Sky's innovative auto standby feature is a simple way of reducing the power consumption of all Sky boxes by turning them to standby automatically when they're not in use, and is saving energy in our customers' households and reducing carbon emissions across the UK. New software is being downloaded onto Sky+ boxes that will enable auto standby to work 24 hours a day.

Previously, boxes go on to standby at night (between 11pm and 3.30am) if they have been inactive for two hours, but now Sky+ boxes will go into standby after four hours of inactivity during the daytime.

The environmental benefits can be shared by everyone; improvements to the energy efficiency of our set top boxes have helped customers save approximately 90,000 tonnes of CO2 a year*. The financial benefit for Sky customers of auto standby is a reduction of approximately £12m a year from their electricity bills!

*90,000 tonnes is a conservative figure based on the roll-out of day and night time auto-standby to all digiboxes in the market, with 12 hours on and 12 hours in standby.