# 2 things my vintage cable DVR wins over TIVO



## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

Just got my Tivo Premiere box yesterday. This is my first Tivo. Waiting on Comcast guy to come by later today with the Cablecard.

Anyways ... Tivo has impressive features ... but two things that I am baffled about ... when comparing the Tivo to the old awful Scientific Atlanta box.

- Tivo has no display in the front. It would be convenient to show which channel its tuned to (or show a clock). I see myself hitting INFO often when surfing channels. Tivo could have done one better and sported a dot-matrix display showing the name of the show (similar to AV devices that display MP3 tags).

- Tivo does not power off ! This is plain stupid. If I am not watching anything, what's the point in buffering the stream. Its not like I am going to want to review that very channel when I return. On my SA box the hard drive spins down when box is powered off. It spins back up 120 seconds before a scheduled recording. In this era of green ... it makes logical sense.

Now the good stuff. I am using HD menus and everything is fairly quick. Tivo box did an mandatory update to 14.5 version when I first booted it up. No delays when changing menus. Now ... that could be because I currently have only analog and clear QAM digital channels ... perhaps once I install the cablecard things will get slow (can anyone verify this?).

Overall I am happy with the Tivo. What I do now is put both tuners on a dead channel and then put the system on standby. Not very convenient.


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## uf20wop (Oct 7, 2010)

if you have a harmony remote they have a function called "power toggle" that will put the box in standby mode when you turn everything off.

this turns off the lcd on the front of the box and turns off the outputs

shows will still record though


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## ncted (May 13, 2007)

Very few DVRs out there have an actual power saving mode like you describe. Was your SA box running SARA or Passport? I know SARA can do it, and Passport might be able to, but Tivos and satellite DVRs don't do this. That said, I agree, it is stupid to waste energy in this fashion. On the other hand, modern DVRs might do too much housekeeping when not recording to make this impossible. Perhaps a small SSD drive to store metadata and other, non-recording data and only keep recordings on the big traditional hard disks?

Ted


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

- who cares? Get a wall clock and most channels have annoying logos so you ALWAYS know what channel you're tuned to.

- your cable DVR doesn't power off either by itself either, so I don't see how this is different than standby other than the awkward nav to get to it and that the Tivo drive doesn't spin down. Does it really matter? The Premieres don't use a lot of power anyway.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

and yet other people like the live buffer and even want it expanded to an hour or 2 hours. So the green function would have to be a toggle - adding in more complexity and maintenance. The amount of energy saved by powering down the hard drive would not equal the savings of one bulb changed to flourescent or the unplugging of a few power chargers like cell phones. You may already do those things so for you it would be an additional savings but for many, there is mnuch they can do to go green.

and in another thread we have had a debate on features and I keep pointing out how it would not sell more TiVo subs and this feature falls squarely in the domain of it would not sell more TiVo DVRs and thus be a direct drain on TiVo bottom line nad pull resources from other features that could sell more TiVo DVRs.

so sure TiVo could be good to mother earth and spend the bucks to save some energy, but since TiVo is not making a profit they simply do not have the means for such largess.


as for the channel info - soon enough you will be watching recorded shows anyway and not be so worried about what channel you are on.

I would like a clock though, currently I have one cable box still hooked up mainly since it has an easy to see LCD that is kept accurate by cable company.


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## oosik77 (Nov 22, 1999)

Why would you power off a device that needs to be able to record your seasons passes? If it's off it cannot record what you want it to.

I think if you are like most of us you will find you will watch very little live TV so no display on the front is really no big deal. 

My 2 cents.....


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

teewow said:


> Now ... that could be because I currently have only analog and clear QAM digital channels ... perhaps once I install the cablecard things will get slow (can anyone verify this?).


Just had my cablecards installed yesterday after putting up with analog-only over the weekend.... no difference whatsoever.

Either the HDUI issues have been exaggerated by some, or they've been fixed before you and I got our Tivos. So far the interface has been working fine (albeit embarrassingly incomplete). HDUI itself I have mixed feelings about... The discovery bar is rather useless except for displaying advertisements to me that I don't want to see anyway. If you take away that, then the HDUI doesn't present a whole lot more information than the SDUI did. The HD Pandora interface though is quite nice looking.


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

oosik77 said:


> If it's off it cannot record what you want it to.
> My 2 cents.....


No cents. Read my original post (turning off is different from pulling the power plug).


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

smbaker said:


> Just had my cablecards installed yesterday after putting up with analog-only over the weekend.... no difference whatsoever.


Good to know. I shall verify in a few hours //


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## NYHeel (Oct 7, 2003)

teewow said:


> No cents. Read my original post (turning off is different from pulling the power plug).


It's probably worse for the hard drive to start and stop like that. Plus I'm always recording stuff anyway and I like having the buffer on when I turn on my TV. I have a season pass of sportscenter with keep at most 1, so my tivo is almost always recording something. But still, I really don't think that's a big deal at all. The power savings would likely be very small.

Agree with you about the clock thing though. It's just nice to have a clock on the face of the box. Don't care about the channel but I would love a clock.


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

NYHeel said:


> It's probably worse for the hard drive to start and stop like that. Plus I'm always recording stuff anyway and I like having the buffer on when I turn on my TV. I have a season pass of sportscenter with keep at most 1, so my tivo is almost always recording something.


Sure. I understand. If and when they offer this feature to stop buffering in standby mode. I will turn off the Tivo ... and you will choose not to. Both of us would be happy


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## jterwelp (Apr 27, 2004)

teewow said:


> What I do now is put both tuners on a dead channel and then put the system on standby. Not very convenient.


Assuming you're performing these steps in an effort to save power, you needn't bother. I just took the following measurements with my Kill A Watt meter:
1. Switch both tuners to dead channels = 0 watt savings
2. Put Premiere into standby mode = 1 watt savings


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## AlexFL (Oct 2, 2010)

IMHO:
-Clock Display? I find it useless. As someone mentioned before, get a wall-clock or something similar that can keep you posted on what time it is. One of my Tivo's is located in my home theater room which obviously needs to be as dark as possible to provide a better watching experience when watching movies. Having a clock blasting the time or something else would be completely annoying. In my opinion entertainment boxes are meant to be clean in design, Tivo Premiere boxes accomplish that.

-Power off Tivo? Really? First of all, the functionality of tuning the active buffers to dead channels is just plain odd. It would be like taking the tires off your car everytime you park it in order to get more mileage from them. I love the fact that the buffers are running all the time. When I get home I may turn the TV on and realize that I would've liked to watch the show playing at that moment from the beginning. With the buffer being active I can do exactly that. If your concern is power consumption, be aware that Tivo Premiere's consume very little energy in comparison to other DVR's. The fact is that these units were meant to stay on 24/7. Studies have also showed that constant powering on/off of hard drives leads to problems with these devices and in order to make your Tivo last as long as possible is best to keep it running all the time. In comparison, you wouldn't want to constantly turn on and off your computer throughout the day, would you?


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

jterwelp said:


> Assuming you're performing these steps in an effort to save power, you needn't bother. I just took the following measurements with my Kill A Watt meter:
> 1. Switch both tuners to dead channels = 0 watt savings
> 2. Put Premiere into standby mode = 1 watt savings


That sounds odd ... a typical hard drive consumes about 8-10 watts (operating) and 3-5 watts (idle). see e.g.

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_7200_12.pdf


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

teewow said:


> That sounds odd ... a typical hard drive consumes about 8-10 watts (operating) and 3-5 watts (idle). see e.g.
> 
> http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_7200_12.pdf


The TiVo is stil buffering even on a dead channel isn't it? It's just a blank screen so there are less resources used.

But still. Even with the SA STB, that thing draws around 35 to 40 watts constantly, whether you've hit the power button or not.
The Non DVR STB is just as bad. Drawing around the same amount of watts as the DVR SA box. At least this is the case on the SA boxes that Comcast uses in my area.


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

AlexFL said:


> It would be like taking the tires off your car everytime you park


Bad analogy. It would be like turnoff off the ignition everytime you park.



AlexFL said:


> When I get home I may turn the TV on and realize that I would've liked to watch the show playing at that moment from the beginning. With the buffer being active I can do exactly that.


Hmm. Really? Since buffering only starts from the time you switched to the channel ... how is your TIVO able to buffer from the beginning of a show ?



AlexFL said:


> In comparison, you wouldn't want to constantly turn on and off your computer throughout the day, would you?


I do that to my laptop all the time. The hard drives are subjected to on/off cycles several times a day. I suspect lot of laptop users have a similar schedule.

What I am saying is ... offer the option to turn off the buffering. You may decide to leave your laptop on all the time ... but the standby feature is there for those who prefer no to.


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> The TiVo is stil buffering even on a dead channel isn't it?


No its not. Put it on a dead channel and you will see that the buffer pointer never moves (i.e. no green colored buffer segment)



aaronwt said:


> But still. Even with the SA STB, that thing draws around 35 to 40 watts constantly


Where did you get that figure from ? Its more like 15-30 watts when recording (more horsepower for HD channels). Its 2 watts when in stand by mode (with hard drive spun down).


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## Stormspace (Apr 13, 2004)

teewow said:


> No its not. Put it on a dead channel and you will see that the buffer pointer never moves (i.e. no green colored buffer segment)
> 
> Where did you get that figure from ? Its more like 15-30 watts when recording (more horsepower for HD channels). Its 2 watts when in stand by mode (with hard drive spun down).


It's still buffering, its just not keeping anything in the buffer. I'm like others, I think that once you have been using it a while channels and time won't mean as much as they did before. We have a clock in the den and the only thing I use it for is to check how late it is before going to bed or if we have to be somewhere else by a certain time. I haven't watched a clock for a TV show in years. (And it's an analog clock with no light to ruin the room)


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

teewow said:


> No its not. Put it on a dead channel and you will see that the buffer pointer never moves (i.e. no green colored buffer segment)
> 
> Where did you get that figure from ? Its more like 15-30 watts when recording (more horsepower for HD channels). Its 2 watts when in stand by mode (with hard drive spun down).


Not with the kill a watt meter on my brothers and parents boxes


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> Not with the kill a watt meter on my brothers and parents boxes


You need to kill your kill-a-watt.

_# As an ENERGY STAR compliant DVR, how many watts does the TiVo Premiere consume?

With early software, the TiVo Premiere dissipates 23 watts in standby and 26 watts while recording.

The System Information screen reports an internal temperature of 30-31C in room where the ambient temperature is 21-22C._

From url:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=444083


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I'm talking about the Comcast SA boxes.
All my premiers use 23 to 25watts.


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## Jets (Sep 28, 2010)

The only thing I miss from the sa dvr is the indicator in the guide of shows you have set to record. 
TiVo guide doesn't indicate that a program is already set to record.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

NYHeel said:


> It's probably worse for the hard drive to start and stop like that.


Nope - life of the hard drive has nothing to do with this. On average hard drives will last just as long in either scenario


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> All my premiers use 23 to 25watts.


Slightly OT, but does anyone have a handy comparison of Tivo energy consumption by model? I'm curious about how much more energy efficient the Premiere is than my previous THD units. I can tell the the THD is physically warmer than the Premiere.

As far as the topic at hand, I'm in favor of 1) Tivo having a standby mode, and 2) Standby mode turning off live buffering. It seems a very easy intuitive obvious feature. Even if it doesn't save much energy consumption, it'll satisfy those who are concerned about it. Why not just do it?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

smbaker said:


> Slightly OT, but does anyone have a handy comparison of Tivo energy consumption by model? I'm curious about how much more energy efficient the Premiere is than my previous THD units. I can tell the the THD is physically warmer than the Premiere.
> 
> As far as the topic at hand, I'm in favor of 1) Tivo having a standby mode, and 2) Standby mode turning off live buffering. It seems a very easy intuitive obvious feature. Even if it doesn't save much energy consumption, it'll satisfy those who are concerned about it. Why not just do it?


The TiVoHD/S3 boxes I had were drawing around 35 watts.

As far as the drive spinning down, the TiVo also is updating content on a regular basis. isn't all this content stored on the hard drive? Guide data, season passess etc.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> As far as the drive spinning down, the TiVo also is updating content on a regular basis. isn't all this content stored on the hard drive? Guide data, season passess etc.


Guide data should only need to be updated when the daily call is made (Flashback: memories of waking up 2am to hard drive noise from the S1 every morning). Anything else that it's doing like sitting around waiting for a season pass to start ought to be able to be cached.

It just seems like such a simple feature that there's no good reason not to implement it. Doing so will make everyone happy. Those who don't want it need not use it.

All one has to do is stop buffering. If the disk subsystem is properly designed and there is no data to be written, then spindown can happen automatically after a pre-determined period of inactivity.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

smbaker said:


> Guide data should only need to be updated when the daily call is made (Flashback: memories of waking up 2am to hard drive noise from the S1 every morning). Anything else that it's doing like sitting around waiting for a season pass to start ought to be able to be cached.
> 
> It just seems like such a simple feature that there's no good reason not to implement it. Doing so will make everyone happy. Those who don't want it need not use it.
> 
> All one has to do is stop buffering. If the disk subsystem is properly designed and there is no data to be written, then spindown can happen automatically after a pre-determined period of inactivity.


Guide data should be updated regularly since changes can be made to the Tv schedule at any time. I don't know if it's 4 times an hour or once. But it does check at least the TiVo servers on a regular basis. For instance a recording scheduled from my cell phone will show up in the To Do list within an hour.

By the TiVo checking the guide data on a regular basis, it is less likely to miss recordings when things change. This is one reason why the number of missed recordings from my TiVos over almost an entire decade is only in the single digits.

there have been times when the Tv schedule has changed in the late morning and the tiVo had adjusted it's recording, to do list, according to the change for that evening.


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## drevilkep (Aug 4, 2010)

teewow said:


> You need to kill your kill-a-watt.
> 
> _# As an ENERGY STAR compliant DVR, how many watts does the TiVo Premiere consume?
> 
> ...


The Scientific Atlanta cable boxes consume almost the same amount of energy whether they are on or "off". I measured the difference with a Kill-a-watt and it barely registered 1 watt; the same as a TiVo in standby. I agree with you on the clock. You just get used to looking at the dvr for the time.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Guide data should be updated regularly since changes can be made to the Tv schedule at any time. I don't know if it's 4 times an hour or once. But it does check at least the TiVo servers on a regular basis. For instance a recording scheduled from my cell phone will show up in the To Do list within an hour.


My premiere claims it's last service connection was "Tuesday Oct 12th 5:40am" and next scheduled is "Wednesday Oct 13th 8:40am".

Even if it is checking more often, those checks can still be done from cached data. Data only needs to be written if and when it changes. Agaiin, the spin-down ought to be automatic if the disk subsystem is designed properly.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

That's for the daily connection.

If you look at the bottom of the system info screen, you'll see what is called VCM connection. That connection happens much more frequently. On my TivoHD, there is only a 1 hour 10 minute span between 'last connected' and 'next scheduled'.


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

smbaker said:


> My premiere claims it's last service connection was "Tuesday Oct 12th 5:40am" and next scheduled is "Wednesday Oct 13th 8:40am".
> 
> Even if it is checking more often, those checks can still be done from cached data. Data only needs to be written if and when it changes. Agaiin, the spin-down ought to be automatic if the disk subsystem is designed properly.


A 'Service Connection' is when the TiVo downloads bulk information and is performed once per day.

A TiVo also maintains a 'real-time' connection to the servers and performs regular 'VCM Connections' throughout the day. Don't know what 'VCM' stands for but I believe it has something to do with the program schedules and personalized data that appears on the TiVo website once you log in (now playing list, season passes, recording schedules, etc.).

TiVo also extracts general schedule info, showcases and stuff from the 'TeleWorld' broadcasts that occur each evening, but only if you are not using your tuners to record shows.

The bottom line is that a TiVo does a lot of work in the background that you aren't aware of. It checks a lot of stuff online throughout the day.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

I'm in favor of an energy saving mode too. (Who isn't really?)

But at the same time the Premiere is more efficient than its predecessors. And could very well be more efficient than an old cable box that had some sort of standby mode.

Anyway my FIOS DVR and Comcast DVR win over Tivo in the responsiveness area. The menus were/are much more responsive than the PRemiere's.

You hit a button and something happens. Rather instantly. Not a second or two or more later.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

TrueTurbo said:


> The bottom line is that a TiVo does a lot of work in the background that you aren't aware of. It checks a lot of stuff online throughout the day.


My S1 and my first S2 worked just fine with a phone connection and calling once per day. I suspect the Premiere would work just fine also with a phone dongle for the guide data updates.

Following in the flavor of the OP's suggestion of a real standby mode, such a standby mode could turn off these hourly checks and other unnecessary background jobs until the next scheduled daily update. It's just not that difficult.

Taken to the extreme, if I wanted to I could use a mechanical timer to disconnect the internet and video connections from the Tivo. The Tivo will not implode if not connected to the Internet 24 hours a day.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

oosik77 said:


> Why would you power off a device that needs to be able to record your seasons passes?


AND suggestions. That is one of the few features ONLY the TiVo has. I can't imagine why anyone would want to turn the unit off.

Plus, like most electronics, it is far more stress on the box to turn it on and off and on and off and on and off all the time. Just leave it on. It is not like the Premiere uses that much power anyway. And would you REALLY want to sit through a 5 minute startup every time?


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

smbaker said:


> My S1 and my first S2 worked just fine with a phone connection and calling once per day. I suspect the Premiere would work just fine also with a phone dongle for the guide data updates.
> 
> Following in the flavor of the OP's suggestion of a real standby mode, such a standby mode could turn off these hourly checks and other unnecessary background jobs until the next scheduled daily update. It's just not that difficult.
> 
> Taken to the extreme, if I wanted to I could use a mechanical timer to disconnect the internet and video connections from the Tivo. The Tivo will not implode if not connected to the Internet 24 hours a day.


No one said the TiVo would implode or not work properly if not constantly connected to the Internet! You are missing the point, that being, the Premiere isn't a huge energy hog. If you are so damned insistent on saving energy, turn your house heat thermostat down 1 or 2 degrees, or dial back your water heater temp, or go clean the cooling coils on your fridge, or switch off some of the lights in your house, or go buy energy efficient bulbs, or whatever. You'll probably save a heck of a lot more than you would messing around with the DVR! It's all relative.


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## PedjaR (Jan 4, 2010)

TrueTurbo said:


> No one said the TiVo would implode or not work properly if not constantly connected to the Internet! You are missing the point, that being, the Premiere isn't a huge energy hog. If you are so damned insistent on saving energy, turn your house heat thermostat down 1 or 2 degrees, or dial back your water heater temp, or go clean the cooling coils on your fridge, or switch off some of the lights in your house, or go buy energy efficient bulbs, or whatever. You'll probably save a heck of a lot more than you would messing around with the DVR! It's all relative.


I vaguely remember seeing somewhere that tuning adapter spends about as much energy as Tivo Premiere.


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> premiers use 23 to 25watts.


25 Watt = 0.025 KiloWatt

24 hrs in a day X 30 days in a month = 720 hours

720 hours x 0.025 KWatt = 18 kWh (i.e. kilowatthour) per month

Cost of electricity at my house = $0.12 per kWh

Cost to operate Tivo = 18 kWh * $0.12 = $2.16 per month

Ok ... so its not significant... especially when you consider that I used 1604 kWh last month for the entire house.

For comparison, if you ran a plasma TV (600Watts) for 4 hours every day ... the cost per month would be 0.6 * 4 * 30 * 0.12 = $8.64

Update: Actually, a plasma TV would put a slight load on your cooling system due to the heat it generates. That needs to be accounted as well.


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

teewow said:


> 25 Watt = 0.025 KiloWatt
> 
> 24 hrs in a day X 30 days in a month = 720 hours
> 
> ...


Are you for real!?! I'm strongly considering sending you a cheque for $2.16 per month if it stops you winging about the minimal power that a TiVo Premiere consumes!


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

TrueTurbo said:


> Are you for real!?! I'm strongly considering sending you a cheque for $2.16 per month if it stops you winging about the minimal power that a TiVo Premiere consumes!


nah, he just needs to turn his PC off instead of using it to post how much energy the TiVo wastes each month


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

I love the clock and recording title info on my S3. I think all DVR's should have the OLED display what is being recorded. Yes, I do depend upon it and have stopped repeat recordings (TiVo doesn't always get it right) because I can see the title, and I can confirm that a particular recordings is going as planned.

However, I'm certain there is a cost to the display technology, and the trend is for DVR's to have virtually no front display at all. Cheaper.


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

TrueTurbo said:


> Are you for real!?[/QUOTE
> 
> Read my entire post ... I used the phrase "not significant" //


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

As is this thread. Can you say, pedantic?


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

slowbiscuit said:


> As is this thread. Can you say, pedantic?


hey the original poster cam back and agreed that his initial concern was misplaced. Why give someone who can take in the debate and agree on the logical outcome a hard time?


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

teewow said:


> TrueTurbo said:
> 
> 
> > Are you for real!?[/QUOTE
> ...


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## schwinn (Sep 18, 2004)

ZeoTiVo said:


> Nope - life of the hard drive has nothing to do with this. On average hard drives will last just as long in either scenario


Really? Everything I have ever read says that the thermal cycling can affect drive life:

http://books.google.com/books?id=lz...epage&q=hard drive life power cycling&f=false

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Minimizing_hard_disk_drive_failure_and_data_loss#Power_cycling_control

And even Google's hard drive reliability study implied this was possible: "Power Cycles. The power cycles indicator counts the
number of times a drive is powered up and down. In
a server-class deployment, in which drives are powered
continuously, we do not expect to reach high enough
power cycle counts to see any effects on failure rates.
Our results find that for drives aged up to two years, this
is true, there is no significant correlation between failures
and high power cycles count. But for drives 3 years
and older, higher power cycle counts can increase the
absolute failure rate by over 2%. We believe this is due
more to our population mix than to aging effects. Moreover,
this correlation could be the effect (not the cause)
of troubled machines that require many repair iterations
and thus many power cycles to be fixed."

Google's data centers don't power cycle all the time, so they won't see the significant numbers home users would... and they don't claim to make this correlation definitiviely, but they did see an increase...

SMART data also collects this information, and lists it as a "life critical attribute".

Bottom line, the thermal cycling of a mechanical system will most certainly affect its life.

I'm not saying you're totally wrong, but I have not found anything that says it "doesn't affect" it as you do... care to provide a reference?


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

Well for what its worth ... here is what I ended up doing ...

Before I put in on standby I put the two tuners on two specific channels so it will buffer the last few minutes.

In my case I put it on CNN and Fox ... so I am aware of what did happen and "what did not".


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## audvidman (Jan 18, 2008)

Tivo has a on screen clock. I use it. Also show's time in playback mode. You can get it at http://tivo.drosoph.com/#SPS


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

schwinn said:


> Really? Everything I have ever read says that the thermal cycling can affect drive life:


It is my experience that it is not just drives, but all electronics can suffer from at least a tad bit to a significant amount of "wear" with unnecessary power-cycling. Even non-electronics, such as light bulbs or florescent fixtures are affected negatively by power-cycling and/or can use more energy total by being power-cycled too frequently vs. being just left on.

I am not saying that everything should be left on all the time. But there are cases when it will ultimately cost the same or less in total-cost-ownership to do so.


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

I admit that since the TIVO Premiere does a lot more than a cable box (remote scheduling; web video season pass etc.) ... it makes sense to have the system on and ready (i.e. hard drive not in standby) mode.

My gripe is with the 24/7 buffering of video from both tuners. The constant writing to the drive *WILL* impact life. I know ... there are TIVO owners who have had their systems running for 11 years with no problems. The facts are this: 1080i video stream buffers are significantly larger ... and newer hard drives have lower MTBF (thanks to cheaper parts due to cut throat pricing).

Tivo should address the problem - do not buffer when the system is on standby. For those who firmly believe that excessive writes to a hard drive will not impact failure rate ... should leave their TIVO's ON all the time.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

teewow said:


> I admit that since the TIVO Premiere does a lot more than a cable box (remote scheduling; web video season pass etc.) ... it makes sense to have the system on and ready (i.e. hard drive not in standby) mode.
> 
> My gripe is with the 24/7 buffering of video from both tuners. The constant writing to the drive *WILL* impact life. Tivo should address the problem - do not buffer when the system is on standby. For those who firmly believe that excessive writes to a hard drive will not impact failure rate ... should leave their TIVO's ON all the time.


The drives are already spinning... the only difference when buffering (as far as the drives are concerned) is that the heads will have to step every now and then. And "Buffering" (which is just recording) is little to no effort for the ASISCS chips. I understand your reasoning, but I think you are being somewhat obsessive about it. Your time and mental energy should be worth FAR more than perhaps saving a fraction of a watt of power, or theoretically extending the life of the system by 1 or 2%.

There are far more interesting things to worry about or be upset about, with the Premiere


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

crxssi said:


> The drives are already spinning... the only difference when buffering (as far as the drives are concerned) is that the heads will have to step every now and then. And "Buffering" (which is just recording) is little to no effort for the ASISCS chips. I understand your reasoning, but I think you are being somewhat obsessive about it. Your time and mental energy should be worth FAR more than perhaps saving a fraction of a watt of power, or theoretically extending the life of the system by 1 or 2%.
> 
> There are far more interesting things to worry about or be upset about, with the Premiere


Setting aside the wear and tear issue ... there is a benefit to not buffering during standby ...

This morning I was transferring Jon Stewart's episode (2680 MB) to my PC ... transfer rate was 1MB/s. Realizing that the tuners were buffering HD channels during the transfer ... I walked over to the TIVO and switched them to two inactive channels ... the transfer rate increase to 3MB/s.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

teewow said:


> - Tivo has no display in the front. It would be convenient to show which channel its tuned to (or show a clock). I see myself hitting INFO often when surfing channels. Tivo could have done one better and sported a dot-matrix display showing the name of the show (similar to AV devices that display MP3 tags).


Been there, done that, the original S3 model has an OLED display that is both a clock and will show you the names of programs it's recording. But that kind of thing costs money, and the S3's were far more expensive then the TivoHD and Premiere sell for.

Diane


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

schwinn said:


> Really? Everything I have ever read says that the thermal cycling can affect drive life:


Ok - I was referring specifically to turning the power off and some people's mistaken idea that the life of the drive is only measured when the hard drive is powered up.
Turning off the drive in no way will increase the life of the drive, that was my point.

The articles you link point out two things that are bad as well. Power coming back on to the drive can stress parts and if a part is not up to spec - this can push that part over the edge. Does indeed shorten the life of the drive.

The thermal cycling you mention is not directly related to the drive per se, but is another reason I leave my PCs and TiVo DVRs powered up - if you do turn off the PC or TiVo then the heat dissipates over time and parts will experience contraction - then when warmed back up at the next power up they will expand again. Unneeded wear and tear and a part not up to spec can fail due to this as well.

overall the blurb you quoted simply points to the number one reason for short hard drive life - poor quality during manufacture that has the drive succumb to the expected wear and tear it was designed to withstand, and that the Google study found that it can go in batches and vary around by manufacture etc..


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## DancnDude (Feb 7, 2001)

I still think TiVo should sell a USB LED screen that would work like the Series 3's screen. I love that feature on my Series3! Plug the thing in and it would show the time and what's recording.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

DancnDude said:


> I still think TiVo should sell a USB LED screen that would work like the Series 3's screen. I love that feature on my Series3! Plug the thing in and it would show the time and what's recording.


subscribe


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

ZeoTiVo said:


> Ok - I was referring specifically to turning the power off and some people's mistaken idea that the life of the drive is only measured when the hard drive is powered up.
> Turning off the drive in no way will increase the life of the drive, that was my point.


I do take issue with turning off the power of a drive does not increase the life of the drive, if one defines life of the drive in time of ownership, now if you define the life on the drive in hours the drive runs you are correct. To make my point if you ran a drive 1 hour a year it would last almost forever, if you start and stop the drive every 5 minutes you would cut down on both the running time and total time of ownership of a working drive. I know some servers that have to be shut down have drive problems after starting back up, that may be because the park arm has not been used for years and some dust got on it and when the power went off the arm stuck. I turn off my computer drives 10 times or more a day (putting the computer to sleep) been doing this for years, never had a drive problem over the 5 to 6 years I keep a computer.
Because i don't record anything between 4am and 4PM I turn off my TiVo once a day for the 12 hours, been doing it from June of 2007, never had a hard drive problem with my 1Tb upgrade. YMMV


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## Jeshimon (Jul 9, 2007)

crxssi said:


> It is my experience that it is not just drives, but all electronics can suffer from at least a tad bit to a significant amount of "wear" with unnecessary power-cycling. Even non-electronics, such as light bulbs or florescent fixtures are affected negatively by power-cycling and/or can use more energy total by being power-cycled too frequently vs. being just left on.
> 
> I am not saying that everything should be left on all the time. But there are cases when it will ultimately cost the same or less in total-cost-ownership to do so.


How often have you had a light bulb fail while it was on vs when you first flipped the switch? Drives fair better when left on too.


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