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. Samsung strongly denies that its TVs’ “motion lighting” feature is designed to fool official energy efficiency tests or that it constitutes a defeat device. World's energy systems at risk from global warming, say leading firms Read more 
 
 Some of the ComplianTV study results were presented at a Royal Society meeting sponsored by the Energy Saving Trust in London on Tuesday. “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," the report concluded. 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. “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.
– 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.