EU may ban ‘defeat devices’ after laboratory tests raise questions over whether some TVs could be set up to game efficiency tests 
 
 Independent lab tests have found that some Samsung TVs in Europe appear to use less energy during official testing conditions than they do during real-world use, raising questions about whether they are set up to game energy efficiency tests. 
 
 The European commission says it will investigate any allegations of cheating the tests and has pledged to tighten energy efficiency regulations to outlaw the use of so-called “defeat devices” in TVs or other consumer products, after several EU states raised similar concerns. 
 
 The apparent discrepancy between real-world and test performance of the TVs is reminiscent of the VW scandal that originated in the US last week. The car company has admitted fitting software to 11m diesel vehicles worldwide which meant the cars produced less pollution during testing than real-world driving. 
 
 Samsung strongly denies that its TVs’ “motion lighting” feature is designed to fool official energy efficiency tests or that it constitutes a defeat device. The company says it reduces screen brightness in response to numerous types of real-world content including fast-moving action movies and sports and slower moving footage such as weather reports - not just during test conditions. 
 
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 “There is no comparison [between motion lighting and VW defeat devices],” a Samsung spokesman said. “This is not a setting that only activates during compliance testing. On the contrary, it is an ‘out of the box’ setting, which reduces power whenever video motion is detected. Not only that, the content used for testing energy consumption has been designed by the international electrotechnical commission to best model actual average picture level internationally.” 
 
 The apparent differences came to light in unpublished lab tests by an EU-funded research group called ComplianTV which recorded consistently higher energy consumption rates for the company’s models in real-world situations than in official test conditions. 
 
 The lab studies found that Samsung’s ‘motion lighting’ feature reduced the TV sets’ brightness – and power consumption – under international electrotechnical commission (IEC) test conditions. These involve the playback of fast sequences of varied material, such as recorded TV shows, DVDs and live broadcasts. 
 
 But under real-world viewing conditions, no reductions in power consumption were registered, making the sets’ power consumption, fuel bills and carbon emissions correspondingly higher. 
 
 After tests in February, a ComplianTV report, which did not name Samsung, said: “The laboratories observed different TV behaviours during the measurements and this raised the possibility of the TV’s detecting a test procedure and adapting their power consumption accordingly. Such phenomenon was not proven within the ComplianTV tests, but some tested TVs gave the impression that they detected a test situation.” 
 
 “Samsung is meeting the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law,” Rudolf Heinz, the project manager of ComplianTV’s product lab, told the Guardian. 
 
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 Some of the ComplianTV study results were presented at a Royal Society meeting sponsored by the Energy Saving Trust in London on Tuesday. 
 
 There is no suggestion that Samsung, the world’s biggest TV manufacturer, behaved illegally, although energy efficiency campaigners claim that EU testing procedures are overly generous. 
 
 In response to a Guardian inquiry, the European commission pledged to outlaw the use of defeat devices within the bloc’s TV ecodesign regulations, and said that any allegations of their use would be fully investigated. 
 
 “The commission is proposing specific text to clarify that [the use of defeat devices] is illegal and that products found to behave differently under test conditions cannot be considered compliant,” a spokesperson said. “The commission will investigate whether this practice is used in other product sectors.” 
 
 Several EU states have already complained about the problem, including the Swedish Energy Agency in a letter to the European commission earlier this year. 
 
 “The Swedish Energy Agency’s Testlab has come across televisions that clearly recognise the standard film (IEC) used for testing,” says the letter, which the Guardian has seen. “These displays immediately lower their energy use by adjusting the brightness of the display when the standard film is being run. This is a way of avoiding the market surveillance authorities and should be addressed by the commission.” The letter did not name any manufacturers. 
 
 “There’s more than a whiff of diesel fumes coming out of this, with officials finding gadgets that recognise test conditions and alter their behaviour,” said Jack Hunter, a spokesman for the European Environmental Bureau an environmental watchdog funded by European governments and international bodies. “If deception is proved for TVs, there’s bound to be a fresh hoard of angry customers à la Volkswagen.” 
 
 Three years earlier, the UK also told the commission that it had received intelligence indicating that some TVs had been pre-installed with default software settings that changed static video signals to dynamic ones, reducing luminance and power consumption. 
 
 “The purpose seems to be to pass the peak luminance measurement test and then reduce luminance (and power) to get a better energy label ranking when the on power is measured,” the correspondence says. “All very clever and it is not dimming so much that it makes a huge difference, but does the commission consider this an acceptable practice or is this a non-compliant activity?” 
 
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 The commission did not respond to a request for its answer to the question. But one UK market surveillance officer told the Guardian that the use of defeat devices was “an area of increasing risk to us – not just in TVs but across the board and future programmes are being duly adjusted to look at these areas.” 
 
 Research underway by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in the US has also uncovered what Noah Horowitz, the NRDC’s director for energy efficiency standards called “a curious anomaly with one manufacturer’s TV’s”. 
 
 More testing is planned to establish whether manufacturers are gaming television testing procedures. But “it wouldn’t take much for an unscrupulous manufacturer to install software to detect the unique ‘signature’ of the test and to then have the unit go into some sort of eco-mode and produce superior results (ie lower energy use) that wouldn’t occur under normal usage,” Horowitz said. 
 
 Televisions typically consume up to 10% of a typical household’s electricity use, according to coolproducts, a coalition of NGOs which campaigns for energy-saving product designs. The group says that across Europe, TVs now account for as much energy use as the combined electricity consumption of Sweden and Portugal, and that this figure is growing. ||||| Image copyright Samsung Image caption Samsung acknowledges that it uses software that has an impact on its energy efficiency scores 
 
 The European Commission says it is "following up" two reports that raise concerns that software used in TVs may be skewing their energy rating scores. 
 
 One study indicates that some Samsung TVs nearly halve their power consumption when a standardised test is carried out. 
 
 Another accuses a different unnamed manufacturer of adjusting the brightness of its sets when they "recognise" the test film involved. 
 
 Samsung has denied any wrongdoing. 
 
 It acknowledged that it used software that altered its televisions' performance during tests, but said this was the effect of a general energy efficiency feature that came into effect during normal use and had nothing to do with the testing process. 
 
 However, one environmental campaign group has likened the accusations to the Volkswagen diesel scandal, in which the German car firm admitted to programming its cars to deliberately cheat emissions tests. 
 
 Power drop 
 
 Televisions' energy efficiency ratings are based on the power they use while screening a 10-minute video, which contains a mix of fast and slow-moving content shown at different brightness levels. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Manufacturers must carry out a standardised energy efficiency test before they can put their screens on sale 
 
 Manufacturers run the test themselves and then file the results. Some of these are then double-checked by various countries' energy regulatory bodies. 
 
 The study involving Samsung was carried out by ComplianTV, a consortium that represents various non-governmental organisations including the UK's Energy Saving Trust (EST). News of the study was first reported by the Guardian newspaper. 
 
 ComplianTV's researchers found that the power demands of one of the South Korean firm's LCD TVs dropped from 70 watts to about 39 watts within a minute of the test video starting. 
 
 "That's not normal, it's an anomaly," explained Richard Kay, an EST spokesman. 
 
 But he added: "We don't have any evidence to back up the accusation that Samsung has a technology to recognise when it is tested." 
 
 Image copyright ComplianTV Image caption This graph shows how the Samsung TV reduced its power requirement shortly after the start of the test 
 
 Samsung said it "firmly rejected" suggestions that it had designed its TV settings to deliberately produce misleading power performance results. 
 
 But it acknowledged that "motion lighting" - a feature introduced in 2011 that controls TV screens' backlights - was causing the discrepancy. 
 
 "It is a standard out-of-the-box feature, which is switched on when the customer takes delivery of their TV, and remains on whenever the customer chooses to watch their TV in standard viewing mode," it said in a blog. 
 
 "It is a default setting which works both in the lab and at home; delivering energy savings and helping us to reduce our environmental impact." 
 
 Dimmer picture 
 
 The second study was carried out by the Swedish Energy Agency, which wrote to the European Commission to alert it of its findings in January. 
 
 The agency has not disclosed which company's televisions it tested. 
 
 But the BBC understands that sets belonging to a single manufacturer that was not Samsung were judged to "clearly recognise" the test film. 
 
 "These displays immediately lower their energy use by adjusting the brightness of the display when the standard film is being run," the report concluded. 
 
 "This is a way of avoiding the market surveillance authorities and should be addressed by the Commission." 
 
 'Brave new world' 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption A UK watchdog raised concerns about TVs changing their power requirements during tests four years ago 
 
 The European Commission said it now planned to explore the two sets of findings. 
 
 "We will follow up both of them," Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, spokeswoman for climate action and energy, told the BBC. 
 
 "We will first of all verify if the problem has occurred. If it has we will estimate at what scale and whether the use of alleged defeat devices results in products being tested as compliant when they are in fact not. 
 
 "So, we therefore cannot yet judge the extent of the problem." 
 
 She stressed that at this stage the Commission had not launched a formal investigation. 
 
 One campaign group highlighted that UK regulators had raised concerns about some TVs adjusting their power-use during tests "to get a better energy label ranking" as far back as 2011. 
 
 "We've got government agencies appearing to find gadgets that detect test conditions, which smacks of the VW case," said Jack Hunter from the European Environmental Bureau. 
 
 "We're entering a brave new world of sophisticated, connected technology, which could be a great thing, but is also open to abuse. 
 
 "It's vital that government officials have the resources and a bullish attitude to ensure that everyone is playing by the rules."
– Claims are coming in from multiple European countries that television manufacturers are pulling a Volkswagen and installing software to cheat energy-efficiency tests, the BBC reports. An EU-funded lab presented findings Tuesday that showed televisions manufactured by Samsung—the largest television manufacturer in the world—cut their energy consumption nearly in half during efficiency tests through their "motion lighting" feature, which would activate under test conditions but not under normal viewing. Critics are comparing it to this month's Volkswagen scandal, in which the company installed software to fool emissions tests, according to the Guardian. “There is no comparison,” a Samsung spokesperson says. “This is not a setting that only activates during compliance testing." Earlier this year, the Swedish Energy Council complained to the European Commission that another, unnamed television manufacturer had sets that recognized the standard test video and immediately dimmed to cut energy use when the video started, the BBC reports. And the United Kingdom complained about similar "defeat software" in televisions three years ago, according to the Guardian. Televisions in Europe account for the equivalent of the total electrical consumption of Sweden and Portugal every year. If televisions are cheating efficiency tests, that means energy consumption, electricity bills, and carbon emissions are all higher than advertised. The European Commission says it will be investigating the claims.