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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."
That is not the news here. The news here is Samsung is faking its test scores. You can pretty summaries any news article as "When there are money, power or sex involved people are willing to lie and cheat." Or if you were summarizing to a 5 year old, just "people bad".
In other news, teachers awarded for teaching kids to perform at standardised tests.
Seriously. As soon as there is a standardised test, it's going to get optimized for.
Government sets absurd limits then companies cheat ...film at 11.
Not quite the same thing. What VW did was recognize the test and change operating modes only during testing. What Samsung did was build a "Home" mode for optimum energy savings and other modes (including changing settings from the defaults in Home mode to give a custom mode) that optimized viewing experience at the expense of power use. The EU's tests use "Home" mode and don't test any other modes, while most consumers immediately adjust the TV for optimum viewing regardless of power consumption, so of course TVs in normal use use more power than their test scores indicate. But the TV doesn't change anything on it's own and it doesn't run any differently during the test than it does in the same mode in normal use, it's just that the EU didn't bother testing the TV in the configuration most consumers are going to set it to. Myself, I'd run the test in every mode the TV has and compare results because you know consumers aren't going to ignore additional modes.
Not limits, it is rating. You will simply be rated lower for consuming more energy. You have no reason to cheat... Film at 11.
Samsung might not have cheated in that manner, but the other unnamed manufacturer did essentially the same thing as VW. They detected the film that's used in energy testing and altered the power consumption based on that. If the TV detects a particular video that's used in testing and alters its behavior for those reasons, I don't think that differs at all from VW's tactics.
Yes, the energy testing needs to be improved to consider normal modes of operation. Allowing manufacturers to perform the testing themselves and then randomly conducting audits might not be a good strategy, either. But the unnamed manufacturer is blatantly in the wrong if the allegations are true.
But if company A is honest and company B cheats, then company A will be at a disadvantage until company B gets caught. If everyone cheats, then they are at a level playing field, even after getting caught (what if it turns out that all car and TV manufacturers cheat?).
Please read the article, or even the summary. TVs are tested using the same film so there's a level playing field in that regard. It's designed to include a variety of types of things that might occur in normal TV programs. The unnamed manufacturer is accused of detecting that particular film and making the TV perform differently while it's playing. Is that actually any different from the wrongdoing VW is accused of?
Volkswagen, Samsung? Anybody beginning to think that companies are acting like a bunch of fucking homos, acting straight when mum and dad come round?
Beginning? Lots of systems detect when benchmarking software is running and alter their performance. I think that a few Android phones do this as well, here is a Slashdot story about it:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
In other news, teachers awarded for teaching kids to perform at standardised tests.
Seriously. As soon as there is a standardised test, it's going to get optimized for.
I used to work at the national Vehicle Engineering Lab, and one of the main complaints that we would get is that we do not publish the tests that we do to decide if a custom vehicle or modification is legal. This is precisely why, people will conform to all the published standards yet find workarounds for the intent. Make a vehicle safe, and we'll allow it. Overpower it with no safety features and we won't. Sometimes, wise decision makers are better then well-defined laws.
Of course, finding wise decision makers is very difficult. We were lucky to have a very wise, experienced engineer lead the team and the process, and I really don't know how it will work out when he needs to be replaced. This is why rule of the people was experimented with two thousand years ago, and hereditary government was found to be problematic three hundred years ago.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
And it already impacts the quality of the devices. I have a plasma TV (bought a plasma because of better black levels) and it limits the white level if there is too much white on the screen, I guess to reduce the power consumption (whichi s actually very similar to a LCD TV of the same size). The thing is, I do not really care about the power consumption - as long as the breaker does not trip, I'm fine, after all, I do not watch TV that often. That, combined with some other quirks (huge input lag, unless set to game mode for example) makes me wish my car was bigger so I could have bought a used TV of older model - while that would have used twice (or more) the power, it would have most likely had better image quality.
How dare these energy-efficiency wonks want some kind of better world for our kids. How *dare* they!
I think that you hit the nail on the head! There is unfortunately no incentive to be honest. It's the same as in politics. If you are honest then you get no votes because you make no promises (that you know that you cannot honour) and when they find out that your opponent lied then they assume that everyone lies which rubs off on you.
Or sports for that matter, what good is it to compete without steroids when all that will happen is that people will assume that you take it anyway and if you don't you will have a disadvantage towards the ones who actually do.
The big question would be how we as a society can move from this absurd reality into a world where honesty actually would pay off. I don't know.
Well you are entitled to your opinion but I think that you must be in the minority to enjoy reduced contrast. And Ambilight have nothing to do with reducing contrast, it's a way to extend the extend the colours of the image beyond the television screen to improve "immersion". Myself I prefer to not use either reduced contrast or Ambilight.
I wonder if they have any C-level executives from VW or vise versa.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
This is the same thing that VW did.
You mean that my TV is spewing out vast amounts of NOx when it's not in test mode?!
EU testers were lazy
I wouldn't use that word. Different settings act different in non-defined ways. There's little to no standard way of knowing how consumers set up their TVs and what those settings do, and ultimately you only have limited resources. I see no problem at all with what they are doing. Most items are tested in some generic way with out of the box settings. A car will also have different emissions if you drive it in some standard way vs taking it to a track day.
There's very little a standardised test can do which is why a real-world test is so important.
You're acting like people actually read the energy use sticker on their TV. Most people can't even find it under the size 300 font sticker on the front which says OMG Ultra-HD! 4K! SPECIAL! BUY ME NOW!
It makes sense in retrospect but I didn't actually realise TVs were energy tested. It made more sense to do it to fridges and things which are always on and can't be switched off easily. That's about the only time I look at ratings.
What the heck is a test mode for a TV anyhow? It makes no sense. Just test the TV playing certain content as you normally would, and measure the power usage. This accusation seems like a bit of a stretch to me.
In the electronics industry it is time honored practice to game the benchmarks. Slashdotters know of so many benchmarks and slowly the industry games them and makes them useless, for graphics cards or chip throughputs etc. It would be a surprise only if TV makers did not game the benchmarks. It is not just the hardware companies.
For example NASA tested the radar cross section of well known shapes as a benchmark to evaluate the correctness of simulation software. Shapes like the NASA almond, or icecream-cone. Users are expected to run the simulation software to test how accurate the simulation results are. Curious thing, create the model exactly with same dimension well aligned with XYZ axes you would get dead bang accurate answer. Rotate the geometry by say, 1.23 degrees about X axis and then 4.56 degrees about Y axis. The solution should remain invariant under a rigid body transformation, (remember to rotate the excitations in synch). Some software would fail horribly. Much longer run times and much lower accuracy.
But the free market comes into play here. Some vendors who don't cheat educate the customers about it. They will brag, "our solution will remain invariant under rigid body xforms, test our competitor! just test it and then get back to us". But when the testing is done by government the feedback loop takes so much longer to close. Like this VW incident.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The companies cheat anyway, so the number on the product is meaningless (ranked first merely for topicality)
People buy a [thing] for its inherent qualities. A TV is chosen for its picture quality, size, features and price first. Energy consumption? The only person I've ever known to choose a TV based on energy consumption was a guy with a boat who wanted to keep his house battery consumption down.
Maybe if all products were essentially equal, energy consumption would matter. You could argue that fridges are basically the same, but when we bought ours size was the most important quality (biggest that would fit the opening) followed by the interior arrangement.
And does the energy consumption vary that much? Maybe the cheapest possible fridge uses a lot more energy, but once you narrow the field and eliminate the tails of the curve they seem awfully close.
If that is your experience then it says more about your experience than wider practice. Regression testing is simply ensuring that functionality that is already in place is not compromised when new versions/extensions/etc are added. Tests from the original specification for the system would be part of ongoing regression testing as the system is expanded/updated.
Myself, I'd run the test in every mode the TV has and compare results because you know consumers aren't going to ignore additional modes.
I have my doubts about that; I think most consumers will never even find the adjustments. Maybe a significant minority will, but I expect most will just plug it in and turn it on.
Sometimes, wise decision makers are better then well-defined laws.
Of course, the problem with government by unwritten rule is that the "wise decision makers" will then use that rule to punish their enemies simply for being their enemies.
Look at the IRS, which targeted people and groups they didn't like for harassment. That's allegedly illegal, but nobody was ever punished for it because "wise decision makers" didn't think it was necessary.
Look at the Secret Service, who did not like that a member of Congress was investigating them, so they leaked that a decade earlier, he applied for a job with them and they decided not to hire him. Allegedly illegal, but no one will be punished for that because the "wise decision makers" don't think it's necessary.
To turn it back to the automotive world, the "wise decision makers" in government decided to PLAY UP an unintended acceleration issue in Toyotas and COVER UP a similar bug in GM cars because the government owned GM at the time.
Part of the reason we have written laws is that they're supposed to protect us from government by the whims of "wise decision makers."
"which even the president of Greenpeace has stated is the best option, given our energy needs"
No he did not.
One of the former founders of Greenpeace said it not the current president of Greenpeace.
BTW I support nuclear power but when posting facts one should make sure that they are facts otherwise the entire post becomes suspect.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
But only the diesel ones
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I do not know how it is whee you live, but in my country the energy class (A-G with some really efficient devices getting multiple As) is displayed on a sticker on the device and the sticker is quite large.
Also, isn't power consumption the reason plasma is less popular than LCD? It seems to me that plasma has better picture quality, but uses more power.
Part of the reason we have written laws is that they're supposed to protect us from government by the whims of "wise decision makers."
I agree with you completely. There is no form of rule which protects the people from the ruled, and also does not prescribe methods for causing harm legally.
A good ruler would balance the needs of the people against his own ego and family interests. I can think of very few modern rulers who I would nominate as being fair and just, the King Hussein of Jordan comes to mind. He's not perfect, but he's doing a better job than any other ruler that I can think of in modern times. He does an outstanding job of protecting his kingdom from threats inside and out, and additionally keeps his neighbors happy (ISIL notwithstanding). All other modern leaders who were good for their respective nations are considered as monsters by other nations. Ahmadinejad and Hitler come to mind. They were both fanatical about advancing their own nations, and did not care about what damage to other people was done in the process.
I venture to say that a "fair, just ruler" is a matter of circumstance no less than it is a matter of personality and values.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
What absurd limit was set?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Get people all upset about asian tv makers so we can go light on VW and save those jobs.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You're being ridiculous. I am an energy-efficiency wonk. You can build as many nuclear power plants as you want, as long as they can compete with other forms of clean energy on price.
Once we have switched to zero-carbon electricity or at least made polluting forms of energy pay appropriate taxes to offset the damage they do, you can use as much energy as you want. That is between you and your wallet. But until then, your electricity consumption is partially paid for by me. Do not waste MY money.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Volkswagens spewing filth: Not good.
TV sets spewing filth: I'm OK with this.
Have gnu, will travel.
When Samsung gets busted, they'll say they had no idea they did that... and they're probably right because it's probably something they stole from Sony haha
I didn't say it's not on the device. I said no one gives a shit.
Plasma wasn't just a bit energy inefficient. It was HUGELY energy inefficient consuming more than double the power of a typical LCD and in some cases triple.
By comparison most LCD TVs differ only slightly in consumption these days maybe +/- 20% and the ones that score highest score lowest on other features such as total brightness.
It comes down to the similar comparison of energy efficient light bulbs. People buy energy efficient bulbs over incandescent when they need to save power, but few if any people actually then look closely at the package to see which one ends up with the best lm/w. Going from 100watt to 18watt is a big difference compared to going from 18watt to 16watt.
Just as well, or there'd have to be an exception to rule 34.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Actually, nuke IS good for all of us. While I support AE, the main 2 pushed are wind and solar, and both depend on the sun. Put up clouds ( from a nation learning to control weather ), or block the sun via a volcano ( hello Yellowstone), and right when you need the most power, it stops. New Fission is needed to replace old tired reactors, and use up the majority of 'waste'. Fusion , may never come, but if so, it can replace coal, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
On the plus side, Samsung TVs still meet mandated limits for NOx emissions no matter what mode they are in.
Consumers don't care. Otherwise, they wouldn't buy the TV.
The winner!
All these 'tests' really do is keep bureaucrats and programmers employed. If we cared about TV power consumption, we'd turn off the power bar when we weren't using it.
I've got a significant number of videos of fucking homos. None of them use cheating on NOx emissions tests as a major part of the plot.
Rule 34. You pointed it out, someone has to make it happen. It might as well be you.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Burn-in happens locally - so, having the entire screen black except for a 2cm by 2cm completely white square would burn the square just as much as having half the screen completely white. But having half the screen completely white lowers the white level, unless it is set low enough in the first place (took me a while to figure that out when setting the picture parameters). As for eye strain - well, I could be watching TV in a lit room, I also doubt that LCDs do that (where the lamp has to be on anyway independent of the picture on the screen).
The sad thing is that for a lot of people the image quality does not matter. What matters is the thickness, weight, features (fullHD, 4K, 3D , but not for everyone) and power consumption. The number of TVs set to stretch a 4:3 source proves it.
That was one of the reasons. I think potential burn in (though really image retention, since it's not permanent burn in) is the other major cause.
Plasmas at the time were LARGER, CHEAPER, and looked better. I think it's only now that we're getting into gigantic TVs (70 inch and above), that plasma can't do.. I also think it can't do 4K, or not easily. Those seemed to be reasons companies have stopped making plasma.
Also, from what I've read (popular press, online reviews), the more recent plasmas (not VERY recent, as in the last several years at least) were much more energy efficient.. The huge discrepancy compared to LED was, I think, based on early plasmas.
(I have a 42" plasma that I got when my CRT died several years ago. So I guess I'm sort of biased, but I basically went out and bought a TV very quickly, and plasma seemed to be the best and cheapest at the time.. I am someone who cares about power usage, but my overall electricity bill is low anyway -- $20-$30.)
When there's something you want involved, you have an incentive to cheat. That doesn't mean everyone will. But of course those who do very much want to pretend that's because they're fools, rather than just honest.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I bought a plasma because I wanted image quality comparable to that of a CRT. As for 4K - no point in that until the source material can handle it. Last time I checked, BluRay was still 1080.
You forget one important thing: fixures are limited by how much power (heat) they can handle, so the more efficient the light is, the brighter light you get.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If that is your experience then it says more about your experience than wider practice.
Given that the regression tests used for both ChromeOS and the Mac OS X kernel are available in the publicly published source trees for each, I assure you that my experience is not unique.
Regression testing is simply ensuring that functionality that is already in place is not compromised when new versions/extensions/etc are added. Tests from the original specification for the system would be part of ongoing regression testing as the system is expanded/updated.
I said as much, when I made the post to which you are replying.
One of the process problems that both projects have is that a single test failure is considered a "build breaker"; and there is no distinction between:
* Tests which fail because they previously passed, and have regressed
* Tests which fail because they were written to verify product acceptance criteria, and that code is not yet written
By not having any way to allow a test failure to be acceptable during the development process, every test failure breaks the build, and shuts down progress for the rest of the team, while that breakage is dealt with.
This is, in general, one of the major dangers of utilizing a bazaar-model iterative process to approach a goal through successive approximation. The other danger is transiently flakey tests that are not disqualified as build breakers because they are considered important enough to break the build, but not important enough to track down (and fix) the reasons for them being flakey (usually differences in timing, e.g. cache creation on initial vs. subsequent boots, etc.).
P.S.: Apple and Google typically do not hire many formal Q/A types; tests are expected to be written by engineers working on the product as part of them working on the product, and are added to build qualification relatively ad-hoc. Ubuntu development testing works in relatively the same way; the closest Open Source projects get to formal verification are probably the compiler testing that happens with gcc and llvm.
You're being ridiculous. I am an energy-efficiency wonk. You can build as many nuclear power plants as you want, as long as they can compete with other forms of clean energy on price.
They can, as long as you take knee-jerk anti-nuclear stonewalling out of the equation. The primary costs in any nuclear plant are legal opposition by people who are antinuclear, and moving regulatory goalposts causing redesigns during construction, which re-triggers all the legal opposition (again). If you replace a T-31-A valve with a T-31-B valve in a design, you are pretty much required to re-do the entire "environmental impact" study, even if the valve in question is in the water faucet in the employee break room.
I wouldn't draw that conclusion at all. Plasma had a major advantage over the LCD screens of the time, but those times changed before the end of Plasma's popularity. At the time LCDs had poor viewing angles poor brightness, and ghosting. These days I'd happily take an LCD.
At least a decent one. Cheap shit is still cheap shit, and cheap Plasmas outperformed cheap LCDs right to the end which didn't help the idea that LCDs sucked.
Yeah and what's written on the box? "40watt equivalent". People in general don't sit down and compare the exact spec on all the boxes trying to squeeze 50lm more out of a fitting.
All other modern leaders who were good for their respective nations are considered as monsters by other nations. Ahmadinejad and Hitler come to mind.
Both of those guys were horrible for their own people. Hitler eventually led Germany to ruin, and Iran spent most of Ahmadinejad's rule isolated on the international stage.
By contrast, I don't think Reagan or Bill Clinton are considered to be "monsters" internationally by anyone other than a group of fringe lunatics. (I'd also posit that both men are more well looked upon by the world at large than by citizens of their own country... ditto Margret Thatcher, actually.)
My point is that it's ridiculous for a standards agency to not publish the standard so as to defeat "attempts to cheat the test." Not having standardized rules understood by all the players allows the standards agency to attack whoever they don't like.
Americans dont read those. We are not conscious about energy usage or fuel usage. Everyone else does.
Americans dont read those. We are not conscious about energy usage or fuel usage. Everyone else does.
This practice is actually quite universal unless you're running your house from batteries. Americans may have a reputation for being worse, but they're really not.
At the time you were right to, these days LCDs are better than Plasmas were.
There are already quickly growing libraries of 4k on Netflix, Amazon, even Youtube has 4k content. Also if you use your TV for something other than videos like another computer monitor, running picture slideshows etc you also get the full benefit.
I'm not saying you're not right. I don't see the value in it right now either. But the library has grown considerably since the last time there was a 4k related discussion on Slashdot and it's growing every day, so you may want to keep a constant check on your assumptions rather than comparing the TV to the Bluray player.
So you think that deregulating nuclear power can yield 50% cost savings or more (since we are removing the primary cost)? Good luck with that.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Both of those guys were horrible for their own people. Hitler eventually led Germany to ruin, and Iran spent most of Ahmadinejad's rule isolated on the international stage.
Hitler got Germany out of the Treaty of Versailles. His mistake was commencing Operation Barbarossa. I'm Jewish and I lost a lot of family to that monster, but I realize that until Operation Barbarossa Hitler was doing what was best _for_Germany_.
Due to Ahmadinejad, Iran will have a nuclear weapon in 15 years. He set the stage for the current negotiations, which allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon in 15 years without sanctions. He did what was best _for_Iran_ despite the short-term consequences.
My point is that it's ridiculous for a standards agency to not publish the standard so as to defeat "attempts to cheat the test." Not having standardized rules understood by all the players allows the standards agency to attack whoever they don't like.
You are right. However, there is no single test. People modify vehicles, from passenger vehicles designed for street use to putting electric motors on skateboards, and we test if they are safe. There is absolutely no way to make rules to cover all the possible scenarios. Put a 200 watt motor on a bicycle and we'll OK it for sale. Put two 550 watt motors on rollerskates connected to a poorly-soldered lithium-ion battery pack in a backpack and we won't.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
However, there is no single test. People modify vehicles, from passenger vehicles designed for street use to putting electric motors on skateboards, and we test if they are safe.
I don't understand this part at all. If you have different classifications, and every vehicle has to past the test for their classification (and it's obvious how to figure out what classification your vehicle belongs in) you should publish ALL the tests. If your real goal is to allow manufacturers to pass the certification by making safe vehicles, you should publish your internal test procedures. If you don't do so, people will wonder whether your real goal is to harass manufacturers you don't like for whatever reason.