Vampire hunting

Tom, that sounds like one of the old boxes since it takes so long to reset. You can probably swap it out for a newer one. This of course depends on your vendor/local office/whomever is at the desk. This is the impression I've gotten from installers (in more than one state.) I'm pretty sure one a few years ago was complaining about the box I had or needed. Either she swapped it out for a newer type or she told me to go down to the office that week to get a new one. The new box was a lot quicker in simple stuff like changing channels.

At any rate it wouldn't hurt to ask if what you are seeing is "normal." A lot of time the folks in the trenches will do box swaps if you carry the old box to the office. I've done it with cable modems before.

I've got to go back through the AV system checking idle loads. I'm not sure if I ever measured the box by itself--although I do recall turning it "off" and not seeing more than a watt or two load change. The combined vampire is large. I haven't broken it out so far, since it is set up more for the kids and I'll need to move a strip into an accessible location.

 

Measured my cable box today at 15W on and off (only difference is the display is gone when it is off...consistent with what I saw with when measuring the whole power strip before.)

Energy Star is waaaaaaaayyyyy behind the curve on this one. All it mentions is something about requiring that Energy Star labeled boxes be 30% more efficient than "conventional" and then only for two participating service providers nationally. This is easy money the nation is just flushing away for nothing. It would be child's play to make them 90% more efficient in the "off" mode.

This is a case where the minimum energy efficiency should be mandated, because the folks buying the boxes are renting them to customers and not paying the operating costs themselves. This is the same sort of scenario that contributed to the need for raising SEER standards in AC. Neither builders nor landlords cared about operating cost since that was paid by the occupant.

 

That would be pricey. I know my UPS's are a substantial part of my vampire loads. My smaller one uses about 6W while the big one takes 25W! (Edit: Remeasured removing loads, with nothing attached to it, the big UPS pulls 15W, the PC & monitor were adding another 9W--used to pull 10W but my new monitor uses less in standby.)

Power is pretty stable here so I don't worry about the various clocks. Even if I lost it once a month or so I wouldn't worry about most appliance clocks. For alarm clocks I've got battery back up so it isn't an issue. The alarm clocks are pulling about 0.5 to 1.5 watts.

Depending on the model that would hit it hard, especially if it has its own cable box and a UPS.

 

Well, I put two sets of PC's speakers, a printer, router, and modem all on a powerstrip so that I can shut them completely down. They total 15W in standby. This will help.

Found out that my combo DVD/VCR is pulling 7W in standby. Unfortunately, it is not a good candidate for a powerstrip because it autoprograms on start up if I do that. It's had hard use with the kids and I have to work on it every few months, so I need to start looking for a replacement anyway. My standalone DVD player uses only 0.5W in standby.

The cable box is up next for some experimentation with a powerstrip.

 

Tom,

I found this about set top boxes and thought you would find it interesting: http://www.efficientproducts.org/reports/stbs/NRDC_STB-efficiency-2005.pdf

The author does a good job of addressing the lack of "sleep mode" (essentially power off.) The table also shows that there is essentially no difference between power usage on and off.

This is something that really needs a 1 watt or less mandated off mode. The same should be done for garage door openers.

 

I've got the cable set top box on a powerstrip now and so far it is working well. It does take about 20 minutes for the Guide to fully load, but I don't really use that anyway.

 

Yep, I've got a Motorola box. When the teaser package ended at my previous residence I gave the cable folks back their box and used the TV's tuner. I really don't use any of the subscription or >100 level stuff anyway, so I didn't notice any difference.

Mine already loads the channel that was displayed when I killed the juice. What I don't understand is why it can't store or access the channel program data really quickly anyway. It shouldn't be hard to store a weeks worth or so and only update flagged changes. This stuff seems to be so low tech anymore.

I could understand the lethargy if one was doing a system wide search at start up, but if one is paging through channels, the data should be coming across about as fast as one can page through it. It doesn't seem to be very efficiently programmed to start with.

Definitely low hanging fruit! I might have an opportunity to press for something like this as a requirement for our local cable franchise...if I can find any hardware or spec that meets the criteria. Unfortunately, I think the Feds will have to take the lead on this because I haven't got any leads on appropriate gear.

And while they are at it...the cable modems should have their transformers made internal so that they can also be switched on/off in a 1W or less standby/power off mode. Mine presently runs 4W. External transformer blocks should go the way of the Dodo.

I agree. I've always kept my primary A/V gear on surge protectors, never on UPS. I've kept PC gear on UPS so that I could shut the system down in the event of an outage or brown out.

There is really a lot of opportunity to reduce needless energy waste in this country without taking away any functionality or even adding any cost. It's not so much that any of the waste is intentional, it's that stuff on the market isn't being updated to take advantage of basic tech that is already available. It's like the old days of 5-7 gallons per flush, refrigerators and AC that used two to three times as much power, etc.

 

Interesting.

The problem with this is that what I really need is a sequencer rather than a master/slave powerstrip. With dynamic IP addressing I need to be able to bring up the cable box about 30 seconds prior to the router so that it can pull an IP, and then have about another 30 seconds for the router to start up and sync before any of the PC's launch.

If I bring them up together one of the boxes seems to be trying to fixate on a former IP address or prevent the cable modem from pulling a new one (that's my guess anyway, I'm not a networking guru and am only going by recurring symptoms.) I can't get this to release until I physically disconnect boxes and cycle them, then reconnect.

I knew this was an issue with powerstripping my modem and router as I had done the same thing a few times before in different regions with different ISP's. That's why I had not put them back on a powerstrip until the past few weeks. At present I have two inkjets, two sets of PC speakers, the modem and router all on a single powerstrip connected to my larger capacity UPS.