TV Model: Panasonic TV-42Z90BE8 (OLED, Fire TV OS) Firmware Version: 8.1.6.6
Description:
There is a severe power management flaw regarding scheduled timer recordings. When even a single recording is scheduled—regardless of whether it is set for a few hours or several days in the future—the television completely refuses to enter Deep Standby (Red LED).
Instead, the TV permanently remains in “Active Standby / Function Standby” (Orange/Yellow LED). In this state, the mainboard and tuners stay powered on, resulting in a continuous power draw of 15 Watts.
Expected Behavior:
The TV should perform its mandatory OLED panel maintenance cycle (approx. 10 minutes) after power-off and then enter Deep Standby (< 0.5W). It should only wake up into Active Standby a few minutes before the actual scheduled timer recording starts, perform the recording, and shut down back into Deep Standby immediately after.
Why this is a critical issue:
EU Ecodesign Compliance: Keeping a TV at 15 Watts continuously for days just to wait for a timer is a direct violation of EU standby regulations (ErP Directive), which mandate a standby power consumption of less than 0.5 Watts.
Outdated Logic: Even 10-to-15-year-old dedicated satellite/cable receivers were capable of keeping a real-time clock running in Deep Standby to wake up precisely for a recording. A modern, high-end Smart TV should not fall back to inefficient 24/7 background power draw for a basic feature.
Financial and Ecological Impact: 15W of continuous standby power adds up to roughly 131 kWh per year just for waiting, generating unnecessary electricity costs and heat.
Steps to Reproduce:
Schedule a timer recording via the EPG/Guide for an event that occurs in 3 days.
Turn off the TV via the remote control.
Observe the LED: It stays Amber/Yellow indefinitely (even after the 10-minute OLED refresh completes).
Measure power consumption at the wall: It continuously draws ~15W.
Delete the scheduled recording from the timer list and turn the TV off again → The LED turns Red and power drops to < 0.5W after a few minutes.
Please forward this to the engineering/software team. The OS power management needs to be decoupled from the timer database so that the TV can utilize a “Deep Standby with Wake-Up-Timer” state.
Thank you for the detailed report with clear reproduction steps and power measurements.
We’ve documented your report with the following details:
Device: Panasonic TV-42Z90BE8 (OLED, Fire TV OS 8.1.6.6)
Issue: Scheduled timer recordings prevent Deep Standby, keeping the device at ~15W Active Standby indefinitely
Expected: Device should enter Deep Standby (<0.5W) and wake via RTC timer shortly before the scheduled recording
This has been forwarded to the relevant team for review.
We will keep you updated as we hear back from our team.
As a temporary workaround, you can schedule recordings closer to air time rather than days in advance to minimize the Active Standby duration.
Many thanks for the feedback, SW version is the most current one available 8.1.6.6 (RS8166/3485), measured via power meter (Voltcraft energy check 3000) from the wall. I deleted my planned recordings again → LED turns red (good), after a few minutes in standby, consumption drops from ~15w to 0,0w (Voltcraft doesn’t measure exactly between 0w-3w), as intended.
Can provide a detialed log if you have some description how to generate it.
@sacharja from the issue phenomena, it is most likely something blocks the device enter into deep sleep, are you able to use the ADB for debugging? if so maybe you can try to connect the ADB debugger to get the log as well? e.g.
Uploaded to #1781195749 (logcat is hard since I only have one linux laptop in a different wlan, but let me know if it helps already. Otherwise I would try to setup ADB [ TBH I was not even able to enable developer mode on the TV to enable ADB debugging])
Sure (as said can provide a logcat, but need to know ho to enable developer mode, clicking on info or TV seven times has no impact on my TV), anyhow, not a new topic:
1. The Core Architecture of Fire OS
Fire TV OS is built on top of Android (Android 11 for OS 8). Unlike a traditional, lightweight TV firmware, Fire OS runs a heavy suite of background systems (such as the Amazon Device Client, Alexa wake-word standby, and persistent sync frameworks). If any internal system service registers a persistent lock or “WakeLock,” the operating system’s kernel is prevented from entering a deep sleep state (suspend-to-RAM). Knowing that a scheduled recording must keep an active database listener explains why the OS refuses to drop into deep standby.
2. Historical TV Software Patterns
This exact power management flaw has historically happened with other Smart TV operating systems when they first introduced USB PVR (Personal Video Recorder) features.
Platforms like Android TV / Google TV and early versions of Roku TV suffered from the exact same “active standby” bugs in their early iterations. [1]
When a timer is set, the OS developer often takes the “shortcut” of leaving the main SoC (System on a Chip) powered on at a low clock speed rather than writing the complex code required to register a hardware alarm in the TV’s low-power sub-processor to trigger a cold boot.
3. Test Environment
Testing environment mismatches: They often test Fire OS on streaming sticks (like the Fire TV Stick 4K), which completely lack local broadcast tuners, EPG guides, and USB PVR recording frameworks.
Missing hardware constraints: They may be testing on a standard LCD Fire TV rather than an OLED model like your Z90B, which behaves differently because it requires a mandatory 10-minute panel pixel-refresh period immediately after turning off before it even tries to drop into deep sleep.
Thank you for the continued patience. We’d like to pull and review the logs you uploaded (tag #1781195749).
Could you please share your device’s DSN (Device Serial Number)? You can find it here:
Settings → My Fire TV → About → Serial Number (or on some TV models: Settings → Device & Software → About)
Alternatively, the DSN is also printed on the device label/packaging.
This will allow us to locate your uploaded logs in our system.
Regarding Developer Options - on Fire TV Edition televisions (built-in TVs), the path is often different from streaming sticks. Could you confirm your exact Fire OS version? (Settings → My Fire TV → About → Software Version). We’ll provide the correct steps for your model.