davinci Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 RO1 said: ...1. Does this means you have to leave it on 24/7? (Can you power off from the remote?) 2. Does it make much noise in a silent room? (I do occasionally read ) 3. Have you noticed any impact on the power bills? Thanks! 1. Yes and Yes you can use the remote to navigate to the menu to go into stand by 2. No. I never hear it. It is very quiet. 3. No. Power consumption is stand by is pretty low (don't have the figure handy)
NoRelationToNed Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 (edited) The whole TiVo experience is based on leaving it on 24/7. It automatically records its suggested programs for you to review and either watch or delete later. I have made some neat discoveries this way - much more so now since getting the 1Tb expander. It also means that when you do switch on your screen, there will be rewindable content on the channel you were last watching since it is always recording to a buffer, so if you don't catch the start of the news or whatever you can rewind to the start then watch and zap through the ads till you catch up to real time. Very convenient! The TiVo plus the external expander drive together don't emit much noise at all. If you do get a power down situation it does take a long time to reboot - I'll grant that but it is a small price to pay for the plethora of other features such as downloadable content via your home network etc. etc. You can also send video content to it from your PC sourced elsewhere. No regrets here, I am a happy TiVo user. Edited June 3, 2009 by NoRelationToNed
seb42 Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 Frosty77 said: Interesting to see Foxtel offering movie downloads on the same day as the DVD release, as advertised in today's papers.. They are releasing some more, but the big supprise i notice was The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button | 2008 | $8.95 was release on the 3rd of June for $8.95. title | year | price | minutes | log_date | locations ------------------------------------------+------+-------+---------+------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Big Daddy | 1999 | $3.95 | 89 | 2009_06_03 | Comedy-All The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button | 2008 | $8.95 | 159 | 2009_06_03 | New Release, Movies-All, Movies-Fantasy, Movies-Drama, Movies-Romance, Drama-All, Drama-Romance, Sci-Fi and Fantasy-All, Sci-Fi and Fantasy-Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Fantasy-Drama Anaconda | 1997 | $3.95 | 85 | 2009_06_02 | Movies-All, Movies-Horror, Movies-Adventure, Movies-Action, Movies-Thriller, Sport-All, Sport-Adventure The Cable Guy | 1996 | $3.95 | 91 | 2009_06_02 | Movies-All, Movies-Thriller, Movies-Comdey, Comedy-All Soccer Dog | 1999 | $3.95 | 94 | 2009_06_02 | Movies-All, Movies-Family, Movies-Comdey, Comedy-All, Interests-All, Interests-Family, Sport-All Peter and the Wolf | 2006 | $3.95 | 46 | 2009_06_02 | Movies-All, Movies-Animation, Movies-Family, Movies-Short, Interests-All, Interests-Animation, Interests-Family Independence Day | 1996 | $3.95 | 138 | 2009_06_02 | Movies-All, Movies-Thriller, Movies-Sci-Fi, Movies-Adventure, Movies-Action, Sci-Fi and Fantasy-All, Sci-Fi and Fantasy-Adventure, Sci-Fi and Fantasy-Action, Sci-Fi and Fantasy-Sci-Fi, Sport-All, Sport-Adventure American Teen | 2008 | $5.95 | 97 | 2009_06_02 | New Release, Movies-All, Movies-Documentary, Documentary-All How To Lose Friends and Alienate People | 2008 | $5.95 | 105 | 2009_06_02 | New Release, Movies-All, Movies-Comdey, Movies-Romance, Comedy-All
Blackman1503561291 Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 davinci said: 1. Yes and Yes you can use the remote to navigate to the menu to go into stand by2. No. I never hear it. It is very quiet. 3. No. Power consumption is stand by is pretty low (don't have the figure handy) The TiVo consumes 27 watts of power on standby using it standard 160 gig drive and that is outragous and will not pass the new laws about to be introduced soon. I have passed this on to TiVo months ago and its up to them to do a software upgrade that allows the hard drive and cooling fan to shut off after recording once on standby. So in simple in the standby mode the TiVo HDD and fan are idle and once recording time approaches both the drive and fan fire up, once recording is finished both the drive and fan shut down again and its back in the standby mode. But if you leave it on well it stay on period as the TiVo consumes the same on or on standby and just think if you have both drives what does it consume then. Mind you we have 60 inch TV's today that use less than 0.5 of a watt on standby. All I hope is that the hardware allows the above to happen. The above has attracted green pollies attention on another site.
pneu Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 Blackman said: The TiVo consumes 27 watts of power on standby The standby mode is not really a standby mode though. When normally operating the tivo uses something like 30w which is quite decent. The expander drive is a bit of a killer though - I read 56w , and is one of the main reasons I wouldn't use one myself. I acutally don't mind the tivo running 24/7, it's pretty cool quiet and reliable and I've never had to reboot. The long reboot process is probably to perform checks to make sure everything is installed correctly and there are no errors on the hard disk, which imo is preferable to having the unit crash during operation and doing quick reboots.
steelpaw Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 RO1 said: 1. Does this means you have to leave it on 24/7? (Can you power off from the remote?)And if so... 2. Does it make much noise in a silent room? (I do occasionally read ) 3. Have you noticed any impact on the power bills? Thanks! I sometimes find the noise of the Tivo a bit irritating when I am trying to read and occasionally shut it off at the mains for this reason. It is true, however, that I am perhaps excessively sensitive to even quite faint noises. The amount of noise that the Tivo makes when it is apparently not doing anything varies. I assume that at times when it seems 'busier' it is recording a Tivo Suggestion, or downloading program information or software updates. Before I got the Tivo, I tried a Topfield and returned it to DSE within hours because I knew I couldn't live with the noise it made whilst operating. That might sum it up: the Tivo really is pretty quiet (see other posts) but it is designed to stay on continuously and consequently makes a very faint noise all the time and a slightly louder noise some of the time; while other units might make more noise when they're operating but have periods on standby when they (presumably) make no noise at all. The Tivo uses about 25W when it is on so-called 'standby'. I am considering putting mine on a timer, so that it is powered off for about 12 hours per day. I am not sure how this will affect its memory for Season Passes and other settings, however one way to find out is to try it and see, I suppose.
prl Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 pneu said: ... The expander drive is a bit of a killer though - I read 56w ... 56W for a 1TB USB HDD sounds pretty unlikely to me.
petef Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 Blackman said: The TiVo consumes 27 watts of power on standby using it standard 160 gig drive and that is outragous and will not pass the new laws about to be introduced soon. I have passed this on to TiVo months ago and its up to them to do a software upgrade that allows the hard drive and cooling fan to shut off after recording once on standby. So in simple in the standby mode the TiVo HDD and fan are idle and once recording time approaches both the drive and fan fire up, once recording is finished both the drive and fan shut down again and its back in the standby mode. What you propose is not feasible or practical for the majority of users with the current TiVo System as it would limit the TiVo features. Live TV is first recorded to the hard drive and then streamed through the hard drive to be shown on the screen, so if you turn on your TV you will have no picture from your TiVo until it is restarted. If you have connected the TiVo as the instructions suggest, you no longer have an antenna plugged into your TV so you cannot watch TV until the TiVo restarts. Even if you have split your antenna and still have one connected to your TV, it means you cannot watch any of the digital channels if your TV does not have a digital tuner, and none of the HD channels unless you have a HD digital tuner in your TV. There would also be no buffer or skip back, so if you turn on the TV and find something interesting you cannot go back in time and what the beginning. Not to mention reducing the life of your Hard Drive by cycling it multiple times a day for each scheduled recording and suggestion, then again each time you wanted to watch a recording. Peter.
duncane Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 My TiVO uses about 20 to 30 watts while plugged in. Standby seems to make little difference. But to put it in perspective, thats about 6c a day or $22 a year (based on 13c per KW). Its not a lot of power. Also turning a TiVO off is missing the point of the device. Its like turning a fridge off... it just doesnt make sense?
prl Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 duncane said: My TiVO uses about 20 to 30 watts while plugged in. Standby seems to make little difference.But to put it in perspective, thats about 6c a day or $22 a year (based on 13c per KW). Its not a lot of power. Also turning a TiVO off is missing the point of the device. Its like turning a fridge off... it just doesnt make sense? That's a poor comparison. Most fridges turn themselves almost entirely off when they don't actually need to run the compressor. Apart from pre-filling the "rewind live TV" buffers, there's almost nothing that the TiVo does that actually requires it to be almost fully powered on 24/7. Even the pre-filling can be arranged if you have more-or-less regular TV viewing hours. I'm quite happy with only powering up my Beyonwiz when it's actually being used. It even annoys me that the Beyonwiz's standby power is 3.5W, when it could be much less. Anyway, all the PVR enthusiasts keep saying that the point of a PVR is so that you never actually watch live TV 25W 24/7 is about a quarter of a tonne of CO2/year (for NSW, slightly higher for Vic, much less for Tas); equivalent to me driving my car about 1200km.
gavincato Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 hey guys is it possible to stream recorded shows to your pc/laptop? I have software to copy videos off the tivo, but you have to wait until it has finished copying it before you can watch it. thanks Gav
blue2th Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 prl said: That's a poor comparison. Most fridges turn themselves almost entirely off when they don't actually need to run the compressor.Apart from pre-filling the "rewind live TV" buffers, there's almost nothing that the TiVo does that actually requires it to be almost fully powered on 24/7. Even the pre-filling can be arranged if you have more-or-less regular TV viewing hours. I'm quite happy with only powering up my Beyonwiz when it's actually being used. It even annoys me that the Beyonwiz's standby power is 3.5W, when it could be much less. Anyway, all the PVR enthusiasts keep saying that the point of a PVR is so that you never actually watch live TV 25W 24/7 is about a quarter of a tonne of CO2/year (for NSW, slightly higher for Vic, much less for Tas); equivalent to me driving my car about 1200km. we could all walk to work, use old CRT tvs and not bother with PVRs and just watch the shows you want when it's on air. that would be the most environmentally sound choice. we could also ban monstrous trucks trying to be urban vehicles from sealed roads - this would make way more sense than trying to get a tivo on standby to suck up less juice. we could all also simply drink filtered water instead of bottled water and discontinue manufacture of cigarettes. this would eliminate manufcature of plastic bottles and energy on production of cigarettes and their subsequent clean up of butts on the streets. if we all made sacrifices that offsets the negative environment output of some of our choices, then it should be a happy balanced planet.
Blackman1503561291 Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 petef said: What you propose is not feasible or practical for the majority of users with the current TiVo System as it would limit the TiVo features. Live TV is first recorded to the hard drive and then streamed through the hard drive to be shown on the screen, so if you turn on your TV you will have no picture from your TiVo until it is restarted. If you have connected the TiVo as the instructions suggest, you no longer have an antenna plugged into your TV so you cannot watch TV until the TiVo restarts. Even if you have split your antenna and still have one connected to your TV, it means you cannot watch any of the digital channels if your TV does not have a digital tuner, and none of the HD channels unless you have a HD digital tuner in your TV. There would also be no buffer or skip back, so if you turn on the TV and find something interesting you cannot go back in time and what the beginning. Not to mention reducing the life of your Hard Drive by cycling it multiple times a day for each scheduled recording and suggestion, then again each time you wanted to watch a recording. Peter. I am fully aware of all you concerns but what I do is look at the to do list and after that I make a decision that nothing is to be recorded so I shut it down at the mains. (someone asked) By the way the seasons pass is not effected at all.
petef Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 Blackman said: I am fully aware of all you concerns but what I do is look at the to do list and after that I make a decision that nothing is to be recorded so I shut it down at the mains. (someone asked) By the way the seasons pass is not effected at all. That's fair enough if you don't want to record Suggestions, make use of the live buffer, or care about wear and tear on the Hard Drive & Power Supply. It's yours to use as you like. Peter.
prl Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 petef said: That's fair enough if you don't want to record Suggestions, make use of the live buffer, or care about wear and tear on the Hard Drive & Power Supply.It's yours to use as you like. Peter. There's no reason why the intelligent use of timers (possibly even timers set automatically by the device) can't allow for recording of Suggestions. Putting the device into standby doesn't stop you using the live buffer. It does limit its usefulness for a time after you come out of standby, but as I said, if you have regular TV viewing habits, you can also use timers to prefill the live buffer by starting the PVR up a while before you normally start watching TV. Wear and tear on the HDD is a possible drawback of powering down, but we normally power up/down only once in a day. Far less often than many deskdop or laptop HDDs will spin themselves down. Power supply problems are often due to electrolytic capacitors drying out, which is due to them being warm for extended periods - this can be made worse by leaving equipment on 24/7. I'm not trying to be a luddite as one poster seems to be painting me. I use a PVR that offers a reasonable choice between leaving it on 24/7 (31W) and putting into standby (3.5W). It takes about 25 seconds to come out of standby. Existing timers make sure its recording timers and EPG are updated from the web frequently enough. I've rarely wanted to rewind live TV back past the time I powered the PVR on. I get a large part of the services that are being claimed that can't be provided by leaving the PVR in standby when it's not being used. Other users of the same PVR choose to leave it on 24/7, for similar reasons to those given for saying the TiVo needs to be on 24/7. The way the TiVo's firmware has been constructed (especially its reputed slow startup from power-down) may make it hard to use the TiVo in this way. But that doesn't mean that by putting a PVR into standby when its not in use, and advocating it as a reasonable choice, that I want to go back to "use old CRT tvs and not bother with PVRs and just watch the shows you want when it's on air". The standby power of my PVR, incidentally, is about a third of the standby power of the VCR it replaced. While I don't "walk to work" as that poster suggested, I do in fact cycle, and I've cycled or walked for my daily commute for almost all of the past fifty years.
Blackman1503561291 Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 (edited) prl said: Wear and tear on the HDD is a possible drawback of powering down, but we normally power up/down only once in a day. Far less often than many deskdop or laptop HDDs will spin themselves down. Power supply problems are often due to electrolytic capacitors drying out, which is due to them being warm for extended periods - this can be made worse by leaving equipment on 24/7. I Totally agree! I have been lucky with computers, I have only had one computer die and a power supply fail in the last 20 odd years going back in the days of my first computer a 486 DX 40. even my computer I am typing with now is 5 years old and gets turned on a minimum of 2 time a day sometimes 4 times a day every day for the last 5 years and this hard drive has been formatted at least 10 times in this period. Yes there is + and - for the above but you will find in the future the option on standby the power down the drive and fan will be a must as I have spoken to TiVo about this on another site and was replied by saying these will be the requirements in the future in the US. Very interesting email i got back from the boss. Edited June 5, 2009 by Blackman
duncane Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 prl said: 25W 24/7 is about a quarter of a tonne of CO2/year (for NSW, slightly higher for Vic, much less for Tas); equivalent to me driving my car about 1200km. That's not a reasonable comparison or your numbers are off. 25W 24/7 is about $25 a year which is about 200km worth of petrol depending on the Car. Plus I could be on Green power or have solar panels on my roof.
prl Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 duncane said: That's not a reasonable comparison or your numbers are off. 25W 24/7 is about $25 a year which is about 200km worth of petrol depending on the Car. Plus I could be on Green power or have solar panels on my roof. I was talking about CO2 emissions not fuel price, and I was talking about standard electricity supply, though perhaps I should have made that clearer. The emissions numbers I was using are the Australian Greenhouse Office numbers for electrical power generation in NSW/ACT, which is about 1kg CO2/kWh, and includes incidental emissions (e.g. mining and transport). Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia are similar. Victoria, which uses a lot of brown coal, with a higher moisture content, for its electricity generation produces more CO2/kWh. Tasmania, which largely uses hydroelectricity, has very low CO2/kWh. See National Greenhouse Accounts (NGA) Factors - November 2008, Table 39. The emissions figures for my car are from http://www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au/, which gives it to be 180g CO2/km. You are indeed correct that energy generated from coal is relatively cheap compared to energy generated from hydrocarbons, even though the hydrocarbons produce less CO2 per unit energy than coal, but I was making a different point. Yes, you could be using Green Power or have solar panels. I was making a general argument. Very few people use Green Power or have solar panels, though they may be over-represented amongst PVR owners, just because of possibly overlapping demographics.
petef Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 (edited) prl said: Putting the device into standby doesn't stop you using the live buffer. That is because the Hard Drive is still spinning. But the proposal was to power down the Hard Drive. The video signal is first recorded to the drive and then streamed back for "Live TV" this is why there is a delay when passing though the TiVo. You could not watch any live TV with the current TiVo architecture if the drive was powered down. prl said: Wear and tear on the HDD is a possible drawback of powering down, but we normally power up/down only once in a day. Far less often than many deskdop or laptop HDDs will spin themselves down. The OP wanted TiVo to power down when not recording, not just once a day. In our household we average 10-15 recordings a day. I have had drives fail over the years in PVR's and I would not want to potentially shorten drive life by cycling it 10 times a day. Laptop drives are built with standby in mind. prl said: Power supply problems are often due to electrolytic capacitors drying out, which is due to them being warm for extended periods - this can be made worse by leaving equipment on 24/7. I totally agree having worked in the electronics industry for the last 30 years, but inrush currents certainly play their part in premature failures for frequently cycled products. Peter. Edited June 5, 2009 by petef
prl Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 petef said: That is because the Hard Drive is still spinning. But the proposal was to power down the Hard Drive. The video signal is first recorded to the drive and then streamed back for "Live TV" this is why there is a delay when passing though the TiVo. You could not watch any live TV with the current TiVo architecture if the drive was powered down. I'm aware that "standby" on the TiVo really means "almost everything powered on". The context made it clear that the kind of standby I was referring to was the standby state of the Topfield and Beyonwiz recorders. However, the only difference as far as the state of the timeshift buffer is concerned between the TiVo coming out of standby and a BW or TF coming out of standby is that the TiVo will come out of standby with a full timeshift buffer, but the TF and BW will come out of standby with an empty timeshift buffer. Of course almost all of the PVR needs to be powered up in order to feed the timeshift buffer. The fact that the Beyonwiz comes out of standby with an empty timeshift buffer is something that's never bothered me, and I don't think it's a good reason to keep it powered on all the time. I made it clear in my post that the I thought the TiVo firmware would need to be rethought in some ways to allow it to have a standby mode that powered most of the device off. petef said: The OP wanted TiVo to power down when not recording, not just once a day. In our household we average 10-15 recordings a day. I have had drives fail over the years in PVR's and I would not want to potentially shorten drive life by cycling it 10 times a day. Laptop drives are built with standby in mind. The overlap between "recording" and "on anyway for viewing" in our household is almost complete, so the PVR isn't turning on and off each time a recording is made. I suspect that that's not unusual. Power saving by spinning down the drives is common in many desktops and in external HDDs. The default energy saving settings on my iMac spins down the HDD when it goes into sleep mode (15 min idle time, IIRC). Both my WD external HDDs spin down when not being accessed (and AFAIK don't have any way to turn this off). They all use commodity HDDs, not laptop drives.
WhereAreTheChannels Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 So, the conclusion is....if you want a PVR that behaves like a BW or TF...buy a BW or TF. The TiVo is a TiVo cos it behaves as it was conceived and to provide a "better" experience for the user. If your view of "better" is not a TiVo, so be it. Also, start a seperate forum for people to debate the features of TiVo vs BW vs TF rather than have the TiVo forums being mis-directed into product comparisons. I don't see BW or TF in the title of any of the TiVo forums but people want to keep saying that 15w is better than 25 w and 15 sec jump is not so good cos TF does 30sec or whatever....I don't care what a BW or TF does - I want to know more about what a TiVo can do. Apologies for the rant, but getting a little tired of reading entries in the TiVo forums in which I am interested, and coming out the other end as an expert on features of some other product which if I had wanted, I would have bought. Cheers!
prl Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 WhereAreTheChannels said: So, the conclusion is....if you want a PVR that behaves like a BW or TF...buy a BW or TF.The TiVo is a TiVo cos it behaves as it was conceived and to provide a "better" experience for the user. If your view of "better" is not a TiVo, so be it. ... The discussion started when a poster remarked that he'd rather that a TiVo (which he owned) worked in some respects like other PVRs. Which is how comparisons came in. I've said all I want to say on that topic anyway, so I won't be continuing in the discussion.
Blackman1503561291 Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 petef said: I totally agree having worked in the electronics industry for the last 30 years, but inrush currents certainly play their part in premature failures for frequently cycled products.Peter. Yes 10 times a day not once a day.
David Williams Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 seb42 said: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button | 2008 | $8.95 was release on the 3rd of June for $8.95. In glorious DD 2.0 as well. Makes Foxtel HD on demand @$6 much more attractive no? With real 5.1 sound as well (Not that I want to watch that excrement twice)
Robert E Posted June 5, 2009 Posted June 5, 2009 petef said: The video signal is first recorded to the drive and then streamed back for "Live TV" this is why there is a delay when passing though the TiVo. You could not watch any live TV with the current TiVo architecture if the drive was powered down. Thanks Peter for this clarification. It accounts for why the TiVo can't be recording two programs and allow the user to view another service that is part of a mux of one of the two being recorded (ie record 10 and ABC1 and watch ABC2).
Recommended Posts