July 13th, 2006
Standby Mode to Be Outlawed in the U.K.
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
I am so torn. Should I file this under the ultimate irony or just plain blatant stupidity? Since it comes to us from the United Kingdom - a nation that once accused Americans of having no sense of irony, let’s go with ironic.
Basically in an effort to save energy, the British government is planning to outlaw the standby mode in most home and office electronics - arguing that they eat up about 8% of all energy costs each year. This means that every TV set, home computer, office printer, and so on will not longer have a standby mode but will only offer on and off.
Ignoring the fact that standby modes were invented in many cases to save energy, we predict that given the choice of a lengthy boot up, or long wait at the photocopier most people will leave their devices on all the time causing far more waste than ever before.
The government is to outlaw standby switches on televisions and video and DVD players to cut the amount of electricity wasted in the home.Lighting, set-top boxes, televisions, chargers, fridges, freezers, washing machines and computers were highlighted as wasteful products that must be redesigned to save power. Businesses will have to phase out or reduce drastically the energy used by computers, printers and photocopiers left on standby. Source: London Times Online via TechDirt
We Say: Isn’t it Ironic?
Don’t you think?
Mumblix Grumph says:
This isn’t the first time the demon of unintended consequences pooped on their porch.
The EU passed a huge tax on recycling old refrigerators in an attempt to “Save The Planet”.
People just shrugged and started dumping them on the side of the road.
Works every time!
July 13th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Jimmy Daniels says:
Standby Buttons to be Outlawed in the UK
This is one of those stories where you just have to shake your head and say, “what”? But in the UK, the government is going to outlaw standby buttons on televisions, video and dvd players the rdeuce the amount of electricity wasted in the h…
July 13th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Michael Santo says:
I’m not sure this is being interpreted correctly. My first thought, reading this, is they are referring to the modes which TV sets sit in while waiting for you to press a button on your remote. In reality, nothing tha uses a remote is ever really off. All all these devices waste a lot of energy. In fact, even those bricks you hook up to charge your cell phones, etc are wasting energy. Feel them. If they’re hot or even warm, they hvae to be using energy.
Check out this article for example. I think that’s what’s really being addressed here. Trickle wastage.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1343
On the other hand, how will remotes work?!
July 13th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
Rhys says:
First I heard about it was that it was only TV and DVD/VCR players that were doing it. Back when they first were introduced, TV’s DID take a long time to switch on, so they implemented a standby mode to eliminate switching it on.
Nowadays as TV’s are quick to switch on, it really isn’t needed. The whole “Businesses will leave everything switched on” arguement, well in the business I’ve worked in, they do anyway, so it shouldn’t make much difference to them.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:05 am
IsamuM says:
I can understand the rationale behind outlawing the standby mode in TVs, VCRs and the like, but fridges and freezers? I don’t think those have standby modes. They’re pretty much left on all the time and for a reason.
Of course, if the article is just saying that refrigerators and freezers are among the most wasteful appliances with respect to power, maybe so, but again for a reason. I’m sure that you can redesign them to be more efficient, but how are you going to measure and mandate that?
July 14th, 2006 at 2:12 am
Xerxes says:
No it isn’t ironic. Irony means “the use of words to indicate something other than their litteral meaning”. So I guess there is at least one American who still doesn’t understand irony.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:11 am
ed3 says:
Did anyone else catch the irony of a Californian poking fun at a piece of foreign legislation designed to further reduce energy usage?
Seriously, while many electronic devices truly go into a lower-power state when “turned off” or placed into standby, there are many more cheaply made devices with poor designs which allow the internal (or external “brick”) DC converters to sit there and continue to churn out their full capacity of electricity. “Hard” power switches on said devices are becoming more rare (or as on external “brick” devices, does little good), leaving unplugging the only option for a person determined to actually do something about saving electricity.
Want to do something about it?? Place all those “wall-warts” on a power strip (or a switched wall outlet) and turn it on/off when they are not charging or powering a device. Same goes for PC’s and their peripherals. TVs, VCRs, Sat/Cable boxes are more difficult since more often than not they need to stay powered in order to retain their data and settings. Those devices need to be redesigned to be fully power off while retaining their data… If my $10 clock radio can have a 9-volt battery backup, why can’t the TV/VCR/Sat/Cbl??
July 14th, 2006 at 4:30 am
Snopesman says:
I got a device called a “Kill-A-Watt” meter that can measure the amount of power something consumes. A lot of devices consume significant power when the device is “Off”, and they really don’t have to.
I thought the real funny part of this article was the part about using solar panels in England …. maybe they are working on something that can work through the clouds
July 14th, 2006 at 5:21 am
Alice says:
Most outlets in england have an on off switch. if you go on vacation, you can simply snap off the outlet if you really want to.
July 14th, 2006 at 5:50 am
Mike says:
Irony also means:
incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result
This most certainly IS ironic….the British Government passing a law to SAVE electricity, which will in turn no doubt USE more electricity…..IT IS IRONIC.
July 14th, 2006 at 6:02 am
J says:
Well Xerxes, I’m sorry that you are too smart for the author of this article. After all, everyone knows there is only one definition for irony. This wouldn’t be another definition at all: Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.
/sarcasm
July 14th, 2006 at 6:05 am
Alex says:
This is in response to the Yes magazine article. 1)It’s a women’s/liberal/treehugger magazine. 2)What is 9 watts per hour? I guess 9 joules per second per hour. 3)The average American leaks 50 watts. So? That’s less than one light bulb. 4)And the kicker: “Eliminating that trickle, would save $1 billion annually in wasted electricity.” That comes out to a whopping $3.33 per person . . . per year. You can save that in July by turning your thermostat up 2 degrees.
July 14th, 2006 at 6:34 am
TacoBreath says:
The Europeans have long been famous for irrationality. Let it continue unabated, so that they can reap the harvest they’ve sown. D-bags.
July 14th, 2006 at 6:57 am
Loadmaster says:
“standby modes were invented in many cases to save energy”
Okay, but how much energy do they really save?
In the old days, people used to turn off appliances they weren’t using, but today everything that’s plugged in stays on 24/7. It stands to reason that this can’t be saving energy.
July 14th, 2006 at 7:21 am
Joe says:
Actually, standby for TV’s has nothign to do with startup. It has everything to do with being able to use your remote to turn it on. Some part of the circuitry needs to remain powered. It also keeps the channel memory etc in a similar way. Some newer TV’s store that in non volotile ram but many not so much older models need to scan for channels when they are unplugged (truly powered off) and plugged back in. Same goes for the clock. VCR’s (and similar devices like TiVo’s) need to remain slightly powered to be able to use the timer and turn themselves on to record a program at a specific time. Again some part of the cicuitry needs to remain active and not truly “OFF”. It’s also nice to be able to turn those on with a remote too. These things don’t happen by magic they require electricity at some level. As components improve they draw less electricity and that is a better solution than only having ONLY true off and on. For computers it is a matter of power saving and there are a lot of people who will not turn them off.
As for the Irony bit… I find it ironic in both definitions… It’s also ironic that they are banning a feature to save electricity than (at least as far as computers go) was implemented to do just that… save electricity.
July 14th, 2006 at 7:32 am
jeem says:
Ah, England.
The whole country is covered with surveillance cameras [over 4 million according to the CS Monitor] that are ALWAYS on, and never on “standby”. Each one connected to [at least] one monitor that is always on. Connected to some type of recording device that is always on. And these are aggregated in monitoring centers all over the place that are full of other lights and equipment that are always on. 24/7/365.
But they’re going to save power by making remotes useless and by forcing businesses to leave copiers, laser printers, and computer monitors fully powered at all times.
Dudes, THAT’S irony.
July 14th, 2006 at 7:35 am
Ben says:
Good idea. Stand-by modes on consumer electronics are usually just energy hogs for clocks that aren’t set right anyway. Get rid of them. And no: I won’t just leave all my equipment on. I’ll turn it off when I stop using it for the day, as I do with the PC when I leave work, even though I don’t directly pay for that electricity. I guess I was just raised right.
July 14th, 2006 at 7:58 am
PDQ says:
The ironic thing is that, while standby mode may have been invented to save electricity (actually it enables a TV to stand by for a remote signal and allows clocks to run on VCRs; it was deemed to be a necessary waste of electricity for convenience) the actual result is that we waste energy powering things that could be turned off with no penalty.
I turn off the power strip for my AV and computer system when I stop using it. And I turn off my PC every night. And when I turn it on, I use the power-up time to…get a cup of coffee and a donut anmd say “zGood Morning” to the secretary. Ooh, I hate that! Having to get a cup of coffee before I answer my emails at work…I just wish I could get to work right away…
July 14th, 2006 at 8:15 am
Edmond says:
Britain can save a great more energy and money by withdrawing from Northern Ireland completely, end partition, and returning the jurisdiction to the Republic of Ireland.
July 14th, 2006 at 9:06 am
Edmond says:
Britain can save a great more energy and money by withdrawing from Northern Ireland completely, end partition, and returning the jurisdiction to the Republic of Ireland.
July 14th, 2006 at 9:06 am
prometicon says:
The point behind this legislation is that there are a great many devices that have no need to standby, but do so anyway. I have a DVD player that uses standby mode without the option to turn off, and yet suffers no ill effect from being unplugged. This is also true of my stereo, CD player, computer monitor, and DISHWASHER. There is no reason for a standby mode on many devices, and most people don’t know these items don’t really turn off. This legislation was aimed at those devices, which everyone thinks are turned off, and yet draw power when they don’t need to.
July 14th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Jason says:
It’s better for a computer for it to be continually powered than it is for it to be switched on and off all the time.
And how does this compare to the EnergyStar program in the US?
July 14th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Cam says:
OMG! The answer is simple! Outlaw light bulbs and subsidize energy efficient halogen bulbs. Jeez politicians are boneheads!
July 14th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Commonsense says:
Perhaps I am the only one that sees things this way.
Why would the government care what the rate of consumption of a tv on standby mode is.
My tv has standby mode. When a DVD is done playing a panasonic tab floats around.
Gee, if they were paying for my electric bill, then they can comment.
Until then, who cares?
July 15th, 2006 at 2:45 am
David Johnston says:
They aren’t proposing to eliminate standby mode, but to make it so that devices have to use only 1 watt or less when in standby mode. I believe the reason that many people are saying that this would effectively outlaw standby mode is because that would be very, very hard to do for many devices and certainly more expensive for the producers and consumers.
July 15th, 2006 at 4:55 am
Michael Santo says:
If you want to get all picky about what article I chose … I chose the first one in Google. Here’s a BBC news article which though its title says PCs, is about electronics in general.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4929594.stm
BTW, if it’s one device, you’re right, it’s not that much. But add up all the devices across the world and you can see a major savings.
July 15th, 2006 at 7:06 am
Billy Davis says:
In response to Edmond comment, NO!!! thats plain stupid, by ending partition the protestants would be up in arms, and another conflict would happen which would require armed forces be deployed therefore costing more money and consuming more energy, that is one of the most ignorant comments I’ve ever heard!
July 15th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
Standby Mode To Be Outlawed In The U.K.
Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes: I am so torn. Should I file this under the ultimate irony or just plain blatant stupidity? Since it comes to us from the United Kingdom - a nation that once accused Americans of having no sense of irony, let’s go …
July 18th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
martinelli says:
Fight type II Diabetes, the excercise it would take to walk your sorry butt across the room to turn on the TV before the remote works would not hurt you, neither would walking across the room to turn it off either.
July 22nd, 2006 at 7:30 am
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August 6th, 2006 at 2:49 am
Biglad says:
LOL the UK giv is just plain messed up they cant get anything right, so they going to try and make us save power by removing standby modes of some equipment, have they thought what will happen then the power companies suddenly get a lose in proffit, the rpice will go up so we will py the same for less!
i have 8 computers in my house and 5 of them are on 24/7/365 as they are web servers but none on them have a monitor connected and i didnt notice an increase in my bill when they got installed.
i do argree TV & HI-FIs etc. should loose the standby lights theres just no need for these lights we no they in standby whent he music stops playign in the hi-fi and all the lights og off we not that stupid we need another lgiht to tell us its off.
Biglad
October 24th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Abi says:
You American’s are hilarious.
What efforts are you making to save our planet?
If you, the largest and richest country in the world, won’t get off your lazy obese arses to turn the TV on/off, then there’s no hope for the rest of the world, no matter how hard the rest of us try.
You could always tax things some more. Maybe invade China, stop them from using the electricity they can now afford…? That will no doubt be your bit…
There are patents in progress to use small batteries in the powering of extension cables, so you can boot up the remote from there… These things are being made, as we speak.
As for Commonsense’s comment, there’s a fervent waste of energy right there…
Sheesh!
June 15th, 2007 at 2:15 am
tachyio says:
The thing is, if we outlaw standby mode, won’t everyone leave everything ON all the time?
Though yes I do agree, that perhaps with new technologies such as flash ram or magnetic ram, computers could be made to bootup instantly etc.
Hmm lots of food for thought
…standby time replaced by instant off and on.
September 14th, 2007 at 5:36 am
No More Standby Mode for TVs, etc. in the UK? | Etixet says:
[…] I saw this story this week, about the U.K. outlawing the use of standby buttons on devices like TVs, DVD players, VCRS, and I thought it was great. However, there have been a few negative postings and it took me a while to figure out why. […]
January 7th, 2008 at 5:23 am