-on is required.

This intermediate condition has been dubbed ‘active standby’ in the Code, compared with ‘passive standby’ for simple set-top boxes.

There is a reason complex boxes cannot be closed down to passive standby. “A cold start takes one to two minutes and I have seen products that take more like four to five minutes, although these are not typically European,” explained Turner.

Apart from booting internal software, this time is required to re-establish controlled access (CA), to allow pay-per-view decoding; and to download the  hidden mapping data behind the programme guide that tells the receiver which programmes are on what frequency.

“We are working with CA vendors and the middleware people,” said Tuner. “The question is: Can we store some information regularly and pull it off the disk as boot-up.”

This is a touchy subject for those that rely on controlled access for revenue as relinquishing some control over cryptographic data to the set-top may, or may not, allow hacking.

“However we manage power, we must not compromise security or integrity. This is not impossible, but it is difficult to do,” said Turner.

Another solution Pace is discussing with CA and middleware vendors is periodic updates. “Can we go with a better standby on a cycle to cycle basis,” said Turner. “Say 3W for 45 minutes and 8W for 15 minutes. The [network] software does not support this at the moment.”

Outside de-facto constraints from the network, Turner claims Pace does what it can, where pricing allows, to save power using the hardware.

The Code allows for 7, 6, 8 and 6W active standby in cable, terrestrial, satellite and DSL set-top boxes respectively until the end of this year.

2009 boxes will be allowed 1W less in each category. “We are working with the silicon vendors,” he said. “For example, where a system chip has a high-definition decode block, when only standard definition is being watched we want to be able to turn the high-definition block off.”

In an ideal world Turner wants to be able to shut unused hardware down completely with a software command.
If this is not possible, the choice is: put an unused block into the lowest power state available to software commands, or shut it of completely through the extra expense of a power rail transistor.

“Our next generation of products will have much better standby management,” said Turner. “We can get 7W down to a much smaller number, although we don’t know what yet. We have a product in development that will be capable of below 3W in passive standby.”

The ideal situation is that installed software makes use of all hardware power-down facilities. Although given guaranteed access, the software can follow.

“We have the benefit over most of the electronics industry that most of our products are in some form of pay TV which can download software updates. Provided we get the hardware right, it doesn’t matter as much if the software follows six months later.”

He cites the example of a new-technology product seven years ago. “Half a million of them were shipped with 28W standby,” he said. “An over-air download got this down to 14W without any intervention by end-users.”

Power reduction does not only bring environmental and marketing advantages. “Lower power means a cooler box which tends increase reliability,” said Turner.

As the Code of Practice and any legislation develops, care will have to be taken to get the best environmental outcome.

“With wireless multi-room set-ups, the minimum power answer is to have a low-power box and a high-power box in a client-server relationship,” said Turner. Legislation might force you to have two medium power boxes with a higher total consumption.”
Away from the electronics, more can be done with the chassis and enclosure. “The majority of our products are metal which is easily recycled,” said Turner. “Our approach is to make the box as small as possible to minimise the amount of material that needs recycling.”

The number of different types, or grades, of plastic in a product is also important.

For example: “it is desirable to make the front panel and its buttons from the same plastic, and to make them from a single polymer with no coatings, labels or paint”, said Turner.

Cutting out potentially hazardous substances also brings advantages.

“We are being pro-active. We have looked at the RoHS II list, the Greenpeace list and the REACH Directive,” said Turner. “When customers contact us to talk about hazardous substances, we want to be able to say we are stopping using it, or we have stopped using it.” 

Pace recently also made a promise on packaging: “All materials used in the packaging of Pace products will be 100% recyclable,” said the firm. “Pace is setting a minimum standard of 50% of all materials used in packaging to be sourced from recycled materials.”