Toshiba announced on Wednesday that it is developing an LCD TV and a Blu-ray Disc (BD) recorder that consume no power in the standby mode.
The company plans to commercialize the new REGZA devices within fiscal 2011.
The devices are equipped with the "Eco Chip," essentially a semoconductor chip with a capacitor that stores electric power. A mechanical relay positioned between the AC power cable and the power supply circuit inside each device is controlled by the Eco Chip. In the standby mode, the mechanical relay is turned off, meaning that the device is consuming zero power as when its AC power cable is unplugged. During prolonged periods in standby mode, the Eco Chip turns on the mechanical relay to charge the Eco Chip's capacitor. The charging time is about five minutes with a power consumption of 0.13W.
When a user powers up the device using the remote control, the Eco Chip turns on the mechanical relay and restarts supplying power to the device.
Toshiba aims to reduce the power consumption of the Eco Chip to 150μW.
Toshiba also developed the "RZ Power-Saving Remo," an Android application for reducing the power consumption of its Regza series of LCD TVs. The application enables to automatically or manually set a power-saving mode in accordance with power consumption by using the "Electricity Forecast" and "Power Consumption Meter" information, which Yahoo! Japan provides to Android-based smartphones and tablet computers.
Toshiba plans to start distribution of the application for free in the Android Market in mid-July 2011.