insights
Outputs & conclusions from work completed
Direct Device Measurement Results
The findings and conclusions of the device measurement tests provided some useful insight into how different types of display react to different scenarios.
The act of streaming is a very small proportion of the energy consumption in the home, the device and display used is much more significant.
Rendering SDR as HDR can use an additional 10% to 30% more energy.
Power Factor can have a significant impact on the electricity required to be generated to power the end device during operation, requiring anything up to 10x more.
Every display shows differing characteristics of power consumption, some along technology lines, some down to specific manufacturer decision, with some counter-intuitive behaviours.
Reliable power consumption reduction can be seen when switching to SDR content / not having HDR enabled and using Audio Only mode.
Varying the brightness of the room viewing conditions can result in significant power variation on displays - up to doubling power consumption in bright conditions.
Multicast or peer to peer streaming had no significant energy impact on the display device - the end to end energy profile, including content distribution, has not yet been evaluated, but where we would expect to see an impact.
Bit rate reduction with devices like streaming sticks and TVs had no significant reduction in energy consumption.
This led the group to form the following conclusions:
The type of display/device you use has a big impact on energy consumption.
Manufacturer and OEM decisions also have a big impact on energy consumption.
Improvements to energy efficiency requires applications to be aware of the in-use display type - this requires engagement from device and display manufacturers.
Emissive or high dimming zone displays have more promise in saving energy.
Policy decisions by manufacturers of streaming devices means that most default to Auto-HDR, and this has a significant impact on energy consumption without significant benefit.
LED based displays warrant more research on improvements to energy consumption due to the consumer popularity of lower cost displays.
Consumer education could have a more significant impact than any of the measures investigated on device control, including: viewing in dimmer rooms; using devices that are optimised for streaming; and by considering the usage of high performance peripherals including games consoles.
Using hardware decoding provides the most power efficient approach.
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