# Hackable 'Powersave' mode?



## bignoise (Oct 7, 2000)

Ever since I started walking around the house with a plug-in power meter, I couldn't get over how much power a TiVo seems to use, especially when you've got dual drives in place.

Which got me to wondering.. would it be possible to produce some kind of 'hack' which could attempt to optimise TiVo's power use? For example, disabling the live TV buffer, and (where possible) spinning down the hard discs during the periods of inactivity between suggested and planned recordings?

It doesn't strike me that either of these things would be hard to do... but of course I don't have the faintest idea about how you could do them. Does anyone here have any ideas?

(I'm *almost* considering trying out some SSD drives too... in which case being able to disable the live buffer should be even more important from a disc wear point of view.)


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

My last Tivo is turned off mainly because of its high energy consumption 
That and of course the STB needed to work with it.

Last last models I know failed USA EPA energy saving tests due to the fact they are always awake to make the record live TV buffer work.

The only area I think our UK ones could be enhanced is as you suggest a solid state hard drive but I suspect more important would be a new very high effiency power supply unit and then perhaps a "green" hard drive.

My Windows Home Server has 2 x 500Gb "green" SATA drives and eats just over 40watts of power.

Automan.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Automan said:


> My Windows Home Server has 2 x 500Gb "green" SATA drives and eats just over 40watts of power


My 2 x 250GB Tivo only uses 37W. Admittedly the Sky box uses a further 16W and the Freeview box 11W.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

1W per year costs just over &#163;1
So your average tivo + STB combo uses 60W, or &#163;60 a year

Stick both tivo and STB on a mains timeswitch if you want to save some money,
e.g. off at 2am, on at 8am
Then set a matching manual repeating recording on tivo for these times, 
that way tivo will warn you if you try to set a recording when its scheduled to be off. 

BTW home server has a "lights out" service that puts it into suspend at set hours


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

mikerr said:


> BTW home server has a "lights out" service that puts it into suspend at set hours


My one has to be awake 24/7 to talk to my weather station http://www.morlocks.co.uk/weather/ but I could tweak it as you suggest and then get my weather software to read the saved data from the Davis Data logger module in the console when the server wakes up.

Automan.


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

I suppose it would make sense to spin down the disks whenever nobody is going to be watching (overnight and during the day if the owner is out at work) AND when there is no scheduled recording (or suggestions) - I only need the live buffer when I get home from work, so between 6pm-1am. Unless there is an easy hack for this it seems to be more hassle than it's worth.

And putting the TiVo on a timer switch would most likely lead to early failure of a component, most likely a hard drive.


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## mdolan (Jun 4, 2002)

Milhouse said:


> Unless there is an easy hack for this it seems to be more hassle than it's worth.


Yes, it could be a lot of hassle - however it would have a physical cash payback. As someone has pointed out 1w/hr roughly equates to £1/year (and with tivo running around the 40w mark thats a saving of £40/year!)

I would *love* a plugin that could power down/hibernate/sleep the tivo... (or at least the hard drives).

Anyone up for the challenge? If there are people intelligent enough to design cachecards etc, maybe this could be the next puzzle for them to work upon?

Could be a nice commercial earner?

Cheers,
Mike


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

mdolan said:


> I would *love* a plugin that could power down/hibernate/sleep the tivo... (or at least the hard drives).


My only concern would be that any such power down could lead to increased drive failure, the net saving thus being zero or less.


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## mdolan (Jun 4, 2002)

Milhouse said:


> My only concern would be that any such power down could lead to increased drive failure, the net saving thus being zero or less.


Shouldn't be a real issue depending on your usage.

My guesstimate is:
Time spent recording/playback= 25% of the day (6 hours).
therefore 75% of time is "wasted".

75% saving against 40w=30w saving

1w=£1

So each year savings would be approx £30. So you could easily pay for a new drive every 1.5 years....

I've been running a home server for 3 years with hibernate/spinup support and still waiting for a drive to fail 

Cheers,
Mike


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## boringgit (Jan 20, 2007)

Spam methinks 

Would love to see the hack. Tivo has been relegated to the bedroom now that V+ is on its way but 60 quid a year makes me wonder if a cheap HDD freeview box wouldn't be a better option.... Especially given that I'll need to run a cat 5 cable in order to let me set recordings from work (which is pretty useful)

I could never understand why the live buffer didn't switch off when you put the darn thing into standby. I struggle to see that it is a feature - therefore either an oversight, or there was a problem which made it difficult to implement...


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

boringgit said:


> Spam methinks
> 
> Would love to see the hack. Tivo has been relegated to the bedroom now that V+ is on its way but 60 quid a year makes me wonder if a cheap HDD freeview box wouldn't be a better option.... Especially given that I'll need to run a cat 5 cable in order to let me set recordings from work (which is pretty useful)


Yes I now have in my bedroom a Daewoo DSD-9503TFP which eats 11watts in standby and 22watts when on.

Freeview+ works pretty well, infact where avaialble the best I have seen starting recording nearly always within 30sec before the program!

Unit was under £100.00 from amazon.

Gadget is *not* perfect but is okay for a second room / low usage.

Automan.


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## boringgit (Jan 20, 2007)

I have a quite awful Digifusion box plugged into Tivo now. It seems to freeze several times a day. Bought a 1.99 timer switch from Wilkos which I hope will keep it responsive.

Seems silly to spend money on a crappy freeview boxwhen £90 odd would get me a dual record PVR. 

Think I have decided that Tivo will stay out of the cupboard until that kind of price point will get me a dual record PVR with HDMI. Should be about a year I reckon...


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## bignoise (Oct 7, 2000)

Not just me then. Seems like there are several points of attack:

1. The STB feeding the TiVo itself. This is a good point - an old ONdigital box sucks up about 14 watts while on, a newer box (e.g. Pace DTVA) just 4 watts. [Although not all new boxes are low power - the cheapo box from Woolworths is about 10 watts.] I'm not too sure about Sky boxes (my ancient Pace takes about 11 watts, I don't know if a modern box is any better) - possibly the Pace 'minibox' might be worth looking at as it's powered by an external PSU rather than internal mains.

2. If there's a significant power difference between 'on' and 'standby' then some means to IR blast a standby code after a recording finishes would be neat. (In the case of, e.g. a Sky box, it'd automatically be woken up again by the "Sky" button before the next channel change.) This might also have the effect of causing no writes to the live buffer if there's no signal on the SCART.

2b. Alternatively, forcing a channel change to a blank UHF channel (e.g. 65 or whatever isn't in use locally) could/should reduce disc writes substantially, if there's no easy way to disable the live buffer directly.

3. Hard discs - two use more power than one. Newer drives use less than older ones? I must get my power meter out again. Still tempted by SSD drives but capacity/cost is an issue. (A 64gb IDE SSD weighs in at about £180. It might be possible to do something interesting with a few 32gb CF cards, but either way this increases the cost and lowers the storage considerably.)

3b. Which means.. still far better to spin down the hard drives if at all possible. Can't some drives be configured to automatically spin-down themselves when not in use? Or is that a parameter which would need to be asserted by a disk utility at boot time? (Easy as adding something to the TiVo startup file? hdparm -S60 -B1 /dev/hda, etc?) Disabling/circumventing the live buffer and perhaps getting a Cachecard in place might prevent a lot of 'background' use, maybe?

4. If all else fails, some kind of external power box that can be signalled (perhaps by serial/ethernet) to "Turn off until 20:55pm on Tuesday"? Great if you leave the TiVo alone for long periods but a nuisance if you have to power it up every time you want to watch something.

5. What was that about replacing the TiVo PSU? Could that make a significant difference?

Must be plenty of options, surely.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

All of the above suggestions might save you perhaps £30 per annum at best but no doubt also severely reduce the recording reliability of your Tivo. The only one that seems of any practical value and is easy to do is powering the Tivo off on a timer between say 2am and 6pm each day for those who do not use Suggestions and who only record shows in the evening. Even then implementing the established hack to force the Daily Call to a time of day when Tivo will be on and after which all indexing operations will be complete before it powers off would be very advisable.

I would suspect most of you would save far more per annum if you visited www.saynoto0870.com to find a geographic alternative for any 084 or 087 prefixed number phone number before you call in on your landline or mobile, especially if you have a bundled minutes package on your mobile or unlimited calls plan on your landline to all 01, 02 and 03 prefixed numbers.


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## bignoise (Oct 7, 2000)

What does SayNoTo have to do with saving electricty? That's a rather blatant advert for an entirely unrelated thing. If we're doing that then surely I should point out the everday low, low prices at MORRISON'S supermarkets. 

My point here is not in reducing the usability or reliabilty of the TiVo - just optimising its power use so that it is not wasting electricity buffering live TV that I'm not watching, not spinning its discs when it doesn't have to, and so on. My primary TiVo (the original and best) only records 3 programmes a day, so for the vast majority of the time it's using a lot of electricity - and money - doing nothing. Multiply this by the 4 TiVos that I personally own and suddenly things just get insane.

Some quick measurements.. This is a twin-drive TiVo, one 120gb Samsung, one 160gb Maxtor, 512mb cachecard on board.

BOOTING (disc read, cachecard loading) - 30 watts
INTRO (playing the TiVo intro video) - 33 watts
LIVE TV (watching in the live buffer) - 33 watts
DISABLED LIVE BUFFER (changed to an invalid UHF channel) - 30 watts
FORCED /DEV/HDB [Maxtor] TO SLEEP MODE (hdparm -y /dev/hdb) - 27 watts
FORCED /DEV/HDA [Samsung] TO SLEEP MODE (hdparm -y /dev/hdb) - 21 watts

It looks to me like there's an attack surface of at least 12 watts that could fairly easily be optimised from within software, and possibly more with hardware (better/greener discs, etc) and clever STB tricks. Certainly killing the live buffer makes a measurable difference immediately, though it'd need some kind of software to automate it. Setting the drives to spin down after a few minutes of inactivity is also a measurable saving [at least on the B drive - the A drive seems to be more constantly in use, but I haven't tested that too closely. Maybe if HDA gets all of the attention in an unavoidable manner then it'd make sense to replace HDA with a (possibly quite small) SSD/flash drive and keep HDB as a big spinning disc.]

I think there's the chance to do something useful here.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

It just seems like a lot of trouble to go to in 2008 when Tivo S1 in the UK is now much nearer to the end of the line than it was in Autumn 2000.

Of course if its a challenge that you enjoy for its own sake then don't let me stop you and I am sure you will be the first to remind me of the substantial increases in electricity prices over the last couple of years.


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## boringgit (Jan 20, 2007)

I agree with Pete, in that there are lots of ways to save &#163;30 a year and that leaving Tivo alone and tackling others is far easier.

However 

There's a wee bit too much Scottish blood in me to enjoy the idea that I am wasting that money. 

Agreed - if Tivo could switch a set-top box to standby, then wake it up again that would be fantastic. 

What's the padding hack? That would be a perfect way of doing it - it's already adding 3 minutes (or whatever you set), to the beginning and end of recorded shows.. if it doesn't conflict with other recordings. Somebody has already worked out the logic, all it would need to do is, 30 seconds before it was due to start recording send a power signal, then 30 seconds after it ends (which would only be padded if it didn't conflict), it sends another power command.

Switching off the TV buffer has an even easier cue - when you press the standby button it should stop and not resume again until you switch it on. 

Of course I come to this with loads of enthusiasm and absolutely zero practical know how


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## bignoise (Oct 7, 2000)

That's the style, boringgit. I agree entirely. 

I do see your point, Pete, but if it comes down to it, if a couple of quick software mods could save you [at least] £15 a year on your electricity bill, it's daft not to. If you don't care about the money, think of the planet. Think of the rainforest, full of meerkats and dolphins and otters yearning to breathe free, clogged up by all that carbon exhaust from your inconsiderate TiVo viewing. 

OK, no question that ripping out the guts of the TiVo and replacing it with less powerlicious hardware is extreme, totally agree there, and that's definitely up at the "advanced dabbling" end of the scale. But I think even if you just look at the difference that could be made with some fairly quick, simple software hacks, I reckon that alone is worth taking a look at. It can't hurt, after all.

Totally agree with you, boringgit, about the padding hack - maybe somewhere between that and the old IR blaster hack (for sending 'BACK UP' to remove the red dot during recordings) there could be a workable solution.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

2.5" drives use up less than half the power of the lowest power 3.5" drives,
so try that route to get a tivo using 20W while active....

E.g. £60 for a 250GB 2.5" IDE drive

[edit] BTW the last thread we had on power saving.... was  here


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## bignoise (Oct 7, 2000)

Interesting! Laptop drives, hadn't thought of that. Definitely an idea.


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## boringgit (Jan 20, 2007)

Agreed, but you would be looking at perhaps 3 years to recoup the investment....

Tivo in the UK may still be here in 3 years...

Might not though....


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> 2.5" drives use up less than half the power of the lowest power 3.5" drives,
> so try that route to get a tivo using 20W while active....
> 
> E.g. £60 for a 250GB 2.5" IDE drive


So does a single 500GB 3.5" IDE drive also only use half the power of 2 x 250GB 3.5" drives then? Or does a single 1TB Western Digital Green Power 3.5" SATA drive only use half the power of 2 x 500GB 3.5" IDE drives?


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

bignoise said:


> 2. If there's a significant power difference between 'on' and 'standby' then some means to IR blast a standby code after a recording finishes would be neat. (In the case of, e.g. a Sky box, it'd automatically be woken up again by the "Sky" button before the next channel change.) This might also have the effect of causing no writes to the live buffer if there's no signal on the SCART.
> 
> 2b. Alternatively, forcing a channel change to a blank UHF channel (e.g. 65 or whatever isn't in use locally) could/should reduce disc writes substantially, if there's no easy way to disable the live buffer directly.


IIRC if Tivo doesn't see a signal over SCART for a certain period of time it reboots. That's going to cause some stress on the PSU - similar to hard powering off on a timer. Not sure if selecting an RF channel prevents this.

I completely agree its a shame to be buring watts for no obvious reason, but I don't see an obvious way to achieve big power savings other than a lower power drive, choosing the most energy efficient STB and potentially removing the cachecard.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

AMc said:


> I completely agree its a shame to be buring watts for no obvious reason, but I don't see an obvious way to achieve big power savings other than a lower power drive, choosing the most energy efficient STB and potentially removing the cachecard.


Surely the biggest saving without much hassle is powering the Tivo off on a timer between 2am and say 6pm (off for 16 hours per day). However this requires the time of the daily call to be hacked to run early on during these on hours so that all indexing etc will long since have completed before it is powered off. This hack has been written and is available.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

I suppose a new Tivo could perhaps have enough ram for the live TV buffer so the rest of the time its single drive (which must eat less power than 2) could spin down.

The power supply unit should also be 90&#37;+ efficient and remain so on a full range of loads from low standby to maximum.

Automan.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Surely the biggest saving without much hassle is powering the Tivo off on a timer between 2am and say 6pm (off for 16 hours per day).


 If you're happy putting that stress on the PSU and drive you will obviously save power for a few quid on the timer.

My take is that the £ cost/environmental impact of a replacing the PSU and/or disk prematurely outweighs the savings from having Tivo switched off but your mileage may vary.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Automan said:


> I suppose a new Tivo could perhaps have enough ram for the live TV buffer so the rest of the time its single drive (which must eat less power than 2) could spin down.


You'd then lose the ability to save the buffer to a recording.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

TCM2007 said:


> You'd then lose the ability to save the buffer to a recording.


Not if it is smart, it should be able to flush the ram to the hard drive.

Granted it may need a 1hr5min ram buffer.

Going in the oposite direction I see Sony are bringing out a freeview module for the PS3.

Then you can leave the PS3 on 24/7 and that really does eat some power!

Also it does not even support Freeview+ features or Freeview HD 

http://www.homecinemachoice.com/reviews/new_reviews/PS3+PlayTv

Automan.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

PS3 PlayTV being discussed here...
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=393031

Not sure if it can wake the PS3 from standby which uses around 2 Watts.
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-4.htm


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## methers (Apr 26, 2004)

This is why I'm looking at the new Humax Freesat HD PVR. No subscription, multiple HD tuners, and <1W power consumption in standby.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/home-cinema/news/2008/08/29/IFA-2008--Humax-Quietly-Unveils-Freesat-HD-FOXSAT-HDR-PVR/p1


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

methers said:


> This is why I'm looking at the new Humax Freesat HD PVR. No subscription, multiple HD tuners, and <1W power consumption in standby.
> 
> http://www.trustedreviews.com/home-cinema/news/2008/08/29/IFA-2008--Humax-Quietly-Unveils-Freesat-HD-FOXSAT-HDR-PVR/p1


I hope it turns out better than their Freesat "Foxsat" box did.

1. Low power consumption in standby if scart bypass switched off
2. Soft picture
3. Sound sync issues
4. No subtitles on HD channels
5. Poor physical contruction (front centre bezel tends to peel off).
6. Poor HDMI HDCP hanshake with lots of TV and HDMI switches.

Also I have my doubts about the new EPG. So far it seems it contains no equivalent to freeview+ data to permit the accurate start and stop of recordings.

Also EPG program data is poor with sometimes less data than the old Sky EPG provides.

Still we shall see when they have one setup that works....

Automan.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Automan said:


> Not if it is smart, it should be able to flush the ram to the hard drive.


In theory; in practice that isn't how TiVo works (the live buffer is just a recorded programme which doesn't appear in Now Playing). To dump half an hour of data from RAM while continuing to record the new stuff is more than an S1's processor can handle, judging by what happens when you extract video while a ecording is going on. Later TiVos are a bit more powerful, but not much.



> Then you can leave the PS3 on 24/7 and that really does eat some power!
> .


Yes, I have to open the doors of my AV cabinet when the PS3 is on because of the heat it produces.


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## Heuer (Mar 15, 2004)

My Hi-Fi runs at 1.8Kw so I doubt my two TiVo's are going to make much difference to our consumption. I also have to leave my server on to collect data from my Davis station.


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## bignoise (Oct 7, 2000)

Heuer said:


> My Hi-Fi runs at 1.8Kw


Your hifi runs at 1800w? That means it costs you 25p an hour in electricity.

Wow.

Is it very loud?


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## BrianHughes (Jan 21, 2001)

bignoise said:


> Your hifi runs at 1800w? That means it costs you 25p an hour in electricity.
> 
> Wow.
> 
> Is it very loud?


He probably plays it very loud on cold days to warm up the room


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## Heuer (Mar 15, 2004)

Indeed. With it running we do not need the central heating on - can't touch the case. It is also a Class A design which means it draws 1.5Kw even when idling. Sounds good though. Welcome to the world of Krell ownership. http://www.krellonline.com/krell_component.php?id=39&page=fpbStereo


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## bignoise (Oct 7, 2000)

Wow!


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## RichardJH (Oct 7, 2002)

> Welcome to the world of Krell ownership. http://www.krellonline.com/krell_com...page=fpbStereo


 originally posted by Heuer.

Even bigger WOW!

Just browsed the manual for one of the Evolution range and its specs show max power used 3.8 KW


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

I assume being Krell power is not an issue...

As I recall from the movie about them they had an almost unlimited power supply with zero cost which was great till the creatures from the id wiped them all out 

Automan.


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## Heuer (Mar 15, 2004)

Yes a seminal film - The Forbidden Planet. However I have a large collection of Robby the Robot tin toys to protect my Krell


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

10x10x10x10x10x10....

One of my favourite films. :up:


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