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Powering down TiVo when not in use.
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Posted by: cnaumann

OK, really now, there is absolutely nothing on TV between the hours of 12Midnight and 6PM that I am interested in watching. This means that my TiVo is running 18 hours a day more than it really needs to be running. The thing is, that is not a trivial amount of power...

If the TiVo is pulling 40W (wild guess), that is about 30kWh a month, or, at 8 cents/kWhr $2.40 a month (that TiVo subscription is actually 24% higher than most people think!!) -- over $28/year. Tack on another 30% for the months you run A/C. I could cut the energy use by 75% just by turning the silly thing off when it is not in use.

A simple mechanical or electronic timer (pulling less than 3W) should do the trick... but the reason I ask here... has anyone tried this? Does anyone know of any drawbacks to doing this? Also, does anyone know the actual power draw of a dual-disk drive stand-alone TiVo?

I am not worried about wear and tear on the disk drives. I simply do not believe that drives that run all the time last any longer than drives that are powered down daily. I am concerned about the daily call, the clock battery and other unintended consequences of doing this.

Any thoughts? Any first hand experience?

Posted by: inaka

Well, wear and tear on the hard drive would be my first concern. However, if that's not a concern to you, then that would mean two draw backs:

1. Your TiVo would be making the daily call when you're home and awake (meaning you could possibly miss an incoming phone call or two.)

Or more importantly...

2. You'd be missing out on recording anything from 12am to 6pm!!! I don't understand why you think there's nothing interesting on during those hours. You really should take the time and scan though the movies, documentaries, etc on your TiVo's menu guide. You may find quite a bit of material worth watching. I know I do.

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Inaka
Oakland, CA
Phillips HD112 - 198 hr 2.5.1

Posted by: Otto

I'd be surprised if it was really pulling an average of 40W all the time. Anyone with the right equipment want to check the power usage on a standalone?

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<FONT size="1">All comments made in this post are my opinion and my opinion alone. Deal with it.
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Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by inaka:
You'd be missing out on recording anything from 12am to 6pm!!! I don't understand why you think there's nothing interesting on during those hours.

I find I often miss the local evening news. I find it nice that my TiVo picks up the 9 PM news at 3 AM as a suggestion for me now and then.

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http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/tivo/HTHb.gif

Posted by: Saturn

quote:
Originally posted by Otto:
I'd be surprised if it was really pulling an average of 40W all the time. Anyone with the right equipment want to check the power usage on a standalone?

Remind me in a couple weeks (after X-mas http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/biggrin.gif ), and I should have the equipment to measure the current draw of the TiVo quite accurately.

[This message has been edited by Saturn49 (edited 12-11-2001).]

Posted by: 33

All you need is a power strip with an on/off switch. Hit the power switch and TIVO is off. Personally, every show I record runs during the night/day. I hate prime time TV. That's why TIVO is the greatest material possession I have! I would never, never, never turn it off.

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http://www.thirtythree.com

Posted by: mcline

Being the curious type, I did some testing...

For a Phillips HDR312 single drive:
During bootup: 17 Watts
During idle or active use: 20 Watts
During "Standby Mode": 20 Watts (just blanks video out)

Note: If you have a two drive model, it would be reasonable to add 5 watts to the numbers...

My two bits: Having just recovered my corrupt tivo drive, I would be very concerned about data corruption when consistently powering down the tivo.

Michael

Posted by: cnaumann

mcline, how did you measure the power drawn by your TiVo?

I attempted to measure the power drawn by my TiVo (I got real curious after I posted) using a 'true RMS' Fluke 89 mulitmeter. Here are the results: My line voltage is 124V. The TiVo pulled about 350mA during boot-up and about 395mA doing everything else. I also had a strand of 35 Christmas tree lights that pulled 200mA. I figure the Christmass tree lamps are pretty close to an ideal resistive load. When I connected both the Christmas tree lamps and the TiVo, the combined current draw was 537mA.

Now assuming 'a' is the real current drawn by TiVo and 'b' is the imaginary current drawn by TiVo and 'c' is the real current drawn by the Christmas tree lamps (and that the Christmas tree lamps only draw real current) then we can write:

a^2 + b^2 = 158^2
(a + c)^2 + b^2 = 318^2

c = 200

Rearranging:

a = (537^2 - 395^2 - 200^2)/(2*200) = 230mA

the real power drawn is therefor 230*124=28,600mW or 28.6W

Since your unit is a single drive and mine is a dual drive, I can easily believe that my unit is pulling 8.6W more than yours.

Without the power factor correction, the DC power formula (P=V*I) would have give an answer almost twice as high, 49.6W.

I also measured the standby power of several other appliances: my microwave pulls 6.2W, my coffee maker, 1.3W, a mechanical timer 2.8W, and my TV/VCR 5.7W.

Posted by: Want1394

That 1.3W coffee maker is sure going to take a long time to get to that 195 degree brewing temperature!

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TOTAL Digital

Posted by: Tasky

I would say that pulling the plug on the TiVo a LOT is going to cause it to fail a lot sooner than you think. The Hard Drive wear and tear is the least of your worries. No operating system that is currently writing to the hard disk is going to survive a lot of power downs while writing data to the disks.

All you have to do is happen to catch it at the wrong time and BAM, dead TiVo. Any number of things could get corrupted. You database if you zap it during indexing or garbage collection, a hard error on a disk while recording a movie, etc.

As for nothing on between 12am and 6pm. You should check your guide more often. The beneft of having a TiVo is that you can watch the things that are on during those hours without actually being up during those hours. I love to come home after work at 5:30 and have a bunch of shows waiting for me that TiVo faithfully recorded the night before or during the day.

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-Tasky

[This message has been edited by Tasky (edited 12-12-2001).]

Posted by: controlio

Your concerns over your TiVo's power draw are unwarranted. As it stands, my dual-drive modded TiVo draws about half the power of my lava lamp, and only a fraction of the power draw of one of my lightbulbs in my house. If you really want to be astounded, go measure the power draw of the Griswold-style christmas light display you have in your front yard. You'd be amazed.

If you're looking to shave dollars off your electricity bill, TiVo should be the least of your problems. Install flourescent lighting, turn your heat down 1deg, unplug units that have "digital clocks" on the front of them (VCRs, Microwaves), and eliminate any "surge protectors" you have in your house. Each of these draws power, constantly, and at a much more significant rate than your TiVo does.

In all honesty, adding an extra layer of insulation to your home would give you far better electricity bills than unplugging your TiVo overnight ever would. Take some time, go around and measure the "standby" draw of each of the devices in your home. I bet you won't have any problem finding over 100w of draw on devices you never thought absorbed power while turned off. There are MANY articles written on this phenomenon, go look at some "solar powered home" magazines.

Oh, and on average, the biggest energy draw in a home is the refrigerator. Got one that's more than 2 years old? Go replace it. You'll shave more money off your electricity bill than you'd think.

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"Wit is educated Insolence." -Aristotle

Posted by: Ricochet

I appreciate your good efforts to conserve resources, both natural and financial. Data corruption is certainly a concern. We know that turning off a computer, in the process of writing data to the hard drive, isn't good practice. For this sole reason, I wouldn't cut power to my TiVo on a regular basis. To be safe, my Sony TiVo is always plugged into my computer's APC UPS, along with the Sony DirecTV box.

Lots of things are on in some capacity when they are switched off. A television, for instance.

Posted by: cnaumann

Originally posted by controlio:

If you really want to be astounded, go measure the power draw of the Griswold-style christmas light display you have in your front yard. You'd be amazed.

I have been fairly modest this year in front yard displays. Even still, a 1,000 light display (30 strands of 35 Lights) is only about 750W. Four hours a day for 4 weeks is 84kWh is only $7 worth of juice. Much much less than a year of TiVo.

If you're looking to shave dollars off your electricity bill, TiVo should be the least of your problems.

From my revised power estimates, TiVo accounts for less than 2% of my power use. Not worth making a major fuss over, still, a lot of that power is wasted. There is really no need for the drives to spin continuously. I wish I could designate a 'sleep time' where it would spin down the drives and shut of the MPEG chip during parts of the day where there is no chance of anyone watching the live TV stream. I agree that removing power to the unit daily is not a good idea.

Install flourescent lighting, turn your heat down 1deg, unplug units that have "digital clocks" on the front of them (VCRs, Microwaves), and eliminate any "surge protectors" you have in your house. Each of these draws power, constantly, and at a much more significant rate than your TiVo does.

I have switched most of my non-decorative lighting to CF bulbs, the current generation of these devices works very well (and costs less than $4 a bulb!!). Turning down the heat could save some energy, but a single degree will be noticed comfort-wise and will not result in a significant power savings (figure if the average outdoor temp is 45 degrees, and the indoor temp is 72 I could achieve about a 4% reduction in the amount of power required for heating. This is on the same order of power used by TiVo...

BTW I also heat water off the waste heat from my air conditioning in the summer and with my heat pump in the winter.

I have measured the standby current of many devices, and also attempted to tell if the current is 'reactive' meaning that the current draw does not result in any power consumption. Many VCRs, TV and Microwaves pull on the order of 3-5W. I doubt I have 100W worth of such devices in my house. The TiVo is pulling 28W... other appliances with 'digital' clocks pull under 1.5W. I wish the standby current of these devices was lower, but there is not really much I can do about it (it is way too much hassle to install switches or pull cords every time I want to watch TV). I have yet to find a surge protector that draws a significant amount of power. I have also discovered that many cheap 'Wall Wart' transformers used 3-5W when plugged in.

In all honesty, adding an extra layer of insulation to your home would give you far better electricity bills than unplugging your TiVo overnight ever would. Take some time, go around and measure the "standby" draw of each of the devices in your home. I bet you won't have any problem finding over 100w of draw on devices you never thought absorbed power while turned off. There are MANY articles written on this phenomenon, go look at some "solar powered home" magazines.

It is not the the TiVo by itself is drawing a huge amount of power. It is simply one of dozens of things in my house that is using much more power than is needed. In TiVo's case, it is using almost 3 times more power than is really required.

Oh, and on average, the biggest energy draw in a home is the refrigerator. Got one that's more than 2 years old? Go replace it. You'll shave more money off your electricity bill than you'd think.

Unless of course you keep the old fridge out in the garage to cool beer...

It is true that some old refrigerators pulled substantial amounts of power. Many had heating coils around them to prevent condensation. These heaters ran all the time and some pulled over 100W. A modern refrigerator will only use about 750kWh/year (about 3 times as much as a TiVo). Modern efficeincy standards for refrigerators have been in effect almost 8 years now, so a 2 year old refrigerator is fine.

I seriously question the claim that a refrigerator is the biggest (or even one of the biggest) energy draws in the house. At least it is not in my house. Space heating, air conditioning, general lighting and water heating each use substantially more power than my refridgerator. I would love to see the actual data on the claim that puts the refrigerator on top of that list...

Posted by: Tiger

Data corruption from shutting down is not that big a problem. The TiVo data is designed to be very resiliant, much more than your average DOS computer. More in line with server grade access in it's structure. The only data that is not protected is the OS data, which is never written after install and protected during install, and logs, which it can re-create if it needs to. Powering up and down won't cause corruption.

Now a power spike on the other hand could.

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TMNBT Special Forces
Are we not men? We are TiVo!

Posted by: kazymyr

I don't think that was about corrupting filesystems on power down, but more about disk failure (with which I completely agree).

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This mind intentionally left blank--

Posted by: mostman

What do I need to get to measure power draw? I would be interested in seeing how much energy I am pissing away.
-Mike

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Star Trek - Dark Beer - Linux - TiVo
What the hell else do you need?

Posted by: Tattva

It is best if you do not measure your draw at all. If you do an inline measurement and your resistor is too small you could start a fire, and line current is really nasty anyway. I am a computer engineer (granted, I do software) who works at Agilent Technologies, I have a 34401a on my desk, and I hesitate to do such a measurement. It sounds like you're like me (not a EE) so I would recommend either thoroughly reading up on the topic or not doing it at all.

Posted by: affegott

To measure power usage, pick up a "Watt's Up". I think you get get them at Radio Hack and such. They do a pretty good job of measuring power.

Later,
-Ryan

Posted by: notenought

The specification in the user manual stated power consumption is 45W on my Hughes DTIVO with single drive in it.
Don't worry about the power cycles to the disk drive. They are rated at more than 20,000 cycles. So pewer cycle it twice a day, and 356 days a year means 27 years.

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Not Enough Tv

Posted by: millst

You can check out info on Watts Up? here:
link

They are expensive (~$100). Maybe they can be found cheaper elsewhere.

tm

Posted by: aphro

quote:
Originally posted by notenought:
So pewer cycle it twice a day, and 356 days a year means 27 years.

thats funny. i couldn't help but laugh when i read that.
tell that to the 12 drives ive had fail in the past
6 months, most of which did less then 30 power down/power up cycles ..(yes am now a registered
member of the ibm class action lawsuit)

while its nice that people want to conserve power,
others have already mentioned there are far better
ways to do it then powering down a tivo for 18
hours a day. like most electronic devices it gets
the most stress during power up. my electricity bill
is usually half that of my friends because i rarely
use the heat. take into account i have 8 computers
and my tivo on 24/7 and that tells me that computers
do not draw much power. my apt has been in the 55-63
degree range the past month or so. im glad i left
california almost 2 years ago. best decision i made
in recent years. i do turn off my tv and monitor
and lights to reduce heat levels in my apt, not
really to save energy though.

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--
System/Network Administrator

Posted by: pderocco

A hard drive's main bearing wears down as it spins, so running a low duty cycle will probably give you longer bearing life. However, electronics are stressed by powering them up and down, since things expand and contract as they warm up and cool down. It's often bond wires on ICs that fail as a result of this stress, and they do so suddenly.

I'd opt for leaving everything running 24/7, because at least with bearing failure you generally get plenty of warning. A failing bearing sounds vaguely like a board being pushed through a table saw, but of course much softer. Also, replacing a hard drive is something that you can probably do yourself (assuming you made the backup like you were supposed to), while replacing a chip or board is a different matter. I wouldn't obsess about twenty watts.

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Ciao,
Paul

Posted by: Worf

Of course, in this case though, electronics can go through many more power up/down and thermal cycles than a mechanical device can.

You can turn on and off that CPU chip inside your computer many many more times than you can a hard drive, even with added thermal stresses. But mechanical devices have things that spin and move. For a hard drive, most of the stresses are in the motor in spinning it up and down, with the platters and bearings expanding and contracting, etc. Keeping it spinning keeps the bearings lubricated, etc.

After all, consider a modern car - it has a mechanical device (the engine) that needs far more maintenance (tune-ups, repairs, fluid changes) than say, your car stereo, and both tend to go through similar amounts of start/stop cycles. Heck, your car's engine computer doesn't need regular tuneups...

Posted by: pderocco

quote:
Originally posted by Worf:
After all, consider a modern car - it has a mechanical device (the engine) that needs far more maintenance (tune-ups, repairs, fluid changes) than say, your car stereo, and both tend to go through similar amounts of start/stop cycles. Heck, your car's engine computer doesn't need regular tuneups...

There's some truth to that, but remember that a car engine is really taking a beating, much more so than anything inside a disk drive.

That said, we both agree that power cycling is generally a bad idea, as long as wasted power isn't an issue.

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Ciao,
Paul

Posted by: unixadm

cnaumann....Do you have cable or DirectTV?

If you do, why would you pay for a subscription to either of these if you only watch between 6pm and midnight? If you do pay for your TV channels, then you are paying for 24/7 programming and only watching a very small percentage...seems like that is a much bigger waste than the electricity that TiVo uses.

If you are only get over the air networks, then maybe I could see your point that there is nothing much on during the day and overnight, but you still may be surprised...there may be a good movie, show or whatever on that TiVo could pick up during those off peak hours.

One of the biggest features of TiVo is to be able to find and record shows anytime....especially the times you aren't there to watch it.

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Posted by: bsnelson

Not that I agree with these solutions (I have a total of 10 drives spread across six TiVos that I leave running 24x7 http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/biggrin.gif ):

See if the drives in your unit support spindown after a period of inactivity. If so, turn it on. If not, get different drives.

Tune your TiVo to a non-existant channel when you aren't watching. This will make live TV buffering stop.

With any luck, the background processing of the unit is such that it will let the drives spin down most of the time, but you should be able to "bring it to life" within a few seconds by changing the channel to a "real" channel.

I know, I know, this still causes the unnecessary (IMHO) spinup/down cycles on the drive, and perhaps some interesting errors from the TiVo software when disk I/O takes so long, but at least it's better than powering the whole darned thing off.

Brad

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(4) Philips DSR6000R (165, 67, 35 and 35 hours),
(2) Philips HDR112 (196 and 45 hours)

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by cnaumann:
I am not worried about wear and tear on the disk drives. I simply do not believe that drives that run all the time last any longer than drives that are powered down daily. I am concerned about the daily call, the clock battery and other unintended consequences of doing this.

An off TiVo can't make its daily calls, nor any recordings. Also, the clock battery is not rechargeable, and replacing it requires lifting out the motherboard or diking out part of the case for current model standalones. When powered, a TiVo does not draw power from its clock battery.

The VCRs you had before were never really off either unless unplugged, and they typically did not have batteries for their clocks either, at best using only a capacitor to retain power to them for short periods of time for short outages, such as when moving them from room to room.

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http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/tivo/HTHb.gif

Posted by: cnaumann

OK, here are some replies...

cnaumann....Do you have cable or DirectTV?
If you do, why would you pay for a subscription to either of these if you only watch between 6pm and midnight? If you do pay for your TV channels, then you are paying for 24/7 programming and only watching a very small percentage...seems like that is a much bigger waste than the electricity that TiVo uses.

My cable company charges me the same no matter how much I use the cable. My electric company bills only for the power I use. I have no urge to stuff myself at all-you-can-eat buffets, use the phone for local calls 24/7, or even use all my monthly minutes on my cell phone. I have had a TiVo for over a year. I know what I watch. I do not watch daytime TV. Really.

12 drives ive had fail in the past
6 months, most of which did less then 30 power down/power up cycles

So it is obviously cycling the drives has NOTHING to do with the drives failing...

while its nice that people want to conserve power,
others have already mentioned there are far better
ways to do it then powering down a tivo for 18
hours a day.

I have already knocked out all the easy, no-comfort-lost ways of saving power that I can think of. Some of them, like the heat recovery unit on the AC are rather sophisticated. I am actually considering designing a heat storage system that will allow me to run my heat-pump in the daytime when the outside temperature is about 20 warmer than at night (the heat pump operates 20-25% more effiecently at the higher outdoor temperatures, and has excess capacity), unfortunately, the pay-back period is rather long. Granted, this has become a bit of an obsession, and TiVo's power use is not going to put me in the poor house, but it is bothering me.

like most electronic devices it gets
the most stress during power up. my electricity bill
is usually half that of my friends because i rarely
use the heat. take into account i have 8 computers
and my tivo on 24/7 and that tells me that computers
do not draw much power.

Well, think how low your bill would be if you did not run those 8 computers all the time... It sounds to me like one of the reasons your bill is so low is that your neighbors are paying to heat your apartment. If you have an apartment that is surrounded by other occupied units, you probably can get by without running the heat. If you really want to get cheap, run a small fan on the wall between you and the next unit. Your entire electric bill may be going to run just those 8 computers... How much ARE you paying a month just to run those 8 computers?

However, electronics are stressed by powering them up and down, since things expand and contract as they warm up and cool down. It's often bond wires on ICs that fail as a result of this stress, and they do so suddenly.

I have never seen an IC fail due to a broken bond wire. (I assume that a broken bond wire would look like an open pin.) I am not saying that bond wires do not break inside epoxy IC packages, but it is not a common failure mode these days. I do not see any evidence that modern electronics (low power stuff) is in any way affected by 'thermal stress' of power up/power down. Voltage surge from crappy cheap power supplies is another matter. Some poorly designed power supplies really do not like being turned off and on. It more often a magnetic issue than a thermal one.

From the few dozen disk drives I have owned and cared for over the years, they seem to die more or less at random. Use, and power cycling does not seem to dramtically alter their lifetime. I have had fewer and fewer catastrophic disk failure in recent time, and fewer failure overall. I still have plenty of failures, but I seem to be getting more warning signs. Ten years ago, drive just up and died on me...

After all, consider a modern car - it has a mechanical device (the engine) that needs far more maintenance (tune-ups, repairs, fluid changes) than say, your car stereo, and both tend to go through similar amounts of start/stop cycles. Heck, your car's engine computer doesn't need regular tuneups...

My car's engine outlasted three complete stereos and several sets of speakers. If you count cleaning the heads of the tape deck and repairs to the amplifer (resoldered everything) maintainace was about the same really...