I've been shutting off all my vampire devices including my DVR. I only need it between 7pm and llpm. The last time the menus and all the channel info crap would not load up. Is it broken now?
-- Blattus Slafaly ? 3 :) 7/8
If it has a "reset" button, try poking it.
No reset button.
-- Claude Hopper ? 3 :) 7/8
I was wondering if he was eating garlic bread just before he messed with the gear.
You have kept it from recieveing updates from it's server and delivering your usage information because these events usually occour after midnight and into the early morning hours. In other words you have kept it from uploading your usage and the server has shut it down until it can sync with your DVR.
It must be left on to do it's job or else ... well you already see the result.
Absolutely. I get fed up of seeing all these non-technical prats on the TV telling us that we should shut off everything which has a standby mode because it's just for lazy people who can't be bothered to get out of their chairs to turn stuff back on.
These stupid people totally fail to understand that most standby modes are actually masking important housekeeping functions for the equipment, and that turning them off is likely to screw them up. Most manufacturers are very responsible about power useage, and modern switch mode power supplies, when operating in burst standby mode, consume very little power indeed. Add to this that switchers do not like being turned on and off all the time. A true 'cold start' is the most stressful thing you can do to a switcher, and is the time when most fail. If a piece of kit has a standby mode, then it has been designed to operate this way, and should be just left alone at night.
Arfa
Ummm.... my DirecTV DVR (forgot model number) sucks 33 watts in standby. At 15 cents per kw-hr, that's 0.8 kw-hr per day, $0.12 per day, or $43.36 per year in electricity.
I have mine on an Intermec timer. DirecTV never does updates in the middle of the day. It's always late at night. So, I leave it powered on all night, every other day. The timer also turns it off weekdays between 6AM and 6PM whem I'm at work. Methinks this should be a standard feature in all DVR's.
I'm not so much concerned about the switcher going bad due to power cycling. The chronic power failures in the winter give my devices enough exercise anyway. It's starting and stopping the hard disk that has a big effect on its lifetime. All my servers that run 24x7 seem to run forever and rarely kill off a hard disk. I have several with
10+ year old drives, still running just fine. The computahs that I turn on and off kill drives after about 5 years.I checked into DirecTV's policy for hard disk replacements and it wasn't very good. I could buy their $6/month protection plan, or hope for the best. I'm cheap. So, I made a mirror image of the Seagate
120GB drive inside and stock a spare drive. I update it erratically just to be sure I'm not running on totally obsolete firmware. However, I haven't bothered to test the image drive. I guess I should.-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
What, exactly, is it doing to "justify" drawing 33 watts?
That's an *awful* lot of power for a standby mode, and by no means 'typical' for a modern device. Is this a quoted amount in the device's literature, or something you believe you've measured ? If it pulls that much on standby, then what the christ is it using when running ?
Arfa
Depending on the DVR type, it's quite possible that the "standby" and "operational" power drains are essentially the same.
Satellite-type DVRs (DirecTV and Dish Network for example) generally have to keep the CPU, memory, and the satellite receiver itself powered up at all times, in order to keep up with the steady trickle of program-guide updates.
Some of them may spin the hard drive down when in standby, if they keep their program-guide data entirely in RAM. Doing so costs them the ability to buffer the "live TV" stream and thus be able to "rewind" into the current program immediately after being turned on.
Others do not - they're "always live", and always recording something. "Standby" may simply mean "turn off the video and audio outputs, so that the owner's automated video switchbox realizes that this input isn't in use."
Cold-starting a satellite DVR can take several minutes, as there's quite a bit of current information which has to be acquired from the satellite data-stream before viewing/recording can start.
--
Dave Platt AE6EO
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It's a model R15-500. No clue who makes it.
It burns some of the power spinning the hard disk round and round. Looking at the data sheet, the 120GB drive burns about 12.5 watts average.
Add about 3.5 watts per LNB.
The DVR also has a shopping list of shows that I want to record for later viewing. It holds 70 hours of recording, most of which are the Olympics, which I'll be watching for months. There are also erratic past-midnight updates to the operating system. The box also calls DirecTV on the phone in the middle of the night to tell them what I've been watching so they can "better serve me" or something. I don't do Pay-Pour-Vous but that would go out at the same time.
It would be tempting to suggest that they should not spin the hard disk when it's not needed, but as I previously mentioned, that cuts the disk lifetime considerably.
However, I lied. I just stumbled across my Kill-a-watt power meter. Might as well check my numbers. As usual, my memory is defective. It may have been from my previous DVR or when I had more LNB's on the roof. Measuring: Operating power: 22 watts and 42 VA Standby power: 21 watts and 40 VA That's only 8 cents per day or $29/year (at $0.15/kw-hr). Much better. However, the 0.5 power factor isn't very impressive. It's under 75w so it doesn't have to comply with EN61000-3-2.
Using the revised numbers, yields: 12.5 watts for the hard disk 3.5 watts for my single LNB Subtracting from 22.0 watts total leaves: 6.0 watts for everything else including switcher effeciency. I don't think there's room for much improvment (except for power factor correction).
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I lied. See my other posting. It's really about 22 watts standby or operating with one LNB. Add about 3.5 watts per additional LNB. Sorry for the bad numbers (memory fault). Maybe more blood will help.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Bear in mind also, that the 'measured' power consumption on a consumer-type power meter, may not be accurate with a switch mode power supply, particularly if it's operating in a burst standby mode at the time, where it might draw the full amount from the line, but only for brief periods, to keep the standby supply resevoir cap charged. Some of these meters, which are designed to give Joe Public a 'comfort factor' reading on steady draw devices such as lamps and fridges and so on, have some difficulty doing complex 'area under the curve' calculations for asymmetric and burst draws by switchers, to come up with an equivalent steady draw figure that has some real meaning in what it is costing you.
As a 'for instance' on this, a while back I read an article in a mag by a guy that I have known for a long time. He had bought one of these meters and gone round his house measuring all sorts of things, and then working out what all of this standby power was costing him. One of the items he reported on, was a Philips computer monitor, which his meter said was pulling 11 watts (from memory) when on standby. I thought that seemed a lot for a modern device, so I looked it up on the 'net. The manufacturer's blurb said that the standby power was < 1 watt. I can see how your DVR would be consuming the revised figure though, if it does run the HDD all the time. That said, my Sky+ box, which is also an HDD based sat rx and recorder, and which also has the capability of rewinding live TV to the start of the programme, claims (again from memory) only around 10 watts or so in standby ?
Arfa
That's obviously not the case with the DTV DVR. It doesn't need to burn 22 watts just to keep a cazapitor charged.
However, I have a TV that I suspect uses that method because I can barely hear the power supply whine when it's running. Seems to be about a 5 second duty cycle. I just plugged in the Kill-A-Watt meter and found that the display was constantly changing between zero and about 10 watts. Thanks for the warning. I never thought about that. I would have expected the Kill-A-Watt meter to have some manner of averaging integrator, to better simulate the utility electric power meter, but I guess not. My guess(tm) is about 1-2 second average but no longer.
Yep.
Ummm... the hard disk probably burns more than 10 watts. Something is wrong here. Maybe they spin down the HD after a while of non-use?
I did a quick check with Google of what others have reported for DirecTV DVR standby currents. Most people didn't bother supplying the model numbers, so we have the usual muddle. Numbers vary from 10 watts to 45 watts. Sigh. Buy a Kill-A-Watt meter and measure it. Incidentally, there are two models of the Kill-A-Watt. The later has battery backup. I ordered one last week but it hasn't arrived.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Yes indeedy, it's a complex subject. I suspect that some of the cheap consumer power meters, have a sort of 'peak hold' type readout to stabilize against erratic draws, but this serves to give a false impression when a power supply is operating in a burst standby mode. Your TV with short draws of 10 watts, is a classic example of what might upset some meters. 5 seconds is actually quite slow, and gives the meter time to show 10 - 0 - 10 - 0 and so on. If it was doing it quicker, as many do, you may well get a reading which appears to be a lot higher than the true figure, when the pulsed draw is properly integrated.
You've got me thinking now about my Sky+ box. The HDD definitely does not run all the time. You can clearly hear it when it is running. However, live TV pause and rewind is always available. I wonder how that could be, unless the disc is run at a much slower speed that you can't hear, for the purposes of real time writing. If you are feeding it with a steady compressed data stream, I guess it doesn't need to be rotating at full speed does it ? Do HDDs have more than one speed ? Come to think of it, I can't recall the drives in this machine ever sounding like they ramp down to any different speed, unlike the DVD writer, which of course does. I'll have to see what I can find on the 'net about these boxes.
Arfa
DirecTV R15-500 DVR with one LNB.
I hate days like this. My new Kill-A-Watt EZ just arrived. Very similar to the previous model with the addition of battery backup memory and a totally confusing front panel push button derrangement. It's also impossible to read the labels in the dark thanks to the new and improved color scheme. However, all that is tolerable. I have both the old and new meters connected in series. The old reads as above or about 22 watts of operating or standby drain. However, the new EZ meter shows: Operating power: 27 watts and 49 VA Standby power: 25 watts and 47 VA That's about a 20% difference. Indicated PF = 0.55 (yech).
So, I now have an accuracy problem. Time to drag both over to some better test equipment and see which one is wrong.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
More on the Kill-A-Watt EZ. See:
The unit on the top is the old model Kill-a-watt. The one on the bottom is the new Kill-A-Watt EZ. As far as I can determine, they're identical except for the plastic box. Therefore, the only difference is probably software.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Just a wild guess, but maybe it has an internal RAM store that it uses to buffer data to for a while when the HDD is not running? With heavy compression, a few hundred megs could possibly hold a fairly sizeable amount of video.
-- Travis Evans [Obtain email address by swapping at sign and period.]
I guess that's a possibility. There doesn't seem to be much technical data available on the 'net. I used to work on analogue sat boxes, and digital ones before they introduced these clever recording features, but have not had much cause to get involved with the latest generation of HDD-based PVRs, so actually know little of the principles involved.
Arfa
Hi!
Interesting. I have one of the old ones and use it so much the case yellowed. (I can also say that the unit will read in excess of the printed maximums--although it flashed the display and beeped unhappily about doing so.)
And the clock oscillator inside. One runs a little faster than the other. The actual maker (printed on the PCB in mine) is Prodigit, and they have other interesting devices that share the same case and probably a lot of the insides.
Which one did you find to be more accurate? Inquiring minds want to know. (And this one suggests that the unit with the higher clock rate would be it, due to possible finer sample size...but that is just a guess.)
William
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