Televisions are ubiquitous electronic appliances that are popular around the world. Research by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India suggests that televisions are owned by nearly 200 million Indian households, out of nearly 300 million households, which implies that 66% of Indian households have a television.

The total number of televisions purchased in India has been increasing, and the average number of hours that the TV audience is watching television has also been growing. As per BARC study measuring viewership in India, in the year 2016, India recorded 35 trillion hours of television viewing, which grew to 48.4 trillion hours in 2019.

Recognizing the increase in energy consumption due to the increasing number of hours of television viewership compounded by the increasing number of televisions sold in India, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) has made it mandatory for televisions (with native resolution up to 1920 X 1080 pixels) being sold in the country to follow Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) as well as energy performance labeling . The BEE’s program also facilitates comparative energy performance of different television models to enable informed purchase decision making for consumers towards energy efficient televisions. A new technology commercially known as Ultra High Definition (UHD) television is now available in the market, and sales of UHD televisions are growing every year. The UHD televisions are not covered under BEE’s existing program for televisions and therefore, as more consumers replace their current television with UHD televisions, or purchase additional televisions which are UHD, television energy consumption is expected to increase significantly.

BEE, with support from CLASP, is expanding the scope of the existing television labelling program to cover televisions with UHD technology. To achieve this, BEE and CLASP worked with Environmental Design Solutions (EDS) to make a comprehensive assessment of the Indian UHD television market through primary and secondary research to formulate a comparative energy efficiency labeling standard for UHD televisions. The research focused on multiple aspects of the UHD television market, such as the overall size of the market, the distribution of sales among various size categories, the market shares of various market players, the performance data of the various models of each market player, the supply chain of the products, etc.

This work was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.