# V20.4.6 power saving mode



## lessd

I just tested the power saving mode with a watt meter (Roamio Plus), with high power saving checked I am saving about 3 watts, I do have a 2Tb drive in the unit so the wattage goes from 27 watts to 24 watts. Can someone confirm that. This is a savings of only 3 watts, it does not seem that it would matter that much.


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## Dan203

Are you sure it wasn't recording anything? Did you manually put it into Stand By after the setting was checked?

I don't have a meter so I can't check here


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## Sixto

I was thinking that the benefit might be more to stop the buffering and wear on the drive, rather then the electric savings, though the modern drives may be ok with the 6 buffers 24x7 which I love.


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## JoeKustra

I have a Kill-A-Watt so when I get the update I'll check. Next week.


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## lgnad

mine is awaiting restart so I cant measure before and after the update :-/


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## rainwater

So how does this setting work when set on a Roamio that has a Mini connected to it. Can the Mini still connect if the Roamio is in power savings mode?


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## lessd

Dan203 said:


> Are you sure it wasn't recording anything? Did you manually put it into Stand By after the setting was checked?
> 
> I don't have a meter so I can't check here


It was not recording anything, I did put it _Stand By _manually after the high power setting was checked, how else does the Roamio go into standby ?
I have the watt meter on the unit now, will check if the watts goes down later for some reason.


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## Dan203

I was thinking that maybe it takes a specific amount of time before it falls completely asleep with the new option. The manual Stand By might not trigger it instantly.


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## HeadsUp7Up

rainwater said:


> So how does this setting work when set on a Roamio that has a Mini connected to it. Can the Mini still connect if the Roamio is in power savings mode?


Nope, j had that exact scenario happen. Was watching TV on my mini and the Roamio turned off, lost connection.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## southerndoc

Exactly why I didn't enable power save mode. I sometimes watch TV at 3-5 am if I'm in between night shifts. I don't want the Roamio to be unavailable and prevent me from streaming a show to the mini.

Besides, I've owned TiVo's since 2000. I've gone this long without a power save mode, so I don't think I need it now... especially since it only saves a few watts from what I'm reading here. I would rather save energy elsewhere (e.g., vampire devices, LED lightbulbs, etc.).


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## 1283

I assume that this thread is about the power saving mode in version 20.4.6, not 20.4.5.

I'm still on 20.4.5c and just power cycled my 3TB Roamio Plus to plug it into a Kill-A-Watt. With the tuners on 6 different HD channels, initially (shortly after power cycle) it was drawing 24-25 watts. After a while, that dropped to 21-22 watts.


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## HeadsUp7Up

As a follow up to my experience earlier I had the Power Save set to "High" when I could not access a tuner for my mini. With it set to "Low" I was able to use the mini with the Roamio in standby mode. It actually makes sense as the "High" setting basically tells you tuners are turned off. They may want to add some language about mini use on the settings page. I'm going to assume "Medium" might work as well for allowing a mini to access a tuner but I haven't had time to test that out yet. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## lessd

HeadsUp7Up said:


> As a follow up to my experience earlier I had the Power Save set to "High" when I could not access a tuner for my mini. With it set to "Low" I was able to use the mini with the Roamio in standby mode. It actually makes sense as the "High" setting basically tells you tuners are turned off. They may want to add some language about mini use on the settings page. I'm going to assume "Medium" might work as well for allowing a mini to access a tuner but I haven't had time to test that out yet.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I just tested this out and I could get a tuner (with my connected Mini) with the power save mode at high (on the Roamio Plus), took about 3 seconds as the Mini said_ finding a tuner_, all boxes were on V20.4.6.

The power went down to 17 watts after 2 hours, from about 26 watts, a 9 watt savings, that not too bad.


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## HeadsUp7Up

I did get the "finding a tuner" dialog on the low setting. I'll try the high setting again this evening. Last time the mini thought the Roamio was disconnected on the high power save setting. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## JWhites

lessd said:


> I just tested this out and I could get a tuner (with my connected Mini) with the power save mode at high (on the Roamio Plus), took about 3 seconds as the Mini said_ finding a tuner_, all boxes were on V20.4.6.
> 
> The power went down to 17 watts after 2 hours, from about 26 watts, a 9 watt savings, that not too bad.


You mean the mini was also on 20.4.6?


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## Dan203

lessd said:


> The power went down to 17 watts after 2 hours, from about 26 watts, a 9 watt savings, that not too bad.


That's what I was wondering about. If it would take a bit of time for the full savings to kick in. It appears it does.

This is kinda like having an HTPC with S3 sleep mode. Media Center can wake it up to record and then allow it to fall back asleep when it's done.


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## joewom

I am thinking moca bridge stays on as none of my kids complained they couldn't get on play station while the roamio was dead asleep.


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## lessd

JWhites said:


> You mean the mini was also on 20.4.6?


Yes


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## lessd

Dan203 said:


> That's what I was wondering about. If it would take a bit of time for the full savings to kick in. It appears it does.
> 
> This is kinda like having an HTPC with S3 sleep mode. Media Center can wake it up to record and then allow it to fall back asleep when it's done.


I see now on the left that high power saving mode takes 2 hours to start and the other two power saving modes take 4 hours.
The network keeps working as I can xfer or stream from the TiVo in high power saving mode.
My wife hates the wake up time on her TiVo so that power savings function has gone back off on the kitchen Roamio.


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## joewom

lessd said:


> I see now on the left that high power saving mode takes 2 hours to start and the other two power saving modes take 4 hours.
> The network keeps working as I can xfer or stream from the TiVo in high power saving mode.
> My wife hates the wake up time on her TiVo so that power savings function has gone back off on the kitchen Roamio.


First time mine woke up it took like 15 seconds. All other times it's been less the 5 secs.


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## aaronwt

c3 said:


> I assume that this thread is about the power saving mode in version 20.4.6, not 20.4.5.
> 
> I'm still on 20.4.5c and just power cycled my 3TB Roamio Plus to plug it into a Kill-A-Watt. With the tuners on 6 different HD channels, initially (shortly after power cycle) it was drawing 24-25 watts. After a while, that dropped to 21-22 watts.


This is what I've always seen on my Roamio Pro. Certainly nothing at 27 watts.


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## lessd

aaronwt said:


> This is what I've always seen on my Roamio Pro. Certainly nothing at 27 watts.


The Roamio + I was testing the power on did drop to about 24 to 25 watts, could be the meter itself, but the 17 watts for high power savings seems to stay steady.


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## aaronwt

lessd said:


> The Roamio + I was testing the power on did drop to about 24 to 25 watts, could be the meter itself, but the 17 watts for high power savings seems to stay steady.


So to get the power savings do they stop spinning the hard drive or something?


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## ej42137

aaronwt said:


> So to get the power savings do they stop spinning the hard drive or something?


I wanted to say "Well, duh." but I've started far too many arguments lately.


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## lpwcomp

Even with "Power Saving Settings" set to "Off (no power saving)", if you put it in "Standby", the TiVo stops recording the live buffers.


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## 1283

ej42137 said:


> I wanted to say "Well, duh." but I've started far too many arguments lately.


Shutting down the hard drive is not the only way power can be saved. Duh.


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## 1283

lpwcomp said:


> Even with "Power Saving Settings" set to "Off (no power saving)", if you put it in "Standby", the TiVo stops recording the live buffers.


Hmmm. That's another change which some people may not like.


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## ggieseke

lpwcomp said:


> Even with "Power Saving Settings" set to "Off (no power saving)", if you put it in "Standby", the TiVo stops recording the live buffers.


I noticed that change myself, and I don't like it.


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## aaronwt

lpwcomp said:


> Even with "Power Saving Settings" set to "Off (no power saving)", if you put it in "Standby", the TiVo stops recording the live buffers.


In the past though I did not think that was the case. So now, any time in standby there are no buffers?


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## aaronwt

c3 said:


> Shutting down the hard drive is not the only way power can be saved. Duh.


This is why I asked the question. Since there were different levels of power savings I was wondering how they got there. But if the drive does spin down that could cause some issues with the drive spinning down and starting up. That can cause more issues than a drive just constantly spinning. For now though I'm trying both of my Romaios with max power savings. Although my Roamio Pro records over 500 shows every two week period so it is rare it's not recording anything.


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## gmacted

lpwcomp said:


> Even with "Power Saving Settings" set to "Off (no power saving)", if you put it in "Standby", the TiVo stops recording the live buffers.





aaronwt said:


> In the past though I did not think that was the case. So now, any time in standby there are no buffers?


Yes, this is the case.

I have a Roamio Pro that has version 2.4.6.

When I had 2.4.5, and put the unit in Standby, the video buffers continued.

Now, on 2.4.6,



lpwcomp said:


> Even with "Power Saving Settings" set to "Off (no power saving)", if you put it in "Standby", the TiVo stops recording the live buffers.


When placing the Romaio in Standby, the following message is displayed:

"Entering Standby
In Standby, the TiVo box does not display audio and video on your TV. However, shows will sill record normally.
To exit Standy, press TIVO or LIVE TV. It may take up to 30 seconds for the DVR to wake up.
If you do not wish to enter Standby, press any button to cancel."


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## joewom

gmacted said:


> Yes, this is the case.
> 
> I have a Roamio Pro that has version 2.4.6.
> 
> When I had 2.4.5, and put the unit in Standby, the video buffers continued.
> 
> Now, on 2.4.6,
> 
> When placing the Romaio in Standby, the following message is displayed:
> 
> "Entering Standby
> In Standby, the TiVo box does not display audio and video on your TV. However, shows will sill record normally.
> To exit Standy, press TIVO or LIVE TV. It may take up to 30 seconds for the DVR to wake up.
> If you do not wish to enter Standby, press any button to cancel."


And the moca bridge and Ethernet still functions. So that takes power. I'm happy if the only thing it does is stop the HDD from spinning to add to its life.


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## 1283

joewom said:


> I'm happy if the only thing it does is stop the HDD from spinning to add to its life.


Frequent starting and stopping the drive may actually shorten its life.


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## aaronwt

c3 said:


> Frequent starting and stopping the drive may actually shorten its life.


Yes. That is my worry. My GF has two of my S3 boxes I bought in 2006. In early 2007 I got the first 1TB drives available. Hitachi, five platter, 1TB drives. They have been running 24/7/365 for almost eight years now with the hard drives stopped spinning only a few times when the units were off. If those drives had constantly spun up and spun down several times daily, I don't think they would have lasted so long.


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## joewom

aaronwt said:


> Yes. That is my worry. My GF has two of my S3 boxes I bought in 2006. In early 2007 I got the first 1TB drives available. Hitachi, five platter, 1TB drives. They have been running 24/7/365 for almost eight years now with the hard drives stopped spinning only a few times when the units were off. If those drives had constantly spun up and spun down several times daily, I don't think they would have lasted so long.


So all my computers that go to sleep in say an hour and then start up is hurting the drive? Hell I have never lost a drive from a computer but certainly have from DVRs and CCTV


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## aaronwt

joewom said:


> So all my computers that go to sleep in say an hour and then start up is hurting the drive? Hell I have never lost a drive from a computer but certainly have from DVRs and CCTV


I've never lost a drive either from the PCs I've had running 24/7. Its the ones that had start stop cycles that had issues. Now granted I'm only talking about a handful out of several hundred, but when they had issues it was when the drive was supposed to start spinning. Otherwise I had many, many dozens of drives I ran 24/7/365 for a few years with my whs and unraids that had no issues. But now I don't run them 24/7 and I have had more issues. I have a drive right now that has intermittent spin up issues.

Of course part of the problem could be with the general crappy quality from drives today when compared with drives seven hears ago. I've had more issues with hard drives over the last two years than the previous twelve years.


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## nooneuknow

I've been so shocked that TiVo started spinning down the hard drive, I haven't known what to say, or where to start, since this came to light.

First thought was how many years some have been demanding TiVo do so, and how most of those folks got beaten into submission, as "that would NEVER happen".

Second thought was just how much more of an issue this has great potential to be for the base Roamio, its wimpy wall-wart, and upgrade drives that have only been stressing the power supply on initial spin-up (until now).

Third thought is that I thought most had conceded modern hard drives last longer if they park the heads less and spin-up/down less.

My personal jury is still deliberating on the matter...


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## lpwcomp

ggieseke said:


> I noticed that change myself, and I don't like it.


Neither do I.



aaronwt said:


> In the past though I did not think that was the case. So now, any time in standby there are no buffers?


Correct.


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## lessd

nooneuknow said:


> I've been so shocked that TiVo started spinning down the hard drive, I haven't known what to say, or where to start, since this came to light.
> 
> First thought was how many years some have been demanding TiVo do so, and how most of those folks got beaten into submission, as "that would NEVER happen".
> 
> Second thought was just how much more of an issue this has great potential to be for the base Roamio, its wimpy wall-wart, and upgrade drives that have only been stressing the power supply on initial spin-up (until now).
> 
> Third thought is that I thought most had conceded modern hard drives last longer if they park the heads less and spin-up/down less.
> 
> My personal jury is still deliberating on the matter...


In high power saving mode they also turn off the tuners, when I turn on a Mini connected to a Roamio in high power saving mode for about 5 seconds the Mini tells me it is looking for a tuner, when the channel comes on it not the last channel the Mini was on but the lowest channel in the lineup. I have done more testing with the Roamio and it took my 2Tb updated Roamio Plus 18 seconds to wake up from high power saving mode.
All recordings took place, the connected Mini can get Netflix, Comcast OD with no problem, and I guess I save about 7 to 8 watts when the TiVo not recording anything.


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## nooneuknow

lessd said:


> In high power saving mode they also turn off the tuners, when I turn on a Mini connected to a Roamio in high power saving mode for about 5 seconds the Mini tells me it is looking for a tuner, when the channel comes on it not the last channel the Mini was on but the lowest channel in the lineup. I have done more testing with the Roamio and it took my 2Tb updated Roamio Plus 18 seconds to wake up from high power saving mode.
> All recordings took place, the connected Mini can get Netflix, Comcast OD with no problem, and I guess I save about 7 to 8 watts when the TiVo not recording anything.


Good reporting on your datapoints! :up:

I can see by your sig that you are speaking for the 6-tuner Roamio Plus.

Anybody able to test the same on a 4-tuner base model, as well as a Roamio OTA?

My jury is still out. This really whammies almost a year worth of data I was collecting on different drive scenarios with a base Roamio...

Thankfully, I'm still not updated here, but also can't do the tests myself until I am.

I imagine you are probably calculating out how much money you will save, based on your electric utility rates?


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## lessd

nooneuknow said:


> I imagine you are probably calculating out how much money you will save, based on your electric utility rates?


With an one Watt saving over a full year I would save $1.40/year, my TiVo runs about 6 hours per day + the two hours until going into standby, so my Roamio Plus would save me about 2/3 of that $1.40/watt/year or about $0.92/year/watt, with savings of 7 watts we get to a whole $6.50/year, and that tax free, I will tell my wife not to spend this new found wealth in one place. 

My wife does not like the wake up time so no savings for her two Roamios.


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## nooneuknow

lessd said:


> With an one Watt saving over a full year I would save $1.40/year, my TiVo runs about 6 hours per day + the two hours until going into standby, so my Roamio Plus would save me about 2/3 of that $1.40/watt/year or about $0.92/year/watt, with savings of 7 watts we get to a whole $6.50/year, and that tax free, I will tell my wife not to spend this new found wealth in one place.
> 
> My wife does not like the wake up time so no savings for her two Roamios.


No more using standby for me, and I won't be using power savings. If TiVo gives us a choice on what the drive does, I'll revisit the subject at that time.

Everybody else can make their own choice, based on whatever they want. I don't feel like getting a flogging for making any recommendations. Base Roamios with upgraded drives are something that some should put a little thought into, before choosing power saving/standby mode/always on. That's all I'm going to say.


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## jrtroo

I saw this only as marketing, and its clearly what it is. People want green, standby, ect, and this will let them add it to the literature. This is something I don't care about in the least. My savings, at most, would be $1.80 per year.


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## nooneuknow

jrtroo said:


> I saw this only as marketing, and its clearly what it is. People want green, standby, ect, and this will let them add it to the literature. This is something I don't care about in the least. My savings, at most, would be $1.80 per year.


Green marketing was my first thought, too. I just didn't want to be the first to say it. I will miss standby as I knew it. I served me well the way it was, and I wasn't using it for saving power.


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## aaronwt

nooneuknow said:


> Green marketing was my first thought, too. I just didn't want to be the first to say it. I will miss standby as I knew it. I served me well the way it was, and I wasn't using it for saving power.


So even when the power saving settings are off, if you put it in standby there are no buffers?


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## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> So even when the power saving settings are off, if you put it in standby there are no buffers?


I believe that is how it was explained, by whomever laid out the details, and confirmed that to be the case.


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## BobCamp1

aaronwt said:


> I've never lost a drive either from the PCs I've had running 24/7. Its the ones that had start stop cycles that had issues. Now granted I'm only talking about a handful out of several hundred, but when they had issues it was when the drive was supposed to start spinning. Otherwise I had many, many dozens of drives I ran 24/7/365 for a few years with my whs and unraids that had no issues. But now I don't run them 24/7 and I have had more issues. I have a drive right now that has intermittent spin up issues.
> 
> Of course part of the problem could be with the general crappy quality from drives today when compared with drives seven hears ago. I've had more issues with hard drives over the last two years than the previous twelve years.


If the spin up/spin down is limited to twice a day, the reliability of that vs. running it 24/7 is typically about the same. It's difficult to actually calculate or measure this, because there are so many other factors that can influence reliability and the engineers don't have a clue as to what they are. FYI, I've had two 24/7 hard drives die, and both were in Tivos. But they ran for 8 years each. I can't complain.

The tie breaker is the extra stress spinning up puts on the device providing the power to hard drive. Tivo has always taken a minimalist approach to their hard drive power supplies, and this has been confirmed by the excellent work of several others here. I'd be concerned with frying something else in the Tivo that was not as easily repairable as the hard drive.

Considering the minuscule power savings you get and how expensive Tivos are in comparison, I would recommend disabling power save mode and never using standby mode if possible. The fewer internal power surges and brownouts you have the better.


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## CharlesH

I have a Harmony remote, and its activity macro for "Watch TiVo" has a "power on"/"power off" action which is mapped to Standby mode for TiVo. Every time I leave the "Watch TiVo" activity (switch do another activity, or select "Off"), the TiVo goes into Standby mode, which now for the Roamio, means to spin down the hard drive, right? When I select the Watch TiVo activity, there is a delay where the TiVo says something like "Leaving Standby". I guess I can tweak the Harmony settings to not "turn the TiVo on and off", if I really wanted to.


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## nooneuknow

BobCamp1 said:


> If the spin up/spin down is limited to twice a day, the reliability of that vs. running it 24/7 is typically about the same. It's difficult to actually calculate or measure this, because there are so many other factors that can influence reliability and the engineers don't have a clue as to what they are. FYI, I've had two 24/7 hard drives die, and both were in Tivos. But they ran for 8 years each. I can't complain.
> 
> The tie breaker is the extra stress spinning up puts on the device providing the power to hard drive. Tivo has always taken a minimalist approach to their hard drive power supplies, and this has been confirmed by the excellent work of several others here. I'd be concerned with frying something else in the Tivo that was not as easily repairable as the hard drive.
> 
> Considering the minuscule power savings you get and how expensive Tivos are in comparison, I would recommend disabling power save mode and never using standby mode if possible. The fewer internal power surges and brownouts you have the better.


Well said, sir! :up:

I don't often find myself in agreement with you. But, engineer bashing aside, I'd have said the same thing, had you not posted.

No, I'm not a fan of engineers, as i used to work right smack in the middle of engineering at the largest medical equipment manufacturer, essentially being the IS/IT guy who could walk by, fix a problem they'd been fighting over for months in 15 minutes, then have every one of them mad at me.


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## nooneuknow

CharlesH said:


> I have a Harmony remote, and its activity macro for "Watch TiVo" has a "power on"/"power off" action which is mapped to Standby mode for TiVo. Every time I leave the "Watch TiVo" activity (switch do another activity, or select "Off"), the TiVo goes into Standby mode, which now for the Roamio, means to spin down the hard drive, right? When I select the Watch TiVo activity, there is a delay where the TiVo says something like "Leaving Standby". I guess I can tweak the Harmony settings to not "turn the TiVo on and off", if I really wanted to.


It might not spin down immediately. But, yes it will spin down once the delay timer runs out (no, you can't adjust that). If you want your drive spinning at all times, no using of power saving and no manual or macro standby mode anymore.


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## nooneuknow

Here's an idea:

What about the PUIS (Power Up In Standby) Jumper on all modern drives?

I think one position will keep just the PCB live, while another position keeps the platters spinning. It can override the host, IIRC.


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## lessd

I would like to thank the Mods for correcting the title of this Thread an I had made a typo and one can't correct the first title of any new Thread.


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## nooneuknow

lessd said:


> I would like to thank the Mods for correcting the title of this Thread an I had made a typo and one can't correct the first title of any new Thread.


I'll go correct the link to here in the other thread.

*ETA:* Fixed my post, now your reply needs a touchup http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10392270#post10392270


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## morac

Considering that scheduled recordings record in High power saving mode and that it takes around 15 seconds to wake up the Roamio so that there is video, I'm assuming that the Roamio actually wakes up early to record scheduled recordings?

With Low recording suggestions, I would think the drives would be turning on and off constantly, especially with 6 tuners where the box is almost always recording suggestions.

I forgot what the differences between the 3 states are since TiVo hasn't updated their support pages yet, but this page from Virgin seems close enough.

I'm not sure I really see the need for this, though I guess some people might want to save a few bucks a year.


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## nooneuknow

morac said:


> Considering that scheduled recordings record in High power saving mode and that it takes around 15 seconds to wake up the Roamio so that there is video, I'm assuming that the Roamio actually wakes up early to record scheduled recordings?
> 
> With Low recording suggestions, I would think the drives would be turning on and off constantly, especially with 6 tuners where the box is almost always recording suggestions.
> 
> I forgot what the differences between the 3 states are since TiVo hasn't updated their support pages yet, but this page from Virgin seems close enough.
> 
> I'm not sure I really see the need for this, though I guess some people might want to save a few bucks a year.


I agree, and will raise you: Is it saving money, when the spin-up current is higher than the running current, and/or the cycling causes the drive to last 1 yr less than it would have without cycling?

Too bad they made standard manual standby turn the drive off, with no choice in the matter. That just ended my religious use of standby right before I turn my TV off for the night, or the day, etc. Now EAS msgs get to have their way with it again.


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## lpwcomp

nooneuknow said:


> I agree, and will raise you: Is it saving money, when the spin-up current is higher than the running current, and/or the cycling causes the drive to last 1 yr less than it would have without cycling?
> 
> Too bad they made standard manual standby turn the drive off, with no choice in the matter. That just ended my religious use of standby right before I turn my TV off for the night, or the day, etc. Now EAS msgs get to have their way with it again.


I know I am te one who said that they seemed to be spinning down the drive, but now I'm not so sure. The power savings don't seem to be as much as I would expect and the time it takes to get back up seems a bit short to spin up the drive. The only thing I am sure of at this point is that it stops recording the live buffers. One can only hope that it also still avoids recording the EAS messages.


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## trip1eX

What's the watt savings per hour with power savings? 7W savings at maybe 12 hours a day would mean i might save a $.10 every 12 days if my electrical rate was $0.10 per kwh.

And that's a best case.


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## nooneuknow

lpwcomp said:


> I know I am te one who said that they seemed to be spinning down the drive, but now I'm not so sure. The power savings don't seem to be as much as I would expect and the time it takes to get back up seems a bit short to spin up the drive. The only thing I am sure of at this point is that it stops recording the live buffers. One can only hope that it also still avoids recording the EAS messages.


<Gasp> You posted before verifying everything in absolutes?

There goes what cred I had left, if you were wrong...

P.S. Please try to verify within the next 12-16 hours, if you can. I'm toast from running around all night trying to get TiVo #3 back online and ready to record all my multi-SPs, before the update comes through (and being a PITA on TCF)...


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## L David Matheny

nooneuknow said:


> P.S. Please try to verify within the next 12-16 hours, if you can. I'm toast from running around all night trying to get TiVo #3 back online and ready to record all my multi-SPs, before the update comes through (and being a PITA on TCF)...


I thought the rest of the Priority Update guinea pigs were going to get the update this week after the Super Bowl. Let's hope the general release won't occur for another week or two.


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## dswallow

If you were in power saving mode 24 hours a day, every day of the year, saving 9 watts of power per hour, for 24 x 365 hours, would be a total savings of 78,840 watts, or 78.84 kWh over the year. My cost per kWh is around $0.14, which would be a savings of $11.03 maximum (remember this is for being in standby mode all the time -- if that were the usage you had, just turn the whole thing off). If $0.92 (or less) made a noticeable difference or was a noticeable percentage of my monthly electric costs, maybe it'd matter.


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## morac

If the tuners turn off, is there even a way to verify that the disk turns off? I would think that the drives would be virtually silent if not actively seeking, so I don't know if that's something that could be verified, unless they could be heard spinning up after resuming from sleep mode. I think the best one could do is listen for disk activity while the device is in sleep mode, which would disprove that they spin down. 

Also aren't the disks constantly doing background stuff, like indexing, reading database stuff, etc, anyway? Does the Roamio cache the Todo list in memory? If not, it would have to read the recording schedule from disk.


----------



## lpwcomp

nooneuknow said:


> <Gasp> You posted before verifying everything in absolutes?
> 
> There goes what cred I had left, if you were wrong...
> 
> P.S. Please try to verify within the next 12-16 hours, if you can. I'm toast from running around all night trying to get TiVo #3 back online and ready to record all my multi-SPs, before the update comes through (and being a PITA on TCF)...


To be fair to myself, what I posted was that "I _*presume*_ that it is spinning down the disk" and stated my reasons for that presumption. Judging by feel, the disk appears to be spinning. I just timed it and it took 13 seconds to get out of standby.

This past week has been hectic for me as well. After nearly 8 years with no wheels, I purchased a car. Needed some service and two trips to the DMV and two to the dealer (recall notice) My THD died. Then my remote Premiere died. I acquired and prepared a replacement disk for the Premiere Friday and Saturday and installed it yesterday. The THD has a more serious problem but not an urgent one since I don't use it much.


----------



## 1283

I set the power saving mode to high and put the TiVo in standby mode (via Harmony, which I have done for years). 5 hours later, the power consumption was still the normal 21W, and obviously the drive was still spinning.


----------



## nooneuknow

lpwcomp said:


> To be fair to myself, what I posted was that "I _*presume*_ that it is spinning down the disk" and stated my reasons for that presumption. Judging by feel, the disk appears to be spinning. I just timed it and it took 13 seconds to get out of standby.
> 
> This past week has been hectic for me as well. After nearly 8 years with no wheels, I purchased a car. Needed some service and two trips to the DMV and two to the dealer (recall notice) My THD died. Then my remote Premiere died. I acquired and prepared a replacement disk for the Premiere Friday and Saturday and installed it yesterday. The THD has a more serious problem but not an urgent one since I don't use it much.


It might be possible that stock drives might behave differently than upgrade drives, especially if the upgrade drive isn't a model TiVo uses themselves on a platform/series, maybe even those that are a only larger capacity model of what they do use (Like using a 4TB WD AV-GP in a Roamio, a 3TB+ one in a Premiere, or a 2TB one in anything older).

TiVo knows (some) people will upgrade the drives, and some of my past time spent pouring through raw TiVo logs with a disk editor showed they were checking what firmware the drive had (which should give them the ability to notice as little as just a S/N change) and was part of pre-boot procedure since at least the TiVo HD.

While maybe 24-48 hours ago, I might have wondered if TiVo was getting closer to caring so little about retail, that they'd stop turning a blind eye, and making it so easy for us to self upgrade, I've had time to recharge/reset my state of mind.

Now is one of those times I wish I had just boiled-over in private, as I've shotgun sprayed multiple threads with the extreme, combined with the incorrect. Although, on power management, I did start off saying my source of what I said about the new power savings modes came from this thread, but failed to keep it clear I was relaying 3rd-party info as things moved on from there...

My bad. I wasn't implying it was all your fault, or even that you were to blame. I'm going to try a few means to try and (temporarily) block the update, but can't spend much time trying to set up roadblocks I can't be sure will do so.

I know what it's like to have too much going on, and almost none of it good, or it's just too much. I was almost there, and TCF is where I come to kind of take a break, and force my mind off everything else. That's proven to be dangerous, as it seems to just channel through in the manner I post, if I'm not careful to engage here while under other influences...

I guess until I wind up updated, I will have to do my best to stick to the 20.4.6 parts that are in the release notes, and what has been confirmed by many who already have it, trying to steer clear of anything not strongly confirmed by many who got it already.

The Power Up In Standby jumper on modern drives still seems like something worth looking at, just in case (but should not be used without due-diligence)...

Good luck on all the rest.


----------



## BobCamp1

nooneuknow said:


> Well said, sir! :up:
> 
> I don't often find myself in agreement with you. But, engineer bashing aside, I'd have said the same thing, had you not posted.
> 
> No, I'm not a fan of engineers, as i used to work right smack in the middle of engineering at the largest medical equipment manufacturer, essentially being the IS/IT guy who could walk by, fix a problem they'd been fighting over for months in 15 minutes, then have every one of them mad at me.


We agree far more than you think. I just point out the things you say that are not quite correct. I realize that makes a bad impression, and I apologize for that, but some engineers aren't known for their social skills.


----------



## BobCamp1

nooneuknow said:


> The Power Up In Standby jumper on modern drives still seems like something worth looking at, just in case (but should not be used without due-diligence)...


As I recall, that would work exactly the opposite of what is needed. That feature allows the drive to stay spun down even after power is applied to it. There's a special command that has to be sent to spin up the drive. The UEFI must support the functionality for it to work properly, and I don't think something like a Tivo would support it. It's intended to allow the drives in a server to spin up one at a time instead of drawing all that power at once.


----------



## nooneuknow

BobCamp1 said:


> As I recall, that would work exactly the opposite of what is needed. That feature allows the drive to stay spun down even after power is applied to it. There's a special command that has to be sent to spin up the drive. The UEFI must support the functionality for it to work properly, and I don't think something like a Tivo would support it. It's intended to allow the drives in a server to spin up one at a time instead of drawing all that power at once.


Yes, as I said, not to be attempted without due diligence.

That leads to the drive powering up straight into standby, and only spinning up on command, not keeping power up while in standby, as I thought when it came to mind.


----------



## nooneuknow

Is it possible that TiVo is invoking "Idle Mode 3"?

That state is specifically leveraged in high-end motion activated camera security DVRs, parking the heads until data must be written, leaving the platters spinning otherwise, so time to ready is short enough to not lose a single frame when a motion activated camera comes online.

It saves power by reducing the drag of the heads always being over the platters, plus by eliminating unnecessary seeking.

That would explain why the Premieres don't get the new power saving modes. Idle3 was a problem for TiVo until the Roamio line (the hang up on the boot screen with a warm/power-on reboot).

OTOH, it just seems too high-tech for something that I've come to expect from TiVo. That's just my side-thought on it.


----------



## 1283

c3 said:


> I set the power saving mode to high and put the TiVo in standby mode (via Harmony, which I have done for years). 5 hours later, the power consumption was still the normal 21W, and obviously the drive was still spinning.


Hmmm. This is not working for me. It was still 21W when I woke up this morning.


----------



## lessd

nooneuknow said:


> I agree, and will raise you: Is it saving money, when the spin-up current is higher than the running current, and/or the cycling causes the drive to last 1 yr less than it would have without cycling?
> 
> Too bad they made standard manual standby turn the drive off, with no choice in the matter. That just ended my religious use of standby right before I turn my TV off for the night, or the day, etc. Now EAS msgs get to have their way with it again.


The standard standby (power saving off) saves no power I could measure so I assume the drive is not turned off, just the buffering for some reason (but I have nor confirmed that)


----------



## lessd

nooneuknow said:


> I've been so shocked that TiVo started spinning down the hard drive, I haven't known what to say, or where to start, since this came to light.
> 
> First thought was how many years some have been demanding TiVo do so, and how most of those folks got beaten into submission, as "that would NEVER happen".
> 
> Second thought was just how much more of an issue this has great potential to be for the base Roamio, its wimpy wall-wart, and upgrade drives that have only been stressing the power supply on initial spin-up (until now).
> 
> Third thought is that I thought most had conceded modern hard drives last longer if they park the heads less and spin-up/down less.
> 
> My personal jury is still deliberating on the matter...


I getting in a new Roamio Plus for a friend on the 4th, after I upgrade the hard drive and set up the unit I will leave the cover off and check if the hard drive does spin down, when I go to a Mini connected to my High Power saving Roamio Plus that in standby I can start watching a program with no delay, if I go to live TV I get about a 5 second delay.


----------



## nooneuknow

If TiVo is, by some chance, using idle modes that keep the platters spinning, but park the heads, those who have upgraded their drives might not see any net power savings result, with the new power savings (from the hard drive, anyway, unless it is just from less active with tuners asleep).

If TiVo, by some chance, is invoking Idle Mode 3, TiVo can toggle that function in the pre-boot process, but would likely have the TiVo checking for the drive models used in that TiVo, and not enabling it if the firmware check doesn't detect what a stock drive would report when queried by the Tivo.

There is code in TiVos (first spotted in TiVo HDs, after a certain revision) that queries the drive at each boot, checks something in the firmware, changes it if need be, or reports not changed (but not logging what register it is looking at, or what it is for). I believe it may have spawned from TiVo's first attempt to stop power-on boot/reboot hangs when WD was factory enabling intellipark (idle mode 3). It might have been working on stock drives, but coded to not change the register on non-stock drives.

Essentially, to get to the point of being able to make any conclusions on this, everybody who reports in, needs to be specific about their model, and if they are running a stock drive, or not.

Just like some of TiVo's KS54 tests that are not standard SMART tests will fail to execute on a non-stock drive, I'm sure any change to start parking the heads (might as well, if the tuners are put to sleep), won't be applied to non-stock drives.

I think I've speculated as far as I can go, and said all I can really say, until somebody tests 20.4.6 on a stock drive, then tests it on an upgrade drive.

I will try to add doing so onto my ToDoList, but can't make any promises, and don't know when my TSNs will come up in the rollout lottery.

If folks are going to test, and report in, this is one of those times a Kill-A-Watt, or other meter, would be good to use, and having the case open to put an ear to the drive would be a good idea, too (with proper caution and common sense being a priority).


----------



## aaronwt

There is a noticeable 25% reduction in power with my Romaio Basic. But I don't have many SPs for that box so there are long periods where no tuners are needed.


----------



## lessd

nooneuknow said:


> If TiVo is, by some chance, using idle modes that keep the platters spinning, but park the heads, those who have upgraded their drives might not see any net power savings result, with the new power savings (from the hard drive, anyway, unless it is just from less active with tuners asleep).
> 
> If TiVo, by some chance, is invoking Idle Mode 3, TiVo can toggle that function in the pre-boot process, but would likely have the TiVo checking for the drive models used in that TiVo, and not enabling it if the firmware check doesn't detect what a stock drive would report when queried by the Tivo.
> 
> There is code in TiVos (first spotted in TiVo HDs, after a certain revision) that queries the drive at each boot, checks something in the firmware, changes it if need be, or reports not changed (but not logging what register it is looking at, or what it is for). I believe it may have spawned from TiVo's first attempt to stop power-on boot/reboot hangs when WD was factory enabling intellipark (idle mode 3). It might have been working on stock drives, but coded to not change the register on non-stock drives.
> 
> Essentially, to get to the point of being able to make any conclusions on this, everybody who reports in, needs to be specific about their model, and if they are running a stock drive, or not.
> 
> Just like some of TiVo's KS54 tests that are not standard SMART tests will fail to execute on a non-stock drive, I'm sure any change to start parking the heads (might as well, if the tuners are put to sleep), won't be applied to non-stock drives.
> 
> I think I've speculated as far as I can go, and said all I can really say, until somebody tests 20.4.6 on a stock drive, then tests it on an upgrade drive.
> 
> I will try to add doing so onto my ToDoList, but can't make any promises, and don't know when my TSNs will come up in the rollout lottery.
> 
> If folks are going to test, and report in, this is one of those times a Kill-A-Watt, or other meter, would be good to use, and having the case open to put an ear to the drive would be a good idea, too (with proper caution and common sense being a priority).


You really think the power saving modes is connected to the hard drive in some way, I have the kill-a-watt meter but I was not going to set up both the original and updated drive in the new Roamio I will get tonight 2/4/2015.


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## nooneuknow

lessd said:


> You really think the power saving modes is connected to the hard drive in some way, I have the kill-a-watt meter but I was not going to set up both the original and updated drive in the new Roamio I will get tonight 2/4/2015.


I think it could be. That was based on readings and speculation from another member though. Since the revelations on that, I've only been speculating on what TiVo *could* do. It might just be tuner power. The tuners run hotter than the CPU does, so there's a lot of watts involved there, just for the tuners.

All the AV drive mfgrs are building in, and marketing around, the modes I've been speaking of. If TiVo is truly being innovative, as some loudly are screaming this update reflects, and they want to win some of the "green" market, who probably feel products like TiVo are killing the planet, they'd make use of what feature sets come in the drives. It's all been in the ATA specs for years now, already.

If TiVo is turning off/suspending tuners, it would be logical, in theory, to let the drive park the heads when none are active. Like I said before, it's a bit too high tech, for what I've come to expect from TiVo. Do you think they managed to rewrite the code to keep other processes from continually needing to write a bit here and there to the drive at all times? If not, you seem to be leaning in the right direction, as in it's probably just the tuners.


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## 1283

Lessd is using an upgraded 2TB drive and is seeing power reduction, so I don't think the "original drive" theory works. Tonight I left the TiVo in the normal mode. After 2 hours, it went to the standby mode, as expected, but the power usage is still the normal 21W. If there are supposed to be other non-drive related power savings, I'm not seeing them.


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## lessd

The snow delayed my new Roamio Plus (for a friend) for another day.


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## aaronwt

c3 said:


> Lessd is using an upgraded 2TB drive and is seeing power reduction, so I don't think the "original drive" theory works. Tonight I left the TiVo in the normal mode. After 2 hours, it went to the standby mode, as expected, but the power usage is still the normal 21W. If there are supposed to be other non-drive related power savings, I'm not seeing them.


It still depends on how many tuners are being used. My Roamio Pro is typically using tuners at any given time. So there is less power savings on that. My Roamio Basic will drop from 16 watts to 12 watts because it is rarely using any tuners. I'll need to try and check the power usage of my Roamio Pro when it's not using any tuners. The last time I noticed it not using any tuners was when I was transferring shows to my PC and saw transfer speeds around 205Mb/s. But I don't recall what the power usage was.


----------



## 1283

aaronwt said:


> It still depends on how many tuners are being used.


TiVo Suggestion is disabled, there was no recording scheduled for >12 hours, and the live TV buffers are turned off in the standby mode, so there was no tuner being used.


----------



## nooneuknow

c3 said:


> Lessd is using an upgraded 2TB drive and is seeing power reduction, so I don't think the "original drive" theory works. Tonight I left the TiVo in the normal mode. After 2 hours, it went to the standby mode, as expected, but the power usage is still the normal 21W. If there are supposed to be other non-drive related power savings, I'm not seeing them.


As I have come to learn the hard way: It's all just speculation until the sample sizes are larger, and all the necessary parameters are reported, and factored in.

There are only so many ways TiVo can save power. Some ways are out of reach without almost a completely new platform, and a complete rewrite of the OS/software.

I'm as skeptical about what I've speculated on, as any of the rest of you are. I was overly optimistic about some initial reports, which also contained speculation, which I didn't recognize was speculative, at first.

The update hasn't even hit all the priority list boxes yet.


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## 1283

I'm wondering if there are different hardware versions which may affect the power savings feature. My TiVo service number begins with 848-0001. Lessd, what's yours?


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## lessd

c3 said:


> I'm wondering if there are different hardware versions which may affect the power savings feature. My TiVo service number begins with 848-0001. Lessd, what's yours?


All of my Roamios are 848-0001, but the new one (I have coming in for a friend) is *848-0301 *, my last 848-0001 Roamio was in July 2014


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## nooneuknow

lessd said:


> All of my Roamios are 848-0001, but the new one (I have coming in for a friend) is *848-0301 *, my last 848-0001 Roamio was in July 2014


They do seem to have skipped right past the XXX-0101 & XXX 0201, from what I can tell, unless nobody has posted about getting a 1 or 2 stepping. Strange...


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## h2oskierc

The Plus I bought at Best Buy last week is 848-0301. I would have thought their inventory was older. I don't see Best Buy selling a lot of pluses.


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## aaronwt

aaronwt said:


> It still depends on how many tuners are being used. My Roamio Pro is typically using tuners at any given time. So there is less power savings on that. My Roamio Basic will drop from 16 watts to 12 watts because it is rarely using any tuners. I'll need to try and check the power usage of my Roamio Pro when it's not using any tuners. The last time I noticed it not using any tuners was when I was transferring shows to my PC and saw transfer speeds around 205Mb/s. But I don't recall what the power usage was.


I finally got a chance to see the power usage of my Roaming Pro in full power savings mode with all tuners off. Normally with no recordings it is drawing 22.1/22.2 watts while buffering all six tuners. When in power saving mode it drops to 16.8 watts. So a power savings of around 24%.


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## lessd

I just updated an Roamio 848-0301 hardware, I did not notice any difference in the hardware but I did not have an older Roamio apart next to this new Roamio.
After the 3Tb update I put the Roamio into high power saving mode, the hard drive did spin down in two hours. The 3Tb drive WD EZRX green had a lower amps rating on both the 12vdc and the 5vdc than the WD EURX green drive that came with the Roamio, don't know why. 
The full power savings on this Roamio went from 24 watts to 17 watts, about 29% savings. Note the cable card uses about 4 to 5 watts in sleep mode or not, I had a cable card in this unit.


----------



## nooneuknow

lessd said:


> Note the cable card uses about 4 to 5 watts in sleep mode or not, I had a cable card in this unit.


Is that a confirmation that there are no power savings via state/mode change of the cablecard?

If so, even though it might seem obvious, could you please shed some light on the methodology you used to determine what you have?

I'd assume (if I did that kind of thing) you did total draw "before and after" insertion of the cablecard measurements, then made a comparison of that total, after eliminating what you felt could be other variables.

Since MSO equipment has always been known for being energy wasting, and cablecards are MSO equipment, this is not a surprise.

One of the things I see coming up in other threads is that some people are seeing their units resume with all tuners on the lowest channel in the lineup, while others are seeing them resume with all tuners on the last "foreground" channel. Some are reporting a change from the former to the latter, and associating it with this update. Mine made that change (after each reboot) many updates in the past, and I don't recall it having anything to do with a TiVo update (seems I recall it as a cablecard firmware update making that behaviour change). I believe the resume behavior is also linked to the firmware of the cablecard, and will vary by region and provider.

ETA: Some are saying they resume right back to what each channel was on, and nothing has changed. This is what I would expect, when the day comes that my numbers are up in the 20.4.6 lottery (the way resuming from standby has always been for me).

While it might seem I just went sideways OT, I'm only saying I wouldn't completely rule out the need for a larger sample size, or assume all cablecards, with all firmwares, in all markets will be the same story (nor am I saying that you made any such assumption).

Thanks for the time, effort, and posting of results.


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## aaronwt

when mine resumed today, the tuners were all on different channels. The only time I've seen them all on the same channel is after a reboot. And then they are on the channel that was in the foreground when the reboot occurred.

So far the only thing I've needed to do different since the new update is make sure I hit the TiVo button when turning everything on. Otherwise my DVDO DUo will turn off after a few minutes with no video input. I still need to change my Harmony One to hit the TiVo button to bring my Romaios out of standby.


----------



## fregienj

Has anyone else had trouble waking up? My Roamio Plus did not start recording the Grammy's tonight after I put it in standby earlier today. I just got home and noticed the green light on but not the red. (it should have been recording). When I tried to turn it on, it got stuck on the "Waking Up" screen. I let it sit there a good 5 minutes. I had to bounce the box to get it back. I think I'll be disabling this feature...


----------



## aaronwt

I've not noticed anything with either my Roamio Pro or Roamio Basic. So far they have always woken up as expected.


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## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> when mine resumed today, the tuners were all on different channels. The only time I've seen them all on the same channel is after a reboot. And then they are on the channel that was in the foreground when the reboot occurred.
> 
> So far the only thing I've needed to do different since the new update is make sure I hit the TiVo button when turning everything on. Otherwise my DVDO DUo will turn off after a few minutes with no video input. I still need to change my Harmony One to hit the TiVo button to bring my Romaios out of standby.


I've had a problem of sorts, using the TiVo button to resume, going back I'm not sure how long (nothing to do with 20.4.6), where TiVo button would mess up something with the HDMI handshake (I assume, based on good foundations), causing my TVs to blink to black in bursts, sometimes right away, sometimes delayed. I started making sure to use Live TV button, instead, and that problem became much less frequent. I am locked to 1080p60 output plus /24 passthrough (changing this did not help).

Just some info to help anybody else, who might have been seeing this behavior, or starts to see it. I'm direct HDMI from TiVo to TV, and have a heap of HDMI cables I piled up, after getting different ones, in hopes it was the cable. Many with receivers inline seem to tend to have more issues with HDMI, not less, and TiVo seems to always be tweaking the processing to try and lose the delay when switching between preview in menu to full screen, or the other way around.

No matter how hard I try to stay On Topic in this thread, I'm having a hard time. Sorry.


----------



## nooneuknow

fregienj said:


> Has anyone else had trouble waking up? My Roamio Plus did not start recording the Grammy's tonight after I put it in standby earlier today. I just got home and noticed the green light on but not the red. (it should have been recording). When I tried to turn it on, it got stuck on the "Waking Up" screen. I let it sit there a good 5 minutes. I had to bounce the box to get it back. I think I'll be disabling this feature...


So far, you are the only one to bring it up (that I've seen). I saw at least one other post about this (from you) in one of the other parallel threads, which I keep tabs on.

This sounds like a good issue to report to TiVo, and to ask for "log monitoring" on your TiVo for. They should be able to get to the bottom of it that way. As much as I hate dealing with anybody but TiVoMargret, even if you passed this along to her, the regular CSR group TiVo outsources support to, should be made aware.

TiVo prioritizes upcoming "fixes", based on how many people report a specific issue to the CSR team. If nobody reports in, or the numbers are low, the fix you (and possibly others, post rollout) need, could be less than back-burner priority, and not be in the next rollout, or even the one after that.


----------



## lessd

nooneuknow said:


> Is that a confirmation that there are no power savings via state/mode change of the cablecard?
> 
> If so, even though it might seem obvious, could you please shed some light on the methodology you used to determine what you have?
> 
> I'd assume (if I did that kind of thing) you did total draw "before and after" insertion of the cablecard measurements, then made a comparison of that total, after eliminating what you felt could be other variables.
> 
> Since MSO equipment has always been known for being energy wasting, and cablecards are MSO equipment, this is not a surprise.
> 
> One of the things I see coming up in other threads is that some people are seeing their units resume with all tuners on the lowest channel in the lineup, while others are seeing them resume with all tuners on the last "foreground" channel. Some are reporting a change from the former to the latter, and associating it with this update. Mine made that change (after each reboot) many updates in the past, and I don't recall it having anything to do with a TiVo update (seems I recall it as a cablecard firmware update making that behaviour change). I believe the resume behavior is also linked to the firmware of the cablecard, and will vary by region and provider.
> 
> ETA: Some are saying they resume right back to what each channel was on, and nothing has changed. This is what I would expect, when the day comes that my numbers are up in the 20.4.6 lottery (the way resuming from standby has always been for me).
> 
> While it might seem I just went sideways OT, I'm only saying I wouldn't completely rule out the need for a larger sample size, or assume all cablecards, with all firmwares, in all markets will be the same story (nor am I saying that you made any such assumption).
> 
> Thanks for the time, effort, and posting of results.


I put this new (without a cable card) unit to sleep in high power saving mode (took 2 hours), the power went from 21 watts to 14 watts, did the same thing with a Moto card (not paired) and the power went from 25 watts to 17 to 18 watts. The meter reads in whole watts only, read it before I went to bed and it was 18 watts, in the morning it read 17 watts.

I re-checked the wake up channel information and found that the sleeping Roamio did not have a loss of channel setting, but if the Roamio was in deep sleep mode and you tried a connected Mini the Mini would take about 5 sec to find a channel then start at the lowest channel.


----------



## WorldBandRadio

lessd said:


> I just tested the power saving mode with a watt meter (Roamio Plus), with high power saving checked I am saving about 3 watts, I do have a 2Tb drive in the unit so the wattage goes from 27 watts to 24 watts. Can someone confirm that. This is a savings of only 3 watts, it does not seem that it would matter that much.


I connected my RoamioPro (with 3TB drive) to my watt meter. Here's what I saw with the high power saving setting.


standby, no recording taking place: 20 watts immediately, then 17 watts after about 20 minutes, returning to 20 watts sometime within an hour and remaining there for the remainder of the three hour test
standby, one recording taking place: 20 watts
watching TV live, no recording taking place: 22 watts
watching TV live, one recording taking place: 22 watts

Standby hardly seems worth it, especially when one comes out of standby, there is no "last 30 minutes" for the channels, and the tuners are all set to the same channel.

edit 1: updated _standby with no recordings_
edit 2: updated _standby with no recordings_


----------



## WorldBandRadio

BobCamp1 said:


> ...Considering the minuscule power savings you get and how expensive Tivos are in comparison, I would recommend disabling power save mode and never using standby mode if possible. The fewer internal power surges and brownouts you have the better.


Bingo!

I'm leaving the power save mode on for a couple more days to confirm my readings.

If they do not change significantly, I'm chalking the power save feature up to more of a marketing buzzword added to the TiVo brochures than actually being something worthwhile.


----------



## lessd

WorldBandRadio said:


> I connected my RoamioPro (with 3TB drive) to my watt meter. Here's what I saw with the high power saving setting.
> 
> 
> standby, no recording taking place: 20 watts
> standby, one recording taking place: 20 watts
> watching TV live, no recording taking place: 22 watts
> watching TV live, one recording taking place: 22 watts
> 
> Standby hardly seems worth it, especially when one comes out of standby, there is no "last 30 minutes" for the channels, and the tuners are all set to the same channel.


Did you select the high power savings mode ? and if you did you have to wait at least 2 hours even if you manually put the Roamio into standby, for the hard drive to spin down, that was the error I first made. If you do that you will save about 7 watts, not much but a big % off the full power. I am still not saying it worth it, but it does spin down the hard drive, some (like myself) think this will increase the life of the hard drive, others think it will do the opposite to the hard drive life.


----------



## lpwcomp

WorldBandRadio said:


> I connected my RoamioPro (with 3TB drive) to my watt meter. Here's what I saw with the high power saving setting.
> 
> 
> standby, no recording taking place: 20 watts
> standby, one recording taking place: 20 watts
> watching TV live, no recording taking place: 22 watts
> watching TV live, one recording taking place: 22 watts
> 
> Standby hardly seems worth it, especially when one comes out of standby, there is no "last 30 minutes" for the channels, and the tuners are all set to the same channel.


If you're "watching live TV", then all 6 tuners are recording.


----------



## WorldBandRadio

lpwcomp said:


> If you're "watching live TV", then all 6 tuners are recording.


Good point, thanks.


----------



## WorldBandRadio

lessd said:


> Did you select the high power savings mode ? and if you did you have to wait at least 2 hours even if you manually put the Roamio into standby, for the hard drive to spin down, that was the error I first made. If you do that you will save about 7 watts, not much but a big % off the full power. I am still not saying it worth it, but it does spin down the hard drive, some (like myself) think this will increase the life of the hard drive, others think it will do the opposite to the hard drive life.


Yes, high power savings mode was selected.

I just updated the standby mode in my message to indicate what looks like a disk spinning down.


----------



## 1283

It looks like I'm still the only one with the drive not spinning down. Anyone else with Roamio Plus and WD30EURS?


----------



## WorldBandRadio

c3 said:


> It looks like I'm still the only one with the drive not spinning down. Anyone else with Roamio Plus and WD30EURS?


Is the hard drive model on the system info menu?

(I don't want to turn the TiVo on, as it is in the middle of a standy power test  )


----------



## lpwcomp

WorldBandRadio said:


> Is the hard drive model on the system info menu?
> 
> (I don't want to turn the TiVo on, as it is in the middle of a standy power test  )


No.


----------



## aaronwt

WorldBandRadio said:


> I connected my RoamioPro (with 3TB drive) to my watt meter. Here's what I saw with the high power saving setting.
> 
> [*]standby, no recording taking place: 20 watts immediately, then 17 watts after about 20 minutes.
> [*]standby, one recording taking place: 20 watts
> [*]watching TV live, no recording taking place: 22 watts
> [*]watching TV live, one recording taking place: 22 watts
> 
> Standby hardly seems worth it, especially when one comes out of standby, there is no "last 30 minutes" for the channels, and the tuners are all set to the same channel.
> 
> edit: updated standby with no recordings


For a 24% savings it can be worth it. But for someone that uses those buffers it wouldn't be. Personally it was extremely rare that I used those buffers for anything since I typically watch a recorded show when I sit Down to watch TV. It is the main reason I have 170+ One Passes. So far I haven't seen any detrimental effects when using High Power savings mode. If I do start to see some issues then I will turn it off.


----------



## lessd

c3 said:


> It looks like I'm still the only one with the drive not spinning down. Anyone else with Roamio Plus and WD30EURS?


That the drive I use to make my tests, takes 2+ hours in high power saving mode to spin down, and you can't be recording anything. I came back in 3 hours and the drive was cold, so I don't know how accurate the 2 hours is.


----------



## 1283

lessd said:


> That the drive I use to make my tests, takes 2+ hours in high power saving mode to spin down, and you can't be recording anything. I came back in 3 hours and the drive was cold, so I don't know how accurate the 2 hours is.


I have tried both manual and auto standby, with high power savings mode, suggestions off, and no recordings scheduled for 12+ hours. Power stays at 20-21 watts.


----------



## aaronwt

c3 said:


> I have tried both manual and auto standby, with high power savings mode, suggestions off, and no recordings scheduled for 12+ hours. Power stays at 20-21 watts.


Then that would explain the higher power usage in standby. My Romaio Pro is at 16.8 watts in high power standby with nothing being recorded. So maybe something is different with the drive you added?


----------



## 1283

aaronwt said:


> So maybe something is different with the drive you added?


That's what I don't understand. The Pro should have either WD30EURS (what I'm using) or WD30EURX. Lessd has used drives not even in the AV family, and he sees power reduction.


----------



## WorldBandRadio

aaronwt said:


> Then that would explain the higher power usage in standby. My Romaio Pro is at 16.8 watts in high power standby with nothing being recorded. So maybe something is different with the drive you added?


OK, my Roamio Pro just went through a 3 hour rest while it was in standby (I have it set to high power savings).

As I mentioned in my edited post, it dropped to 17 watts after about 20 minutes from the end of the last recording. When I looked an hour later, it was back at 20 watts and remained there until the end of the 3 hours. Nothing was being recorded, the guide update had not been performed.

Considering the number of hours the TiVo is either recording or being used for watching, I'm not convinced that the infrequent and intermittent 5 watts savings maximum that I saw is worth the loss of the last 30 minutes of each tuner.


----------



## nooneuknow

While I'm still not prepared to further comment on power savings and/or pros/cons, I appreciate those who take the time to test, and report in.

I will have more to say, especially once I can post my own before, after, and variable/individual subsystems results. Let's keep the data coming, and hopefully not let it get lost in any petty arguments over who thinks what is best, for them, for everybody, or for the equipment/hard drives.


----------



## trip1eX

lessd said:


> With an one Watt saving over a full year I would save $1.40/year, my TiVo runs about 6 hours per day + the two hours until going into standby, so my Roamio Plus would save me about 2/3 of that $1.40/watt/year or about $0.92/year/watt, with savings of 7 watts we get to a whole $6.50/year, and that tax free, I will tell my wife not to spend this new found wealth in one place.


If your Tivo is in standby 16 hours/day then that is 100 hours of standby every 6 days rounded up. Every 60 days that's 1000 hours. And in 1 year that is ~6000 hours in power savings mode. 1 watt saved every hour under your estimated standby time every year is 6kwh saved per year.

AT $.10/kwh you're saving $.60/yr per watt given 3600 hours in power saving mode per year.

Ok i guess $.15/kwh sounds right.


----------



## lpwcomp

trip1eX said:


> If your Tivo is in standby 16 hours/day then that is 100 hours of standby every 6 days rounded up. Every 60 days that's 600 hours. And in 1 year that is ~3600 hours in power savings mode. 1 watt saved every hour under your estimated standby time every year is 3.6kwh saved per year.
> 
> AT $.10/kwh you're saving $.36/yr per watt given 3600 hours in power saving mode per year. You're saying $.92/year/watt.
> 
> What is your electrical rate? $.25/kwh?


Arithmetic is really not your strong suit , is it?


----------



## dswallow

trip1eX said:


> If your Tivo is in standby 16 hours/day then that is 100 hours of standby every 6 days rounded up. Every 60 days that's 600 hours. And in 1 year that is ~3600 hours in power savings mode. 1 watt saved every hour under your estimated standby time every year is 3.6kwh saved per year.
> 
> AT $.10/kwh you're saving $.36/yr per watt given 3600 hours in power saving mode per year. You're saying $.92/year/watt.
> 
> What is your electrical rate? $.25/kwh?


16 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,840 hours/year

1 watt saved every hour is 5,840 watts saved per year, or 5.84 kWh/year.

My electric rate here is about $0.14/kWh, so that would be an annual savings of about $0.82 for every watt of power saved in power saving mode, which appears, based on this thread, to be at most about 7 watts.

So at my electric rate, the potential savings is about $5.82. I believe that may possibly still be enough to get a standard meal at McDonalds, though maybe it'd be really close.


----------



## trip1eX

lpwcomp said:


> Arithmetic is really not your strong suit , is it?


Well being an ass is your strong suit obviously. 

But....let's see...... Oh multiplied by 6 instead of 10. Ok.

So his numbers sound about right if you assume 16 hours standby per day. $.15/kwh rate isn't out of the norm for some parts.


----------



## trip1eX

dswallow said:


> 16 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,840 hours/year
> 
> 1 watt saved every hour is 5,840 watts saved per year, or 5.84 kWh/year.
> 
> My electric rate here is about $0.14/kWh, so that would be an annual savings of about $0.82 for every watt of power saved in power saving mode, which appears, based on this thread, to be at most about 7 watts.
> 
> So at my electric rate, the potential savings is about $5.82. I believe that may possibly still be enough to get a standard meal at McDonalds, though maybe it'd be really close.


Yeah did it quick and dirty in my head and did a little dyslexic math after I typed 6 days in my post.

Yeah it ain't much (although more than I thought it would be) but that's because of the 16 hours per day standby assumption which seems very optimistic.


----------



## DashingDave

lpwcomp said:


> Neither do I.
> 
> Correct.


Ditto; it's rather annoying having standby screw up the 30-min buffer, as I usually like to keep a couple tuned to sports stations if I want to go backwards in case something random important event happened or was reported (i.e. Sportscenter or games that weren't worth setting up recordings for). Guess I'll have to forego my always-set-tivo-to-standby-when-done-watching methodology (I basically watch it for about an hour three separate times of the day).


----------



## trip1eX

btw, why not just 1 power saving mode? I saw a post with that complaint and I feel the same way.

To me, just split the difference between 2 and 4 hours before entering standby. LEt's call it 3 hrs.  And that's it. You obviously will save more electricity if you turn off Suggestions which you already have the option of doing.


----------



## nooneuknow

Can we all just agree that even if every Roamio owner used the highest level of power savings, that it's not going to save them big bucks, nor save the planet, and get back to measurements, observations, and breakdowns, please?

There, I tried. It's not my thread, or my place to "police" it. But, I thought it had some promise as it is topic specific, unlike the half-dozen other 20.4.6 threads, where anything and everything is going...

I agree about the loss of buffer not being a setting to change (all or nothing, just different timing), being a boneheaded move on TiVo's part.


----------



## lessd

nooneuknow said:


> Can we all just agree that even if every Roamio owner used the highest level of power savings, that it's not going to save them big bucks, nor save the planet, and get back to measurements, observations, and breakdowns, please?
> 
> There, I tried. It's not my thread, or my place to "police" it. But, I thought it had some promise as it is topic specific, unlike the half-dozen other 20.4.6 threads, where anything and everything is going...
> 
> I agree about the loss of buffer not being a setting to change (all or nothing, just different timing), being a boneheaded move on TiVo's part.


I don't want to start something but IMHO the hard drive will last longer not running 24/7, but some on this Forum believe just the opposite will happen to a drive not running 24/7. There no winning this argument so let leave everybody to do as they think best.


----------



## nooneuknow

lessd said:


> I don't want to start something but IMHO the hard drive will last longer not running 24/7, but some on this Forum believe just the opposite will happen to a drive not running 24/7. There no winning this argument so let leave everybody to do as they think best.


Agreed. I can't even try to form a well-educated guess on what might or might not happen to a TiVo drive having standby time, without knowing how well TiVo has managed it. If it's spinning down, only to spin right back up again, that's one thing. If it is well managed, and the TiVo makes sure not to spin down two minutes before a recording is to start (only to spin it right back up again), that's a whole different thing.

My biggest concern would be drives that have been spinning 24/7 for just long enough (which is hard to define in any generalized way), that the change could have negative consequences. We'll have to just "wait and see", or those who have the same concern can proactively turn power savings off and not use standby (since that now can spin down the drive, even done manually).

As you said, everybody should just do as they feel best. I do hope that enough are curious enough to pay some attention to drive behavior, and report in anything that seems helpful (or outside of what seems normal/acceptable hard drive power management).

I'm especially interested in cases where there might be a pattern with some drives not spinning down, when it is reasonably expected that they should be. I'd be looking to see if that leads to identifying certain model drives, or ones that have had the wdidle3 setting messed with, versus left alone, and so on.


----------



## aaronwt

dswallow said:


> 16 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,840 hours/year
> 
> 1 watt saved every hour is 5,840 watts saved per year, or 5.84 kWh/year.
> 
> My electric rate here is about $0.14/kWh, so that would be an annual savings of about $0.82 for every watt of power saved in power saving mode, which appears, based on this thread, to be at most about 7 watts.
> 
> So at my electric rate, the potential savings is about $5.82. I believe that may possibly still be enough to get a standard meal at McDonalds, though maybe it'd be really close.


Sounds good to me. The savings add up. I keep adding more and more devices that draw a few watts. So any savings is welcome. These devices have added up to me using dozens of extra watts over the last 1.5 years. WHich has made a noticeable difference in my electric bills.


----------



## aaronwt

trip1eX said:


> btw, why not just 1 power saving mode? I saw a post with that complaint and I feel the same way.
> 
> To me, just split the difference between 2 and 4 hours before entering standby. LEt's call it 3 hrs.  And that's it. You obviously will save more electricity if you turn off Suggestions which you already have the option of doing.


I wish they had a thirty minute option or even 15 minute. With my Roamio Pro recording so many things every day, with a two hour setting it doesn't go into the high savings mode very often. 4 hours is too long, three hours is too long, even two hours is way too long.


----------



## lessd

aaronwt said:


> I wish they had a thirty minute option or even 15 minute. With my Roamio Pro recording so many things every day, with a two hour setting it doesn't go into the high savings mode very often. 4 hours is too long, three hours is too long, even two hours is way too long.


I would think your not a good candidate for the power saving mode that spins down your hard drive, even I don't think turning your drive on than off that often is a good thing (if that what TiVo does) as nobody, as of now, knows how TiVo does manage this spin down of the drive. I only have one point, after 3 hours with no recordings on the to do list the drive is cold (a new Roamio with a 3 Tb upgraded drive WD EZ model)


----------



## WorldBandRadio

lessd said:


> I don't want to start something but IMHO the hard drive will last longer not running 24/7, but some on this Forum believe just the opposite will happen to a drive not running 24/7. There no winning this argument so let leave everybody to do as they think best.


It really depends upon the hard drive. Some are designed to run 24/7, and last longer running 24/7 than the typical desktop drive which is designed for one or two start/stop sequences per day.

The answer to this question is unfortunately two more questions: 

what drive is used in the TiVo?
what is the manufacturer's design goal for that drive, start/stop or 24/7?

Once you have that info, then you can go to the manufacturer's longevity data (if they will part with it) and find out the answers you need.


----------



## lessd

WorldBandRadio said:


> It really depends upon the hard drive. Some are designed to run 24/7, and last longer running 24/7 than the typical desktop drive which is designed for one or two start/stop sequences per day.
> 
> The answer to this question is unfortunately two more questions:
> 
> what drive is used in the TiVo?
> what is the manufacturer's design goal for that drive, start/stop or 24/7?
> 
> Once you have that info, then you can go to the manufacturer's longevity data (if they will part with it) and find out the answers you need.


You really think that the drives have that type of distinctive design?, that a drive engineer has a specific design for 24/7 operation VS a start/stop design. IMHO each drive has a RPM, and arm speed, I don't think the bearing are any different between consumer drives from say WD. They will tweak the firmware for different use, but I don't think there are other major differences.


----------



## WorldBandRadio

lessd said:


> You really think that the drives have that type of distinctive design?, that a drive engineer has a specific design for 24/7 operation VS a start/stop design. IMHO each drive has a RPM, and arm speed, I don't think the bearing are any different between consumer drives from say WD. They will tweak the firmware for different use, but I don't think there are other major differences.


Presuming there are no hardware differences (though I suspect there are), even firmware differences matter.

For example, motor ramp-up speed. For a desktop drive, you'll want the platters to come up to speed more quickly (seconds count during the boot process).

An enterprise drive can ramp up speed more slowly because it only powers up occasionally.

Then there are the brand-to-brand differences which, I feel, are a larger factor than the desktop vs. 24/7 issues.

In short, I think there is much more to consider in hard drive lifetimes than just whether or not it is running 24/7 or is starting/stopping.

Having said that, I've noticed that desktop drives running 24/7 tend to fail more quickly than 24/7 drives running 24/7. I've also noticed that starting and stopping drives reduces lifetimes even for desktop drives, i.e., no drives have a really long lifetime when they are started and stopped frequently.

Note that the sample size for these observations is small, so take it as such. If you want a larger sample size, here's a good one:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

I'm not out to convince anyone one way or the other. However, when I have a choice, and the cost of doing so is minimal, I tend to leave the drives running 24/7 and buy 24/7 drives when I can.


----------



## lessd

WorldBandRadio said:


> Note that the sample size for these observations is small, so take it as such. If you want a larger sample size, here's a good one:
> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/
> 
> I'm not out to convince anyone one way or the other. However, when I have a choice, and the cost of doing so is minimal, I tend to leave the drives running 24/7 and buy 24/7 drives when I can.


Your link did work as it has one to many http in it.


----------



## WorldBandRadio

lessd said:


> Your link did work as it has one to many http in it.


Fixed, thanks.

I think the URL button here automagically prepends a http:// and I missed seeing it before I saved.


----------



## trip1eX

aaronwt said:


> I wish they had a thirty minute option or even 15 minute. With my Roamio Pro recording so many things every day, with a two hour setting it doesn't go into the high savings mode very often. 4 hours is too long, three hours is too long, even two hours is way too long.


Well you aren't going to save power anyway with all the recording you do.

But knowing Tivo they probably can't tell when you are watching tv so it would power save while you were in the middle of watching a show if you set it for 15 minutes.  That's why sleep time is 2 hrs and 4 hrs.

Otherwise why wouldn't they make it go into standby in 15 minutes? As long as something isn't scheduled to be recorded very soon or you aren't watching tv then why not?

I suppose it would be annoying to pause a show and come back 15 minutes later and it is in sleep mode, but ...that doesn't happen to be very often.


----------



## lessd

trip1eX said:


> Well you aren't going to save power anyway with all the recording you do.
> 
> But knowing Tivo they probably can't tell when you are watching tv so it would power save while you were in the middle of watching a show if you set it for 15 minutes.  That's why sleep time is 2 hrs and 4 hrs.
> 
> Otherwise why wouldn't they make it go into standby in 15 minutes? As long as something isn't scheduled to be recorded very soon or you aren't watching tv then why not?
> 
> I suppose it would be annoying to pause a show and come back 15 minutes later and it is in sleep mode, but ...that doesn't happen to be very often.


Could the Roamio look at the HDMI to see if the TV was off, then go into standby quickly if no recordings are being made??


----------



## tootal2

if TiVo is in power savings mode and then it records a show does it go right back to power savings mode after the show is done recording if you don't touch the remote?


----------



## WorldBandRadio

By way of comparison for this thread....


I have a laser printer on my network.

While it is printing, 500 watts are used.

While it is "active" but not printing, about 60 watts are used. After 20 minutes or so, it goes to sleep.

While it is sleeping, less than 1 watt is used.


If I print something while it is sleeping, it takes 15 seconds to wake up and start printing my document.


----------



## L David Matheny

tootal2 said:


> if TiVo is in power savings mode and then it records a show does it go right back to power savings mode after the show is done recording if you don't touch the remote?


I don't know what it _actually_ does, but what it _should_ do is look at the to-do list and apply whatever rules it usually applies when it's awake, which would probably be to go to sleep if it intends to record nothing in some number of hours depending on your settings.


----------



## lessd

tootal2 said:


> if TiVo is in power savings mode and then it records a show does it go right back to power savings mode after the show is done recording if you don't touch the remote?


Good question, but I don't want to take another unit and make that test as _what difference does it make_, my guess is the hard drive stays running for two hours after any recording or Mini connection for live TV or to watch a recording on the Mini, or another TiVo on the network, in all cases the TiVo stays in sleep mode if you don't press a button on the remote for that Roamio.


----------



## tootal2

How do I turn on power saving mode on a TiVo roamio basic?


----------



## lpwcomp

tootal2 said:


> How do I turn on power saving mode on a TiVo roamio basic?


TiVo Central->Settings & Messages->Settings->Remote, CableCARD, & Devices->Power Saving Settings


----------



## leiff

After i turned on the new power saving features my minis can't access Xfinity on demand once the host DVR goes to sleep so for me power saving features need to be off.


----------



## bbrown9

aaronwt said:


> I wish they had a thirty minute option or even 15 minute. With my Roamio Pro recording so many things every day, with a two hour setting it doesn't go into the high savings mode very often. 4 hours is too long, three hours is too long, even two hours is way too long.


Or better yet, it should go into savings mode immediately if I manually put it in standby and nothing is recording. Why wait?


----------



## rickyTV

I don't like the new coming out of standby delay. 

And ain't it about time there was a quicker easier way to put the unit in standby using the remote? How about a shortcut key after hitting the tivo key. (I.E. now you can enter several shortcuts from that screen, 1=passes, 2=todo, etc.) How about 0 for standby. Or maybe one of the 4 colored option keys when on that screen.


----------



## lpwcomp

At one time there _*was*_ a "Stby" button the remote.


----------



## mattack

nooneuknow said:


> Can we all just agree that even if every Roamio owner used the highest level of power savings, that it's not going to save them big bucks, nor save the planet, and get back to measurements, observations, and breakdowns, please?


I only found out about this via the email sent out a few days ago (I still don't have the new release, at least I didn't yesterday).

While it won't "save the planet", IF it saves electricity (yes I did see the other posts with some saying power usage didn't go down), it's low hanging fruit. I turned off suggestions on my Roamio (mostly since I had upgraded the drive and with the usage meter I didn't really need the suggestions anymore.. I literally have only watched a suggestion only a few times ever..). While I do use the buffer sometimes, for CNN mostly, I'm willing to give that up for power savings.


----------



## WorldBandRadio

mattack said:


> ...
> While it won't "save the planet", IF it saves electricity (yes I did see the other posts with some saying power usage didn't go down), it's low hanging fruit. ...


I had power savings set to HIGH, then LOW for a while, simultaneously I had a wattmeter set up to measure the power used.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, there seem to be three power steps for my Roamio Pro:

22 watts - in use
20 watts - standing by, but not sleeping
17 watts - sleeping

Over the course of a few days, I found the amount of time spent sleeping (17 watts) was relatively low (four or five hours a day, give or take).

I did notice that the Roamio Pro would be sleeping in the middle of the afternoon, then for some reason go into standby for the rest of the afternoon. I had no recordings scheduled, and the network update process had not been scheduled.

So, for me, the bottom line was that it was not worth it to trade the lack of continuous recording for the occasional 2 watt and infrequent 5 watt savings. So I turned off power savings. I have other devices in my house that I am moving to far more substantial power savings. When I need to save a couple more watts here and there, I'll look at the TiVo again.

If the Roamio Pro had a power saving mode similar to my laser printer (less than a watt when sleeping, wake up and print a page within 15 seconds when called upon), then I'd reconsider.

I laud TiVo for the OK second attempt at power savings for their device, but there's a long way for them to go ....


----------



## lessd

leiff said:


> After i turned on the new power saving features my minis can't access Xfinity on demand once the host DVR goes to sleep so for me power saving features need to be off.


This is a feature of the power saving mode, I had a talk with TiVo about it, nothing their going to do, (at least for now) so if Comcast OD is important to you on your Mini, turn off the power saving mode, and Mini Comcast OD will work, and it will cost you a few $ more a year on your electric bill.


----------



## CoxInPHX

leiff said:


> After i turned on the new power saving features my minis can't access Xfinity on demand once the host DVR goes to sleep so for me power saving features need to be off.





lessd said:


> This is a feature of the power saving mode, I had a talk with TiVo about it, nothing their going to do, (at least for now) so if Comcast OD is important to you on your Mini, turn off the power saving mode, and Mini Comcast OD will work, and it will cost you a few $ more a year on your electric bill.


Xfinity on demand uses a tuner, are you saying that launching the XOD App on the Mini does not wake up the Roamio?

If that is the case, then first tune to LiveTV with the Mini, which wakes up the DVR, then launch the XOD App.


----------



## lessd

CoxInPHX said:


> Xfinity on demand uses a tuner, are you saying that launching the XOD App on the Mini does not wake up the Roamio?
> 
> If that is the case, then first tune to LiveTV with the Mini, which wakes up the DVR, then launch the XOD App.


That what I do, just go to Live TV or watch anything from the main TiVo and OD will work for the next two hours, I never checked, but if watching OD for more than two hours with the Roamio in standby, will the OD go off if no Roamio recordings took place??


----------



## aaronwt

WorldBandRadio said:


> I had power savings set to HIGH, then LOW for a while, simultaneously I had a wattmeter set up to measure the power used.
> 
> As I mentioned in an earlier posting, there seem to be three power steps for my Roamio Pro:
> 
> 22 watts - in use
> 20 watts - standing by, but not sleeping
> 17 watts - sleeping
> 
> Over the course of a few days, I found the amount of time spent sleeping (17 watts) was relatively low (four or five hours a day, give or take).
> 
> I did notice that the Roamio Pro would be sleeping in the middle of the afternoon, then for some reason go into standby for the rest of the afternoon. I had no recordings scheduled, and the network update process had not been scheduled.
> 
> So, for me, the bottom line was that it was not worth it to trade the lack of continuous recording for the occasional 2 watt and infrequent 5 watt savings. So I turned off power savings. I have other devices in my house that I am moving to far more substantial power savings. When I need to save a couple more watts here and there, I'll look at the TiVo again.
> 
> If the Roamio Pro had a power saving mode similar to my laser printer (less than a watt when sleeping, wake up and print a page within 15 seconds when called upon), then I'd reconsider.
> 
> I laud TiVo for the OK second attempt at power savings for their device, but there's a long way for them to go ....


What do you mean "lack of continuous recording"? I have both of my Roamios in High Power Saving mode. I have had no issues with any of my recordings. They have all been intact. It's been several weeks now and I've had hundreds of recordings. I've not seen any issues with the recordings I've watched.


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## lpwcomp

aaronwt said:


> What do you mean "lack of continuous recording"? I have both of my Roamios in High Power Saving mode. I have had no issues with any of my recordings. They have all been intact. It's been several weeks now and I've had hundreds of recordings. I've not seen any issues with the recordings I've watched.


No live buffers.


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## rickyTV

Another slight annoyance:

Now that it lets you cancel a standby by hitting any key on the remote, I have to wait till that goes away before I use the remote to switch my tv from the tivo to my pc, or when I want to also turn off the tv. 

They should at least ignore all the keys on the remote that are intended to be sent only to the tv.


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## wmcbrine

rickyTV said:


> Now that it lets you cancel a standby by hitting any key on the remote, I have to wait till that goes away before I use the remote to switch my tv from the tivo to my pc, or when I want to also turn off the tv.


Yeah, I just discovered that last night. :down::down::down:


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## tim1724

rickyTV said:


> Another slight annoyance:
> 
> Now that it lets you cancel a standby by hitting any key on the remote, I have to wait till that goes away before I use the remote to switch my tv from the tivo to my pc, or when I want to also turn off the tv.
> 
> They should at least ignore all the keys on the remote that are intended to be sent only to the tv.


Yeah, I reported that to Margret last week. Apparently it was the first she'd heard about it. It drives me nuts  I put my tivo in standby, hit the TV power button, and I see my TiVo wake up just as the TV shuts off.


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## bbrown9

tim1724 said:


> Yeah, I reported that to Margret last week. Apparently it was the first she'd heard about it. It drives me nuts  I put my tivo in standby, hit the TV power button, and I see my TiVo wake up just as the TV shuts off.


Did she say whether they were going to fix it? It's extremely annoying!


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## jth tv

rickyTV said:


> And ain't it about time there was a quicker easier way to put the unit in standby using the remote?


Needing a Discrete infrared code for Power On and a Discrete infrared code Power Standby is universal remote 101. For such a sophisticated device, it is amazing Tivo does not provide the codes to Harmony for their remotes.

When I press Harmony 600 "All Off", it should be actually able to turn everything off without fear of turning off equipment back on. Or fear of "any button" turning the Tivo back on.


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## WorldBandRadio

aaronwt said:


> What do you mean "lack of continuous recording"? ....


Here's what I mean:

When the TiVo is sitting there, with the TV monitor turned off, all six tuners are still recording the last 30 minutes for each of their respective channels, sometimes I see it referred to as "live recordings."

So I can turn on the TV monitor, and then look through the last 30 minutes of each of the six tuners.

When the TiVo goes to sleep, that capability is turned off (rightly so, imo) due to the power saving mode.


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## passname22

What I like about tivo is that it doesn't have power off button, it makes things easy for old ppl who doesn't know how to use it. I always keep it on and won't enable power saving mode. The old lady I know always calls me because her cable box is off, she doesn't know how to turn it back on unless I help her.


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## ShayL

I observed an issue with power saving mode. It looks like the TiVo doesn't consider streaming at least through the stream when considering to power down. 

I was streaming to my iPad. It stopped playback during a show during playback. I tried to bring up the stream web admin page, but couldn't till I woke up the the TiVo. This is the built-in stream on the Pro. I had the power-saving setting on low.


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## 1283

ShayL said:


> I was streaming to my iPad. It stopped playback during a show during playback. I tried to bring up the stream web admin page, but couldn't till I woke up the the TiVo. This is the built-in stream on the Pro. I had the power-saving setting on low.


I assume that trying to start streaming when the TiVo is in the standby mode would not work, either. Correct?


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## lpwcomp

c3 said:


> I assume that trying to start streaming when the TiVo is in the standby mode would not work, either. Correct?


I stream fine via the Android app with my Pro in standby.


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## aaronwt

c3 said:


> I assume that trying to start streaming when the TiVo is in the standby mode would not work, either. Correct?





lpwcomp said:


> I stream fine via the Android app with my Pro in standby.


Yes. It should come out of standby when you stream with the Android app. At least that is what I saw when I tried it. It just took a few seconds longer to start playing.


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## lpwcomp

aaronwt said:


> Yes. It should come out of standby when you stream with the Android app. At least that is what I saw when I tried it. It just took a few seconds longer to start playing.


It actually doesn't seem to come fully out of standby. Any "idle" tuners remain so.


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## aaronwt

lpwcomp said:


> It actually doesn't seem to come fully out of standby. Any "idle" tuners remain so.


I initially was looking at the power usage. It seems to go up a lot when using the streaming function. I never saw my Roamio Pro use so much power as it did yesterday when I had it streaming three shows to three tablets concurrently.


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## Observer

I hazard a guest that the Power Save feature is actually a ploy to eliminate the live buffers, so that less skipping can occur...

Gotta keep the networks happy !


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## aaronwt

Observer said:


> I hazard a guest that the Power Save feature is actually a ploy to eliminate the live buffers, so that less skipping can occur...
> 
> Gotta keep the networks happy !


skipping??


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## wmcbrine

aaronwt said:


> skipping??


He means ad skipping. And no, his theory makes no sense.


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## Observer

wmcbrine said:


> He means ad skipping. And no, his theory makes no sense.


If you have no buffer, you can't back up (30 mins of live TV - Time Shift backwards in time) and view what has buffered and skip though the parts you don't want watch ays catch up to real time.

"Watch what you want your way" no longer seems be option.


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## rainwater

Observer said:


> If you have no buffer, you can't back up (30 mins of live TV - Time Shift backwards in time) and view what has buffered and skip though the parts you don't want watch ays catch up to real time.
> 
> "Watch what you want your way" no longer seems be option.


Huh? The power saving mode is not on by default. And most people aren't ad skipping live tv. It is recordings that people fast forward through.


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## lpwcomp

Observer said:


> If you have no buffer, you can't back up (30 mins of live TV - Time Shift backwards in time) and view what has buffered and skip though the parts you don't want watch ays catch up to real time.
> 
> "Watch what you want your way" no longer seems be option.


I seriously doubt that this was a consideration. After all, to retain the live buffers, just turn off power saving and don't put your TiVo in standby. My problem with this is that if I don't put in standby, I'm liable to end up with an EAS message in the middle of my recordings.


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## dianebrat

Observer said:


> If you have no buffer, you can't back up (30 mins of live TV - Time Shift backwards in time) and view what has buffered and skip though the parts you don't want watch ays catch up to real time.
> 
> "Watch what you want your way" no longer seems be option.


Flaw in your logic, it also would let viewers see MORE commercials they might have missed otherwise.

conspiracy fail


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## Observer

dianebrat said:


> Flaw in your logic, it also would let viewers see MORE commercials they might have missed otherwise.
> 
> conspiracy fail


Marginal, you now have to pause and skip...more work...and you are stuck with the speed of time as you can time shift into the future.

So you just make dinner an let the commercials roll...


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## lpwcomp

Observer said:


> Marginal, you now have to pause and skip...more work...and you are stuck with the speed of time as you can time shift into the future.
> 
> So you just make dinner an let the commercials roll...


Don't.Put.Your.Tivo.In.Standby.


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## lessd

lpwcomp said:


> Don't.Put.Your.Tivo.In.Standby.


The electric cost savings is very minor for most people using the TiVo high power saving mode, if there is any advantage it the spin down of the hard drive as *SOME *(but not all) people will say that the total life of the TiVo and hard drive may be increased, but I will point out many think that starting and stopping electronics is bad news and will shorten the life, this is only an opinion and I don't want to start a discussion about this life thing as it tends to get quite nasty, so each can do as they want, for me I use the high power saving mode, in 5 or more years I will come back and tell you if my TiVo and hard drive are still working.


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## lpwcomp

lessd said:


> The electric cost savings is very minor for most people using the TiVo high power saving mode, if there is any advantage it the spin down of the hard drive as *SOME *(but not all) people will say that the total life of the TiVo and hard drive may be increased, but I will point out many think that starting and stopping electronics is bad news and will shorten the life, this is only an opinion and I don't want to start a discussion about this life thing as it tends to get quite nasty, so each can do as they want, for me I use the high power saving mode, in 5 or more years I will come back and tell you if my TiVo and hard drive are still working.


My post was based simply on the posters desire to retain the live buffers.

A friend of mine insisted that putting his DTiVos in standby extended the life of the hard drives, so who knows?


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## Stevesreed

I have to say I envy all these posts about $.10/kWh electricity rates. 

In California, with tiered rates, we can easily pay as much as $.40 to $.60/kWh. So standy can save $20-$30 a year. Yes, it's still not much, but you can say that about ever device and light bulb in your house. Eventually it adds up. 

I'm glad they added more power saving options. I don't care about live buffers not recording when I'm not using the Tivo, since I never watch live TV anyway. For me, the whole purpose of having a TiVo is to avoid watching live TV, and watch shows when I want to. I would prefer the TiVo go instantly into deep sleep as soon as I send the Standby command from my remote.

But I can see how some people use their TiVos very differently from our household, so I think it makes sense that when set to off, the Tivo should never stop enter standby/stop live buffering.


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## Mikeguy

Stevesreed said:


> But I can see how some people use their TiVos very differently from our household, so I think it makes sense that when set to off, the Tivo should never stop enter standby/stop live buffering.


Or, hey, just have this as one of the standby option choices.


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## lessd

Stevesreed said:


> I have to say I envy all these posts about $.10/kWh electricity rates.
> 
> In California, with tiered rates, we can easily pay as much as $.40 to $.60/kWh. So standy can save $20-$30 a year. Yes, it's still not much, but you can say that about ever device and light bulb in your house. Eventually it adds up.
> 
> I'm glad they added more power saving options. I don't care about live buffers not recording when I'm not using the Tivo, since I never watch live TV anyway. For me, the whole purpose of having a TiVo is to avoid watching live TV, and watch shows when I want to. I would prefer the TiVo go instantly into deep sleep as soon as I send the Standby command from my remote.
> 
> But I can see how some people use their TiVos very differently from our household, so I think it makes sense that when set to off, the Tivo should never stop enter standby/stop live buffering.


You can't save much power without spinning down the hard drive, and then you can't have the buffering.


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## Bytez

With the 20.4.7a update, the power saving mode was set back to the default of "disabled". I just realized this today.


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## aaronwt

Bytez said:


> With the 20.4.7a update, the power saving mode was set back to the default of "disabled". I just realized this today.


That didn't happen with either of my ROamios.


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## aaronwt

lessd said:


> You can't save much power without spinning down the hard drive, and then you can't have the buffering.


Even when the drive is spinning in standby, it still isn't buffering. At least that is how mine works with the max power saving enabled. The buffers only begin to show up when I take it out of standby. While tuners that are recording are still being written to the hard drive while in standby.


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## lessd

aaronwt said:


> That didn't happen with either of my ROamios.


Nor my Roamios


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## CIP54

I just started using a new Roamio plus, tried out the power savings, don't like it because my TV thinks there's no signal while the box is waking and my wife thinks something's wrong, etc. Turned power savings to "off" but it still goes into standby anyway.

Anybody else seeing this?


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## JoeKustra

CIP54 said:


> I just started using a new Roamio plus, tried out the power savings, don't like it because my TV thinks there's no signal while the box is waking and my wife thinks something's wrong, etc. Turned power savings to "off" but it still goes into standby anyway.
> 
> Anybody else seeing this?


No, in fact the waking up message is displayed as soon as I hit the live TV button. I have never heard of spontaneous standby.


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## compnurd

Where is this setting?


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## lpwcomp

compnurd said:


> Where is this setting?


Settings->Remote & Device Settings->Power Saving Settings


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## Laserfan

Please forgive me if this is answered already. My new Roamio OTA with its Power Saving mode freaked me out a bit on Sunday when I had it programmed to record football and I went-into the Living Room and it appeared dead! Yes, it was in Standby and I have it in Power Saving (High) and it was indeed recording despite that the LEDs were dark. I have two older model TiVo units and of course they show RED when they're recording so I can see at a glance that they're doing their thing.

1. Is the only way to retain this LED display to turn-off Power Saving altogether?

2. Then if I do this the HDD spins 24/7 and recording buffers are cranking-away?

Thanks.


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## aaronwt

Laserfan said:


> Please forgive me if this is answered already. My new Roamio OTA with its Power Saving mode freaked me out a bit on Sunday when I had it programmed to record football and I went-into the Living Room and it appeared dead! Yes, it was in Standby and I have it in Power Saving (High) and it was indeed recording despite that the LEDs were dark. I have two older model TiVo units and of course they show RED when they're recording so I can see at a glance that they're doing their thing.
> 
> 1. Is the only way to retain this LED display to turn-off Power Saving altogether?
> 
> 2. Then if I do this the HDD spins 24/7 and recording buffers are cranking-away?
> 
> Thanks.


Anytime a TiVo goes into standby, the display is dark. AFAIK this has always been the case.

I use the 2 hour standby feature with my Roamios. I don't need to see the lights on the front to know it's recording. Anything scheduled gets recorded whether it's in standby or not.


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## Laserfan

aaronwt said:


> Anytime a TiVo goes into standby, the display is dark. AFAIK this has always been the case.


Thanks for confirming. I had hoped there was a Power Saving mode that allowed at least the Recording-In-Progress LED to glow.


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