Last week, the NCTA put out an announcement touting an energy savings valued at $3.5 billion since top pay TV operators and vendors began working back in 2012 to lower energy consumption of set-tops.

Of course, as is usually the perspective of the tech press, the the linear pay TV industry’s glass is half empty.

Related: NCTA: More Than 100M OTT Devices Were Used in 2017 to Access Pay TV Services sans Set-top

As noted by VentureBeat, the typical power-saving mode on the average pay TV DVR delivers a minuscule energy savings—a dynamic the site compared to the “close door” button on elevators, which have generally been inert since the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed.

“They knew people feel better with a button to push when they are feeling impatient,” VentureBeat writer Joe Bamberg noted. “It seems cable and telco companies have taken their cues from elevator manufacturers in the design of their DVRs.”

Bamberg analyzed data compiled by D+R International, the independent auditor who has analyzed the six-year energy savings progress generated by the pay TV industry-wide consortium. He also factored in energy-use data from pay TV companies including Comcast.

An Arris-made Xfinity DVR, he noted, consumes 24.5 watts while on power-save/standby/sleep mode—just 5.7% less juice than the 26 watts it uses when it’s in its full operational setting.

This is unnecessary, Bamberg noted, given that other video devices figure out how to power up and down quickly with significant energy savings. Sony’s PlayStation 4, for example, gobbles up 137 watts while powered on, but only 8.5 watts while it’s sleeping.

Bamberg said that many pay TV set-tops use Broadcom BCM 7425 chip, which has four different sleep modes. “One of the sleep modes would bring your cable box back to full operation from an extremely low power, deep sleep in five seconds,” he wrote. "A simple software tweak could enable low power mode and significantly reduce energy usage while imposing negligible manufacturing costs on the cable providers.”

Interestingly, Bamberg based his findings on D+R’s August 2017 report, which studied 2016 set-tops and not the latest D+R report issued last week--and cited by the NCTA in the cable lobbying org’s much more positive spin on pay TV set-top energy use.

While both reports support the author’s conclusion, the most recent one studying 2017 set-tops has a few green shoots in terms of sleep mode energy performance.

For example, the Charter’s Technicolor-made model 8640HDC2 DVR delivers nearly a 22% electricity savings while in sleep mode. DirecTV’s H44-500 saves only 9.6% of power in sleep mode, but it only uses 10.4 watts while in full operation.

The pay TV industry seems to disagree that its DVRs can be powered up quickly from more energy-efficient levels of sleep.

“While some power scaling successes have been achieved, set-top boxes in ‘light’ sleep mode typically use much of the power that they consume in on mode, and trialed ‘deep’ sleep modes had re-start times too lengthy to be tolerated by consumers,” D+R noted in its latest report.

Bamberg seems to shoot down this industry-side assertion effectively. But perhaps the focus on sleep mode efficiency misses some larger points.

Overall, pay TV DVRs used 11% less power than they did in 2016, according to the latest D+R report, and a whopping 46% less than they did in 2012, when the industry-wide power-saving collaboration started.

The list of set-tops studied by D+R in 2017 includes an increasing number of thin-client devices, most of which use less than 10 watts in full operation.

While U.S. pay TV operators had around 52,673,000 DVR set-tops in the market in 2016, the number declined to 49,891,000 last year. In fact, the number of thin-client and “non-DVR” pay TV set-tops declined, too, as cord cutting and the rise of virtual services began to transform consumer engagement habits in earnest. The number of all U.S. pay TV set-tops in the market dropped about 5.6% to 201.7 million.

Is the point moot?

“Smart TVs are absolutely part of our strategy and our vision,” said Comcast’s Xfinity services chief Matthew Strauss, telling Fast Company last month that the No. 1 cable operator is now full onboard with streaming its X1 platform to connected TV’s instead of delivering it with a leased proprietary set-top. “When you look at the video landscape today, there are more choices than have ever been available before at the touch of a remote. It’s a good time to be alive if you like television.”

A voluntary set-top box energy conservation agreement that’s supported by the pay-TV industry, consumer electronics manufactures and other advocates have saved $2.1 billion and 11.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the past four years, a report shows.

The report, from independent auditor D+R International and distributed Wednesday by the Consumer Technology Association and the NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, found that consumers saved about $941 million in energy costs in 2016 alone.

The carbon dioxide savings is equal to removing 2.5 million cards from the road for a year, the report found.

RELATED: Pay-TV Firms, CEA, Energy Agree On Set-Top Standards

The voluntary agreement aimed at boosting the energy efficiency of set-tops as signed in 2012. Signatories include MVPDs such as AT&T/DirecTV, Comcast, Charter Communications, Verizon, Dish Network, Cox Communications and CenturyLink as well as box makers that include Arris, Technicolor and EchoStar Technologies, and energy efficiency advocates (Natural Resources Defense Council, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, and the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP). CableLabs has also contributed by researching and developing energy efficiency strategies.

D+R estimated that nearly three-fourths of all DVRs in the field today were purchased under the voluntary agreement’s energy standards, and that new DVR models now use an average of 40% less energy than those bought prior to the agreement. Service providers are also upgrading devices to support reduced power modes during periods of inactivity. 

Among set-tops purchased between 2013 to 2016, the weighted average of energy consumption for DVRs is down 40%, non-DVRs are down 28%, thin-client boxes are down 48%, and DTAs (digital transport adapters) are down 28%.

The initial term of the Voluntary Agreement is set to expire at the end of this year, but the parties recently issued a joint statement that there are talks underway and optimism that there will be a consensus to extend the terms for several more years.

Per the latest annual audit, 98.6% of all new set-tops meet Energy Star efficiency standards, and that signatories pledge to support higher energy efficient standards that became effective Jan. 1, 2017 for 90% of their purchases this year.

Following a similar initiative that’s underway in the U.S., a group of Canadian  MVPDs and some of their key suppliers have inked a voluntary agreement that aims to improve the energy efficiency of set-top boxes.

The Canadian Energy Efficiency Voluntary Agreement (CEEVA) aims to reduce total annual energy consumption and avoid more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to more than 44,000 sub-compact new vehicles driving 15,000 kilometers per year.

On board with the voluntary program as signatories are Bell, Cogeco Communications, Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications, and Vidéotron, MVPDs that serve more than 88% of Canada’s pay TV market, along with two set-top makers – Arris and EchoStar Technologies.

Under the program, at least 90% of all new set-tops purchased starting this year are expected to meet the agreement’s energy efficiency standards, while also factoring in complementary measures such as the Energy Star program. That, they estimate, will reduce the total annual energy output of Canadian STBs from 3.4 terawatt hours in 2016 to 2.7 TWh in 2021.

They’ll keep track of the results via annual reporting and audit mechanisms.

Several other organizations and companies are also extending their support, including Natural Resources Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Energy, the BC Ministry of Energy and Mines, Quebec’s Ministère de l'Énergie et des Ressources naturelles, Manitoba’s Department of Growth, Enterprise and Trade, BC Hydro, Independent Electricity System Operator, Manitoba Hydro, SaskPower, and Hydro Québec, the Consumer Technology Association, CableLabs and CSA Group.

Several U.S. MVPDs forged a similar voluntary energy-saving agreement for set-tops in late 2012 and a cross-industry group announced the standards to be applied the following year. That was later followed by an agreement focused on routers, modems and other broadband equipment.

A new independent audit found that a voluntary set-top energy savings agreement inked in 2012 has saved consumers more than $500 million over a two-year period.

The report, from D&R International, said the improved energy efficiency achieved by set-tops in 2013 and 2014 also avoided nearly three million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions during that span. 

Last year's report by the same outfit found that the voluntary pact had saved consumers about $168 million in energy bills, and nearly 842,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

“This progress is really important because set-top boxes were estimated to draw $3 billion worth of electricity annually in 2012,” Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted in this blog post about the latest audit results. 

U.S. pay TV firms, consumer electronics manufacturers and energy efficiencies advocates announced the voluntary set-top energy conservation program in 2012.

The new report said a major driver of energy cost savings was a 33% decline in the weighted average of energy consumption of DVRs, the biggest energy-sucker in the set-top box category -- over two years. 

By comparison, the report found that there was a 13% decline in weighted average energy consumption in non-DVR boxes from 2012 to 2014, and a 44% decline on “thin client” boxes. The outlier was the Digital Terminal Adapter -- simple one-way digital-to-analog converter boxes used by MSO to fuel all-digital upgrades -- which saw a 26% increase. The report noted that most DTAs purchased in 2013 and 2014 included HD and advanced video processing capability, which increased energy usage, but also found that 100% of the models purchased in 2014 still met the Tier 1 (Energy Star version 3.0) energy efficiency standards.

Overall, 95% service provider set-top purchases in 2014 met the Energy Star Version 3.0 standards, a 12% increase from 2013, the first year of the voluntary agreement, and those boxes use about 14% less energy than boxes previously issued by the service providers, the report said.

Additionally, 62% of service providers’ set-top box purchases last year (a 32% increase from the year before) already meet a set of Tier 2 energy efficiency levels, which will be the new baseline for the 90% procurement commitment in 2017.

“The Voluntary Agreement on set-top box energy efficiency is yielding energy savings for consumers and the nation,” said Jennifer Amann, Buildings Program Director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), in a statement. “New set-top boxes offer updated designs and new features while reducing energy use and consumer energy bills. By meeting the commitments of the Voluntary Agreement, pay-TV companies are demonstrating that energy efficiency and product innovation go hand in hand.”

“The second Annual Report is further proof that rigorous, voluntary, private sector-driven agreements can provide comprehensive energy and related-cost savings for consumers and the country,” added Doug Johnson, vice president, technology policy, Consumer Electronics Association. “This report – an important deliverable of the Voluntary Agreement – offers transparency, public accountability and objective updates on our progress toward greater energy efficiency for pay TV set-top boxes.”

“The significant energy savings that have resulted from this voluntary industry agreement show how strongly committed the cable industry is to finding creative ways to improve the overall consumer experience,” said Neal Goldberg, general counsel for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. “We will continue to work with our vendor community and other stakeholders to explore ways that set-top boxes and other equipment can become even more energy efficient.”