The article states this - "Well, it turns out that all this environmental friendliness is starting to trip over itself, because most devices now start up in standby mode."
Is this the best way for energy efficiency or should there be a different standard?
I'm of the opinion that devices that have a standby mode should either have an option to power on in standby mode, or remember the mode they were in when powered off. Many computer firmwares have a setting like this.
Though I think what's really missing is a reputable general standard for device control. The master/slave power board thing is a kind of hack using the most primitive kind of signalling we can manage at the moment.
In my ideal world I'd have a control panel somewhere where I could set up rules like "the sound system needs the TV to be on". Maybe the TV could even know that it should turn on the sound system it is connected to, though that's crazy optimistic for the current state of home automation.
In theory HDMI-CEC could do this, well if all your devices support CEC. You would have got chances with your homecinema though. They even have an opensourcelib now http://libcec.pulse-eight.com/ .Saw this for the first time, haven't done any AV-Projects in the past years, but maybe I give it a try
Is this the best way for energy efficiency or should there be a different standard?