Slashdot Mirror
EU Probes TVs Over Energy Test Scores
joesreviewss writes: The European Commission says it will follow up on evidence that Samsung and another TV-maker use software that alters their screens' power use during tests. The BBC reports: "One study indicates that some Samsung TVs nearly halve their power consumption when a standardised test is carried out. Another accuses a different unnamed manufacturer of adjusting the brightness of its sets when they "recognise" the test film involved. Samsung has denied any wrongdoing. It acknowledged that it used software that altered its televisions' performance during tests, but said this was the effect of a general energy efficiency feature that came into effect during normal use and had nothing to do with the testing process."
tl;dr version - EU testers were lazy and tested TVs straight out of the box, instead of first figuring out how people were using the TVs and testing the way people were using them.
I don't see a problem here. For a VW car analogy, it'd be like if the EPA only tested cars at idle, and some third party researchers pointed out that most cars emit a lot more pollutants under real driving conditions. You can't exactly get mad at the auto makers if the EPA ran a stupid test like that.
I can actually see a witch hunt like this increasing TV energy consumption. An obvious energy-saving feature to add to a TV is an auto-dimmer if the TV detects no motion in the room for (say) an hour. If there's no motion, there's probably nobody watching, and it makes sense to dim the screen. If someone is really there, they'll move to adjust the TV, and it'll brighten up again. But if you allow stupid tests to dictate TV default settings, then all manufacturers will disable the auto-dimmer by default lest they be accused of trying to cheat on the tests. The proper response is for the test to put a moving object in front of the TV or disable the auto-dimmer for the test.