# sky auto-standby



## adamski (Jul 11, 2002)

I've just read in Wotsat that Sky will soon be introducing auto-standby for sky and sky+ boxes, whereby if the sky box is not being used at 1am, it will issue a warning and then go on to standby.

Now, as environmentally friendly as this is, this would cause a problem for TiVo, not being able to switch channels and thus recording nothing!

Does anyone know of a solution?


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

For those using the Grundig 20016 codes it sends the Sky key before every channel change, duly waking the Sky box.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

adamski said:


> if the sky box is not being used at 1am


...and how do they propose to determine whether it's being 'used' or not?

Even with the Grundig code, this could still lead to a message box popping up and the STB going into standby if no remote commands had been received for some pre-defined amount of time. Sounds like a good reason to buy a Sky-eye if you don't already have one


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## katman (Jun 4, 2002)

adamski said:


> I've just read in Wotsat that Sky will soon be introducing auto-standby for sky and sky+ boxes, whereby if the sky box is not being used at 1am, it will issue a warning and then go on to standby.
> 
> Now, as environmentally friendly as this is, this would cause a problem for TiVo, not being able to switch channels and thus recording nothing!
> 
> Does anyone know of a solution?


Im sorry but I think that story is complete and utter bollox !!!!

1. I have just measured the power consumed by my Grundig box.

Standby = 23.1W
Operating = 23.1W

Total saving = ZERO

My power reading may be slightly lower than would normally be expected from a SKY box but I have a quad LNB so power will be fed to it by the other boxes as well.

2. Assuming SKY have got some special way to shut the box down to a very low consumption then that would also depower the LNB and LNBs that arent constantly powered suffer from ingress of damp and also frequency drift as the temperature changes. Potentially that could cause loads of problems.

3. If they shut the box down completely then how will they be able to update it !!!

4. I would assume quite a lot of people still watch TV at 1am so would just cancel the shutdown. In that case will they also issue shutdown commands every 30 minutes until say 5am to catch the late night viewers, after all if they are up until 4 or 5 am they arent going to be watching again for quite a few hours so best their box goes into standby then!!!

What happens if you are using your SKY box to listen to radio either straight through the Hifi or via a SKY Gnome. you wont have a TV on to see the warning so your listening will just get cut off.

The real way to save power is to shut down all those cruddy shopping channels so that people have nothing to watch then they would turn the TV off which would save loads more power..... and free up transponder bandwidth to give us decent bitrates


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

adamski said:


> I've just read in Wotsat that Sky will soon be introducing auto-standby for sky and sky+ boxes, whereby if the sky box is not being used at 1am, it will issue a warning and then go on to standby.


This is token environmentalism gone mad as my Panasonic TU-DSB20 box uses 16W in Standby Mode and 17W in On Mode. By contrast my Philips television uses 12W in Standby Mode and 130W in On Mode. Therefore there is no worthwhile saving to be made by any Sky or Freeview box in standby. I have checked several and they all use 1W less in Standby than in On mode.

One can only hope that Sky will provide a menu option to disable this new "feature". Along with their 0 prefixed radio channels (when they could simply have made all channels 4 digits so causing no issue for Tivos) this seems to be another deliberate attempt by Sky to finish off UK Tivo use.  :down: :down: :down:


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Some Sky HD boxes had this rolled out to them.
Unit comes up with an onscreen message (after 3 hours of no remote key strokes) saying box going in to standby mode - press x key to abort.

It can however be turned off in the setup menu so should not cause a problem once disabled.

Automan.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Automan said:


> It can however be turned off in the setup menu so should not cause a problem once disabled.


The key point we needed to know Automan. :up:

So it seems Sky are after all aware that some people use their Sky box to record to a Tivo or even a basic timed external HDD recorder or DVD recorder, or even a VHS recorder.

If Sky want to actually save the UK energy though they would actually need to trip power off on the box as Standby mode on a Sky box saves next to nothing. Presumably on a Sky+ or Sky HD box there might be more of a power saving to be made if the actual hard drive is spooled down?


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Pete77 said:


> By contrast my Philips television uses 12W in Standby Mode and 130W in On Mode. ....


I couldn't see what the government was going on about turning your TV via the switch to save power as all my TV's (Panasonic) consume about 0.7W in standby until people like you quote your standby figures.....

Thus @ 16.74p per unit and 8760 hours per year your TV costs

12Watts/1000 x £0.1674/KWhr x 8760hours = £17.60 a year to run whilst not doing anything !!!!


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Sky will have to offer a setting for this as Sky boxes are so common feeding single channels into hotel TV systems. If the channels go dark in the middle of the night it will make a lot of commercial subscribers (who pay through the nose) very unhappy I would think.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Ian_m said:


> *Thus @ 16.74p per unit *and 8760 hours per year your TV costs
> 
> 12Watts/1000 x £0.1674/KWhr x 8760hours = £17.60 a year to run whilst not doing anything !!!!


My supplier Equipower only charge 9.22 per KWhr and have no standing charge so that only comes to £9.69 per annum for my Tv in Standby 365 days per annum (which it isn't as it happens as its often fully off at the off switch on the front when it consumes nothing even when still plugged into the mains with the wall switch on) - I don't know where you get 0.1674/Kwhr from. Perhaps from a supplier that has a high charge for the first few hundred Kwhr per annum as a proxy for standing charge (and to discourage you from leaving mid year for another supplier with a penalty price for the first few hundred Kwhr) but then has a run on charge only around 8p per Kwhr. So 16.74p per Kw is not your average price per Kw during the year.

As to what you say the Panasonic uses in standby I suspect you get this from some manufacturers datasheet or other rather than by testing it using a Power Meter of the kind now available for £14.99 from:-

www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=38343&doy=26m2

I have measured both my own Philips Tv and my mother's Sony tv and they both use about 10% of their fully On level in Standby. In each case this is less than even my low consumption Panasonic TU-DSB 20 Sky Digibox uses in Standby (16W) compared to On (17W). I suspect the figure you quote is not what the set actually turns out to use in Standby if you plug it into a Maplin Power Meter.

Anyhow there is a huge saving to be made if people turn off their Sky Digibox at the mains overnight but I suspect this won't be suggested due to the inconvenience and time taken for a Sky Digibox to go through a full startup run from Power Off.


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Pete77 said:


> As to what you say the Panasonic uses in standby I suspect you get this from some manufacturers datasheet ...


I used our works Fluke power meter to do the measurements which agreed with the instruction manual of less than 1W (also TiVo 35W, Video 3W, DVD recorder 3W).

The £6.99 Aldi one I have isn't very accurate below a couple of Watt, even worse where power factor is concerned though it does display power factor.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Ian_m said:


> I used our works Fluke power meter to do the measurements which agreed with the instruction manual of less than 1W (also TiVo 35W, Video 3W, DVD recorder 3W).
> 
> The £6.99 Aldi one I have isn't very accurate below a couple of Watt, even worse where power factor is concerned though it does display power factor.


Are you sure you weren't measuring it turned off but still plugged into the mains and with the on switch on the wall still on rather than in true Standby mode with the red standby light still showing on the Tv. Proper standby normally uses more than 1W but perhaps the Panasonic benefits from new more efficient technology and/or a flat panel tv uses much less power in standby than a CRT design does?

As to the Aldi power meter I wonder if it is the same one or not as the one Maplin sells for £14.99? This one seems to agree with all the manufacturer ratings for the items I have and does do Power Factor although I'm not sure what you do with the Power Factor number exactly or what it means?


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## johnnye (Oct 18, 2005)

My sony bravia 32in lcd uses less than 1W in standby mode, as should all modern TVs if they hope to meet the latest EU ECO guidelines. The Sony does this in a two step process - switching the TV off with the remote initially does very little to the power draw (about 70W if I recall correctly) but after a minute or so, you can hear a relay click and the power drops right down to under 1W.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Panasonic TVs also use a relay for standby switching, hence the low consumption figure.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> Panasonic TVs also use a relay for standby switching, hence the low consumption figure.


What happens with older tellies that draw about 10% of the power level when fully On in Standby mode?

It seems surprising all those nasty Freeview and Sky Digboxes didn't have the same requirement imposed by the EU to save nearly all power use when in Standby mode.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I assume the regulators didn't consider that they would use enough power to make it worth mandating a low standby value.

I expect the rules only apply to TVs and other 'headline' items, which is probably a good thing for us anyway as the TiVo's 'standby' mode is a fiction as we all know


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

If you google "1 watt initiative" you will find numerous links to manufacturers who are supporting this target for standby though I didn't find the EU directive quickly.

http://www.elecdesign.com/Articles/Index.cfm?AD=1&ArticleID=3127


> Japan has largely endorsed Global 1W, with some makers floating targets of 10 mW. The cost of implementation and the availability of technology, particularly above 30 W of output power, provides technical and commercial challenges.


IMHO it doesn't go far enough, given you can power an IR receiver and a relay from a few milliwatts then 1W for anything is still higher than it needs to be, but every little helps. 
Of course appliances that are fully switched off use 0 watts...


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Heres the spec page from one of my Panasonic TV's, it quotes 1.4W I measured less than 1W (0.7W I think).

Blindlemon might be right about relays in Panasonic TV's, never noticed the clicking until I read his post last night.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

http://www.sust-it.net/home-results.php?id=54&submit=View

Really interesting league tables of the power consumption of different consumer items. No SKy boxes listed as yet.

I was initially a bit shocked that my extra expensive Smeg fridge freezer was so far down the list then noticed it has twice the fridge capacity as the #1 rated appliance and most of the others above it.

http://www.sust-it.net/home-results.php?id=71&submit=View
Xbox360 needs a lot of juice.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Sky have now rolled out a new version of their EPG to all their ordinary basic Sky Digiboxes that implements the availability of Auto Standby - that really great feature (not) that saves a maximum of 1W per hour while disabling recordings by your Tivo. I only noticed this because my Panasonic TU-DSB20 has been going in to Standby for no obvious reason and I had missed a couple of recordings where the Sky box had clearly been in Standby at the time.

I checked the Auto Standby setting (accessed from Option 5 on the Services menu) on my Panasonic TU-DSB20 box and it showed Auto Standby as Off suggesting that Sky only intends users to enable it if they want to. But despite this the box clearly was going in to Auto Standby.

So I turned Auto Standby On in the menus and then turned the box Off in to Standby with the remote before pulling the plug on the box and power cycling it. Then when the box had fully started up I went to Auto Standby and turned it to Off. I then turned off the box to Standby again with the remote and power cycled it again and went back to Auto Standby and turned it On again. I then put the box back in Standby and then power cycled it once more and when the box had started up again I went to the Auto Standby menu and turned the setting to Off.

The box now does not drop to standby on its own any more.

So be warned that whilst Sky is rolling out this feature supposedly disabled unless you want to use it that in fact it is being enabled but the menus are reporting a false Off message. This is rectified by manually turning Auto Standby On and Off and power cycling as described above.

As all Tivo owners who use a Sky Digibox are potentially affected by this glitch have any of the rest of you experienced your box going in to standby after the new EPG update (ends in NS) and having to manually turn it on and off as described above to properly disable it? Or is it just my ancient Panasonic TU-DSB20 that initially can't handle this setting change properly in the new EPG firmware until it is forced through manually a couple of times?


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Perfect timing... I'm away for over a week. I guess I'll be coming back to a load of non-recordings and upset at home. I wonder if my SkyEye that sends the "backup" key every 30 seconds is enough to stop it going into standby?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

kitschcamp said:


> Perfect timing... I'm away for over a week. I guess I'll be coming back to a load of non-recordings and upset at home. I wonder if my SkyEye that sends the "backup" key every 30 seconds is enough to stop it going into standby?


Do you have Auto-Standby showing in the Settings section of your Sky Digibox EPG yet? If so have you made sure to resave what is apparently but is not actually in practice an Off setting in that menu. Of course if you are still running a pre Auto-Standby Sky Digibox EPG then your box might get updated to an EPG with Auto-Standby any time while you are away.

After further thought what I think is actually happening is that Auto-Standby is turned On when Sky sends through the new EPG but the default setting option shown when you go in to Auto Standby is shown as Off, even though you then have to actually save the Off setting to make it active.

This is a bit like a Reciva Logik IRMA1 internet radio I have running a Beta firmware where a setting called Deemphasis always shows as Off when you visit the menu, even though one of the other three settings can currently be in effect. At the end of the day if this is what is happening on the Sky box it is a bug as clearly it should be showing the setting that is currently in effect.

If you make sure to re-save the Off setting (a power cycle or two helps) in Auto Standby on your Sky box you should be ok and then hopefully this setting will also transfer across in future EPG updates as the setting to make the red button disappear after 30 seconds certainly does seem to manage to do so every time the Sky EPG is upgraded.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Pete77 said:


> Do you have Auto-Standby showing in the Settings section of your Sky Digibox EPG yet? If so have you made sure to resave what is apparently but is not actually in practice an Off setting in that menu. Of course if you are still running a pre Auto-Standby Sky Digibox EPG then your box might get updated to an EPG with Auto-Standby any time while you are away.


Exactly. I'm away. Haven't a clue. Hence my thoughts about it being perfect timing.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

kitschcamp said:


> Exactly. I'm away. Haven't a clue. Hence my thoughts about it being perfect timing.


Oh I thought you meant you were about to go away for a week but were still at home.

The new Sky EPG version with Auto Standby was already in operation on my sister's old Amstrad DRX 100 when I was over there at xmas and I was dreading that it would also turn up on my Panny TU-DSB20 while I was away from home for 10 days at the start of the New Year. If that had happened it would have scuppered my recording of the Dakar Rally on Eurosport.

Luckily Auto Standby never kicked in during the Dakar (ended on January 17th) and as best I can tell it downloaded here around Sunday 25th Jan or Monday 26th Jan as that was when the Panny box started turning itself off in to Standby.

So fingers crossed it hasn't happened yet on your Sky box when you get home.


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

I have always used the switch-on stb codes from TiVo anyway - so if the box is off it will power back on for TiVo.

And when I finally found my box did have auto-standby - I switched it off.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ozsat said:


> And when I finally found my box did have auto-standby - I switched it off.


I forgot to mention that Auto Standby was leaving my Panasonic TU-DSB20 in a condition where the red standby light was showing but remote input would not wake it up from Standby mode. Therefore the usual send of the Sky key before a Tivo record did not wake it up.

But properly disabling the Auto-Standby function stopped this happening.

I suspect the very old Sky Digiboxes have hardware that is not properly compatible with Auto-Standby mode.

Allegedly Sky Digiboxes normally burn out after two years if left on 24/7 but I have had mine for nearly four years now second hand running 24/7 and it was probably seven years old when I bought it on Ebay.


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## pauljs (Feb 11, 2001)

Mine switched off during Jools Hooland Hootenanny, as it was over 2 hours long, TiVo was recording, hadn't noticed they had added the auto Standby until then.

That was the first 2 hour plus programme I had recorded before that TiVo had always turned it back on. It only goes off after 11 pm.

Quote from DTG website

"Sky said a Sky+ set-top box uses 28 watts on average when on; this is reduced to 14.5 in standby. An HD box uses 36 watts when on, and 19 in standby mode."


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

pauljs said:


> That was the first 2 hour plus programme I had recorded before that TiVo had always turned it back on. It only goes off after 11 pm.


It is now said that the boxes go off after 2 hours of inactivity between 11pm and 3.30am and after four hours of inactivity between 3.30 and 11pm.



> Quote from DTG website
> 
> "Sky said a Sky+ set-top box uses 28 watts on average when on; this is reduced to 14.5 in standby. An HD box uses 36 watts when on, and 19 in standby mode."


I have a digital power meter that came from Maplin (includes Power Factor) which can measure the current drain for any individual device. My Pansonic TU-DSB 20 draws 17W when switched on and 16W in Standby. An only one year old Pace Sky box at my mum's house displayed the same behaviour. Namely saving only one watt in standby. So Sky and DTG are lieing to justify the Emperors New Clothes like obsession with energy saving (even at the cost of functionality here). Its a total joke when most people have upgraded their tvs from CRT models that consume 50W to 120W to Plasma/LCD models that consume between 120W and 300W!


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## pauljs (Feb 11, 2001)

I always assumed standby must have the receiver, modem and most of the electronics still on to receive updates and phone home.

Unless they can find a better way to wake it up.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

My Panasonic TU-DSB20 Sky box went back in to Standby again last night on its own and would not respond to a switch on command from my Sky remote or from Tivo when carrying out a timed recording. Only a power cycle got it working again today.

So either my Panasonic TU-DSB 20 box is coincidentally knackered just as Sky push out the Auto-Standby firmware or more likely the Auto-Standby firmware doesn't interface properly with some older model Sky boxes such as the Panasonic TU-DSB20. On these boxes it appears to be causing a hang when the firmware reaches the end of the two or four hour timeout period and needs to refer to the Auto Standby code to see if it should switch off or not. This is even though I have actually turned Auto-Standby off in the firmware on my Panasonic box.

Sky deny all knowledge of the problem although one adviser tried to suggest this was less likely to happen if I have the box connected to my phone line. I am sure that is nonsense though.

Does anyone else here use a Panasonic TU-DSB20 with their Tivo and if so has it been updated to a firmware version that shows Auto-Standby at Option 5 on the Services menu and if so have you also been getting these problems with your box locking up and needing a power cycle to get it going again?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

I just thought I would report that I followed the advice of one Sky customer service rep that re-enabling the phone line connection to the modem on the unit sometimes seemed to prevent the lock up being caused by Auto Standby. I also went to the Installer menu on my Sky box (Services button then enter "0" "1" Select) and ran the New Installation option (also utilising the now connected phone line).

Since then my box has not ended up in locked up standby mode but perhaps I need to wait a few more days to be sure if the problem has gone away.

The official Sky technical support department line on the matter is that there are no issues with Auto Standby but this is clearly not true in respect of some older model Sky Digiboxes.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

They always go for the "no reported problems" with new software. Always. Remember a few years back with boxes crashing overnight? It took them over a year to fix that one.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Suggestions also seems to have gone rather crazy with making huge numbers of recordings in the last few days so I think I would need to turn off Suggestions again to be sure the problem of box crashing induced by Auto Standby has definitely gone away for good.


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