Sinrace Power Supply Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

Introducing the deep sleep mode；Maintenance activities time is limited

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has completed thefollowing two versions of the Energy Star set-top box (STB) to develop energy efficiency standard. The new requirements for service providers to encourage measures so as to put forward the set-top box when not in use to dramatically reduce power consumption.

Currently, many service providers are not allowed set-top box SMPS off, because they must remain active in order to download, scan television programs and program guide information, and perform maintenance activities. To help solve this problem, the current specification (version 2) provides for the automatic power-off request, the set-top box to 4 consecutive hours   without any user operations from high-power after the load mode to low-power sleep mode. But the new specification goes further, introduced a newly created"deep sleep"statu, defined as”A power statu in sleep mode,the power consumption drop to a lower level and return utterly take load mode function and needed time to extend”.

A power state to achieve the "deep sleep", its power consumption level in shall not exceed set-top box with load mode power consumption level of 15%, and it must be a kind of default enabling state (have users disable ability). In the set-top box SMPS front panel and / or remote control must have a clearly marked button to manually activate the deep sleep.

At present the selling of set-top box does not have such energy-saving condition, but EPA hopes in energy efficiency standard in products increased incentives to accelerate supplies of these products.

If Service providers have the default function of deep sleep in its product, they will more easier to satisfy the lowest demands of partners of energy stars.

Set-top box can exit the state sleep or the situation of deep sleep automatically to execute maintenance activities(Including speculative movie download for later viewing) ,but less than two hours in every 24 hours. It can also exit the state of sleep or the situation of deep sleep automatically to date the contents and information, but it must return to the previous state of sleep in 15 minutes.

In the aspects of total energy consumption limits of Set-top box, the new standards both continue to use the current version of TEC , Among them, the functional benchmark annual energy consumption of set-top-box (kWh/year)and any additional functions (for example, multiple tuner, multiple hard disk, the network device, etc.) and the amount of the extra energy consumption of SMPS shall not be exceed the maximum specification Limits.

In table 5, separately listed Version2 (current version), Version3 and version 4 normative finally set-top box energy consumption limits.

EPA  may consider before the commencement of the 4th edition to delete the TEC calculation method of removable media options,and may include new set-top boxes SMPS foundation types. Such as use  telephone, wireless, broadband and TV Four Play (four functional combination)of  the concept of "gateway set-top box".