UHD TV adoption will hit viewers’ energy bills
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has produced a report in partnership with Ecos Research that analyzed public databases of UHD television energy use and market share sales data, and also performed power use measurements on 21 televisions representing a cross-section of 2014 and 2015 models.
The conclusion was that the widespread adoption could add $1 billion to U.S. viewers’ annual utility bills.
"Not only do today’s large UHD televisions consume almost one-third more energy, on average, than the high-definition TVs they’ll replace, there is a huge range in the efficiency of the UHD models on the market," said senior scientist Noah Horowitz, director of NRDC’s Center for Energy Efficiency.
"We found an almost three-fold difference in energy consumption between the best and worst UHD TVs, with some models using little or no more energy than their HD predecessors, proving the technology already exists to cut needless energy waste in these large televisions," Horowitz said.
In particular the report found that use of high dynamic range (HDR) features that provide brighter colors significantly add to the power consumption with HDR versions of movies consuming 47 percent more power than the same title in non-HDR 4K format.
The report states that more attention needs to be paid to understanding the HDR format and how to minimize its power consumption.
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