# bought a timeswitch for the tivo...



## cleudo (Apr 7, 2002)

surprised to find (after buying one of those 10 quid Maplin energy monitors) that my TiVo / Sky+ combination was drawing a constant 73W 24/7.

Given I've got 2 such setups, this is costing &#163;130 a year in electricity for doing hee-haw a lot of the time.

So... I've bought a couple of 6 quid 7-day timers (Maplin again..) and this lets me kill power to the two locations from 2am till 2pm the next day (rationale - not a lot the TiVo would want to record in those timeslots anyway).

Total saving &#163;65 - &#163;12 (timers) = &#163;53 or about &#163;4.50 a month.

sorted!


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## digital_S (May 15, 2002)

Good idea in saving power and money during those times, but then there's the instant switch off when your timer switches off, then your TiVo powering up when the switch turns on!
Personally, I think my TiVo would last alot longer if I left it running. (I hate it when there's a powercut)


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## PaulWilkinsUK (Mar 20, 2006)

cleudo said:


> surprised to find (after buying one of those 10 quid Maplin energy monitors) that my TiVo / Sky+ combination was drawing a constant 73W 24/7.
> 
> Given I've got 2 such setups, this is costing £130 a year in electricity for doing hee-haw a lot of the time.
> 
> ...


How are you going to ensure that your guide data is kept up to date? Can you adjust the time of the guide data update manually?


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## katman (Jun 4, 2002)

cleudo said:


> Total saving £65 - £12 (timers) = £53 or about £4.50 a month.


Thats one way of looking at it I suppose.

Another way of looking at it is that you could probably have saved more than that by a simple change in your Sky package.

Likewise if both your setups are SKY+ then you dont actually NEED a Tivo attached to them in the first place.

You have also now effectively DOUBLED the cost of your Sky Subscription because you are paying the same as before you bought the timers but only have 50% of the service !!!!


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

digital_S said:


> Personally, I think my TiVo would last alot longer if I left it running.


I can second that.

Switching a TiVo off overnight puts a strain on the drive and the PSU at switch-on and causes them both to cool down and heat up repeatedly which is not a good thing for either.

You could argue that leaving a PSU switched on 24x7 will wear it out faster as there is power running through it all the time, but the PSUs in my "test" TiVo (which gets switched on and off a few times every day) tend to wear out pretty quickly!

As for the drive - it's well known that leaving a drive powered on is better for it than repeatedly cycling the power. Again, you could argue that the TiVo drive is never idle - even overnight - so switching it off will result in less wear, but personally I feel that cycling the power every night will do it a lot more harm.

So, although you may save a bit in electricity costs, when you factor in the increased cost of replacement parts for your two TiVos, I suspect the saving will not be as great as you hope.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Temperature changes are the biggest killer of both hard drives and electrical components. How often do your light bulbs blow when you switch them on, as compared to them blowing while they're lit.

A short power cycle is less of a problem, but leaving them off for a long-enough period to cool down is not that wise.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

blindlemon said:


> As for the drive - it's well known that leaving a drive powered on is better for it than repeatedly cycling the power.


Well known? No not really, witness the billions of drives in PC's the world over set to spin down every 15 minutes. 

Server drives are used 24/7 and IME they don't last as long as desktop drives in general...

So long as you aren't cold power cycling more than twice a day I doubt it makes much odds though (this is an age old debate after all).


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

mikerr said:


> Well known? No not really, witness the billions of drives in PC's the world over set to spin down every 15 minutes.


As Ian has pointed out, spinning down the drive in a running PC to save power is not the same as pulling the plug and leaving it to get cold for 12 hours.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

PaulWilkinsUK said:


> How are you going to ensure that your guide data is kept up to date? Can you adjust the time of the guide data update manually?


(a) The Tivo will keep trying to get data at different times till it finds one when the Tivo is on. Given that Tivo has 21 days data ahead this is unlikely to be an issue and it will soon find a time it can make a call, even if it misses a call on the odd day now and again.

(b) If this is still an issue then the scripts that have been written by Colin Younger and others to ensure Tivo's daily call always takes place at a set time of day when the power is on(although this assumes a network card of course and some willingness to dabble with Unix text editors and FTP and so on).

(c) As to hard drive going cold for several hours regularly meaning early hard drive death etc I personally believe this to be a purist argument that pedants enjoy exercising that has little basis in fact, especially in a Tivo where Tivo on time means constant read/writing of the disk and not just the drive spinning at a set temperature with little head activity. And frequently it is worn out and stuck heads that leads to the demise of hard drives.

I would also note that my mother's five year old Samsung Notebook PC is only ever on for 3 or 4 hours a day and is often switched on and off more than once a day but despite that the IBM Deathstar 20Gb disk it came supplied with is still running away quite happily, and this despite Deathstars being a supposedly known short lived form of hard drive.

Also if we are talking notebooks PCs their motherboards will fry and eventually burn out in many cases in direct proportion to how many hours they are left on and are overheating for. With many recent compact notebooks this is only overcome by running the notebooks PC on a metallic cooling base with built in cooling fan such as the one I now have from Akasa. My first motherboard in this HP Pavilion notebook burned out after 11 month of near 24/7 operation but this one has been going strong for 24 months now on a cooling base.

I know it offends the purist sensibilities of some of you who believe that Linux is so reliable that Tivos can be left on 24/7 without rebooting but the fact of the matter is that I get far better Tivo reliability and especially Tivweb reliability by powering off my machine once a day for 2 minutes at 5am. As I do record some stuff overnight or in the morning I couldn't myself go for the 12 hours a day off option but I am sure there are plenty of people for whom this would work.


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> I would also note that my mother's five year old Samsung Notebook PC is only ever on for 3 or 4 hours a day and is often switched on and off more than once a day


QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!

Like QI, you've given the obvious response, which is right in spirit, but wrong here. So you get the Quacks.

You are forgetting that our TiVos are running with 8 year old hardware, with all the frailties of age and technology of that time. Also, comparing a laptop or desktop which is DESIGNED to be switched off and on is false.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ColinYounger said:


> Also, comparing a laptop or desktop which is DESIGNED to be switched off and on is false.


Actually I would contend that the Tivo Linux operating system is designed to cope with power cuts precisely because it is left on 24/7/365, whereas Windows machines (that are often off at night etc when unexpected short power cuts are sometimes done for emergency grid maintenance etc) tend to cope far less elegantly with a power off without going through a proper Shutdown process. Whereas Tivos usually don't care when the power is pulled.

I would still maintain that excess heat (as originally experienced by my laptop) is a far more important aspect of early component death than it experiencing regular power cycles. Very frequent short power blips of only a second or two may well be very bad for equipment as those who have lost their /var/hack directory can vouch. But power outages of a few minutes to a few hours usually do no serious harm. And what about the private motor car that has its now complex electronic circuity last 10 years or more with long on/off periods and violent extremes of temperature from below freezing to much hotter than anything a Tivo ever experiences.

Also low energy light bulbs are quoted for 6 to 15 times the life of incandescent ones (depending on brand) with precisely the same on/off duty cycle. How do those who maintain on/off cycling and avoiding temperature extremes is all important in reliability explain that one?


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

Pete77 said:


> (a) The Tivo will keep trying to get data at different times till it finds one when the Tivo is on. Given that Tivo has 21 days data ahead this is unlikely to be an issue and it will soon find a time it can make a call, even if it misses a call on the odd day now and again.


Actually, TiVo will not auto call during the peak phone hours - around 9am to 6pm - so there is a good chance he will miss the daily calls until TiVo gets to the pre-2am slot.

I would not be surprised if the database eventually gets screwed if its powered off during its updates - which are around an hour after the daily call.

Chances are the updates are not going to happen regularly and also they will be interrupted.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ozsat said:


> I would not be surprised if the database eventually gets screwed if its powered off during its updates - which are around an hour after the daily call.
> 
> Chances are the updates are not going to happen regularly and also they will be interrupted.


I would certain recommend securing the time of the daily call to be in the middle of the regular on operating hours of the machine involved using the hack that successfully achieves this (running it here myself and powering off my Tivo once a day for 2 minutes) designed by Colin Younger and previously also by other tivocommunity members.

In this way the call will always go through as normal and the database will be properly indexed and updated before the power is shut off for a few hours.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> a purist argument that pedants enjoy exercising


Thare's goes Pete, making friends again!



> I would also note that my mother's five year old Samsung Notebook PC is only ever on for 3 or 4 hours a day and is often switched on and off more than once a day but despite that the IBM Deathstar 20Gb disk it came supplied with is still running away quite happily, and this despite Deathstars being a supposedly known short lived form of hard drive.


That's the old "My Nan smoked 20 day and lived to be 101 so smoking can't cause cancer" argument.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> Also low energy light bulbs are quoted for 6 to 15 times the life of incandescent ones (depending on brand) with precisely the same on/off duty cycle. How do those who maintain on/off cycling and avoiding temperature extremes is all important in reliability explain that one?


I hardly know where to begin point out the absurdity of that argument!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> I hardly know where to begin point out the absurdity of that argument!


Oh why not indulge us a little bearing in mind that low energy lightbulbs contain miniaturised electronic circuity susceptible to excess levels of heat whereas incandescent bulbs are entierly analogue devices with no electronic circuitry at all to fry and only a tungsten wire involved.

I suspect you don't know where to begin to start because the longer life of low energy light bulbs situation particularly disapproves the idea that regular hot to cold cycles in conjunction with the use of sophisticated electronic circuitry means shorter product life.


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> (a) The Tivo will keep trying to get data at different times till it finds one when the Tivo is on. Given that Tivo has 21 days data ahead this is unlikely to be an issue and it will soon find a time it can make a call, even if it misses a call on the odd day now and again.


I have a bedroom tivo with no network line at the moment.

I temp connect one up to download, then put the cable away.

I have found although tivo has 21days of data, it is incomplete after about 10 days.

In my case the tivo is terestial only, just the 5 channels, data after about day 10 is just 2 hour chunks or "BBC PROGRAMS" in the title, and so on for the 5 channels.

Is this the case of tribune getting lazy?? I never had a valid 21days of data??


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

6022tivo said:


> I have found although tivo has 21days of data, it is incomplete after about 10 days.
> 
> In my case the tivo is terestial only, just the 5 channels, data after about day 10 is just 2 hour chunks or "BBC PROGRAMS" in the title, and so on for the 5 channels.
> 
> Is this the case of tribune getting lazy?? I never had a valid 21days of data??


This is because BBC1, BBC2, ITV11, C4 and Five, being terrestrial channels only provide 14 days of data that then dwindles to only 7 days before being renewed with another 7 day block.

Whereas the multi channel tv channels like Sky One, UK Gold etc have 21 days of data that is updated with another day every day by Tribune apart from on one day of the week (Monday?) when Tribune's staff presumably take the day off and there is no data update.

Your perception of about 10 days is the average of between 7 and 14 days for the five main terrestrial channels.


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Your perception of about 10 days is the average of between 7 and 14 days for the five main terrestrial channels.


That would explain it very well, sometimes I can get aay with nearly 2 weeks, other times just over a week.

I only use it to watch eastenders before I go to bed, hate the thing being on 24/7 for that...

Tempted to use a timer...

Also re the data, I suppose I could forget about dialing in and manually record eastenders, not often they have a 1 hr special, or change the times..


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

6022tivo said:


> Also re the data, I suppose I could forget about dialing in and manually record eastenders, not often they have a 1 hr special, or change the times..


Yes you could except that without the occasional dial in to Tivo the Tivo's clock drifts off in accuracy by several minutes over a number of months.....


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## PaulWilkinsUK (Mar 20, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> (a) The Tivo will keep trying to get data at different times till it finds one when the Tivo is on. Given that Tivo has 21 days data ahead this is unlikely to be an issue and it will soon find a time it can make a call, even if it misses a call on the odd day now and again.
> 
> (b) If this is still an issue then the scripts that have been written by Colin Younger and others to ensure Tivo's daily call always takes place at a set time of day when the power is on(although this assumes a network card of course and some willingness to dabble with Unix text editors and FTP and so on). off option but I am sure there are plenty of people for whom this would work.


I stand corrected (said the man in the orthopedic shoes)


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## cleudo (Apr 7, 2002)

Yes - Daily call - I was just going to force it once or twice a week but a hack would be useful. certainly don't want it to be housekeeping on the powerdown.

I figured that modern drives autopark on powerdown, so don't see any problems there.

Power supply - possibility - but I've got a spare in the garage should that happen (or would have been able to buy a new one off ebay with my leccy savings if I hadn't...).

These timers are so cheap that I've now stuck on one the supply to my router and hubs - another 20W saved. Scary how all these devices add up when left on all the time.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> the longer life of low energy light bulbs situation particularly disapproves the idea that regular hot to cold cycles in conjunction with the use of sophisticated electronic circuitry means shorter product life.


What are you on about?

You'd have to compare long life bulbs under normal usage to long life bulbs continuously on to determine that, not compare long life bulbs to tungsten bulbs.

Apples and Oranges.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

If you want Tivo I think you have to live with it's power consumption.

A new Sky+ box as an alternate will eat about 25watts in standby and 35watts when the hard drive is running.

Less features, less electricity 

Careful of any desktop PC's you have left in standby...
These can eat up to 20watts just waiting for you to press the power button.

New computer PSU meeting American Energy Star 4 have a upper limit of 2 watts.

Automan.


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## cleudo (Apr 7, 2002)

Automan said:


> If you want Tivo I think you have to live with it's power consumption.


The point of my post was you *dont* have to live with it's power consumption - by taking some simple steps, you can limit the amount of energy that it needlessly uses.



> A new Sky+ box as an alternate will eat about 25watts in standby and 35watts when the hard drive is running.


Which is pretty disgraceful really when you think about it, given that Sky+ is so much newer...



> Less features, less electricity


Should NOT be the case.



> Careful of any desktop PC's you have left in standby...
> These can eat up to 20watts just waiting for you to press the power button.


Absolutely true - it's a case of penny-wise, pound foolish to buy a cheap 'value' power supply for a pc for a tenner, when a forty quid unit will pay for itself inside a year.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Also if your Tivo want's to record an item on in the hours it is off you will miss that program 

Another also is to beware of digital power socket time switches.
These with anything other than a resistive load can suffer electronic nervous breakdowns resetting them all to zeroes or just locking up when they turn off the load.

Not an issue with the good old electromechanical ones but they are harder to set and can make a noise.

Automan.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Automan said:


> Also if your Tivo want's to record an item on in the hours it is off you will miss that program .


If you want to be warned of that in the GUI, you could setup a repeating daily manual recording for the hours it's turned off.

Tivo will never record that obviously, but it will clear that section of the schecdule in the todo list,
and warn you when setting recordings.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Automan said:


> Another also is to beware of digital power socket time switches.
> 
> These with anything other than a resistive load can suffer electronic nervous breakdowns resetting them all to zeroes or just locking up when they turn off the load.


Halfords were and perhaps still are selling a Masterplug 7 day digital timer for £5 that is fully compatible with devices like low energy lightbulbs and set top boxes that come on in such a way as to destroy the electronics of inferior digital timers that can still cope with oridinary incandescent electric lights.

I have three of these controlling my television, Tivo, Sky and Freeview boxes and my router and they have all been running for a couple of years shutting on and off once a day without issue. They are however not the best at keeping absolutely accurate time and gain up to 30 seconds or so a month in some cases.

On checking Halfords still stock them and the price has not changed. Eveyone else wants around £15 for digital timer that can handle STBs and fluorescent lamps.

See http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/...ryId_76869_crumb_33958_parentcategoryrn_76869


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

You might also want to look at using a 2.5" drive if you want to reduce power consumption:

Samsung 3.5" drive ~10W 
Samsung 2.5" drive ~3W

[edit] I just had a play with the maplin power meter and my testing tivo:

Single drive 160GB tivo: 25W total
Tivo without a drive connected 17W
The VM cable STB uses 22W 
The tivo cable IR convertor uses 4W


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> You might also want to look at using a 2.5" drive if you want to reduce power consumption:
> 
> Samsung 3.5" drive ~10W
> Samsung 2.5" drive ~3W


My Maplin power monitor suggests my Tivo with 2 x 250Gb Samsung drives and Cachecard and 512MB of RAM on board uses a constant 39W.

I don't know what other power use figures anyone else who has one of these power monitors may report with other hard drive configurations.


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## cleudo (Apr 7, 2002)

mikerr said:


> You might also want to look at using a 2.5" drive if you want to reduce power consumption:
> 
> Samsung 3.5" drive ~10W
> Samsung 2.5" drive ~3W


Fair difference - hadn't thought about 2.5" drives. I suppose the only downside is the size limit and the initial cost.



> Single drive 160GB tivo: 25W total
> Tivo without a drive connected 17W
> The VM cable STB uses 22W
> The tivo cable IR convertor uses 4W


I haven't looked at all my individual bits yet - I just measured the cable feeding everything else (which to be fair, includes my projector on standby, my amp on standby, 2.1 speakers on the lcd tv, and an RGB-svid converter).


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

cleudo said:


> I haven't looked at all my individual bits yet - I just measured the cable feeding everything else (which to be fair, includes my projector on standby, my amp on standby, 2.1 speakers on the lcd tv, and an RGB-svid converter).


It would appear the Cachecard and 512MB of RAM may draw about 5W to 6W then based on the earlier figures of power consumption by a Tivo with no hard drives and then with a 160Gb hard drive.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

The question is -- does the TiVo use more power when it's full than empty?


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## BrianHughes (Jan 21, 2001)

blindlemon said:


> The question is -- does the TiVo use more power when it's full than empty?


When you say "full" - do you mean when most of the bits on the hard disks are ones rather than zeros? And does it weigh more?


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

mikerr said:


> Single drive 160GB tivo: 25W total
> Tivo without a drive connected 17W


The above was a maxtor 160GB drive.
Replacing it with a single samsung HD400LD increases the total tivo usage to 30W !
The HD400LD is a 3 platter drive, the 160GB maxtor a single platter drive... but that's still a large difference IMO.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> The above was a maxtor 160GB drive.
> Replacing it with a single samsung HD400LD increases the total tivo usage to 30W !
> 
> The HD400LD is a 3 platter drive, the 160GB maxtor a single platter drive... but that's still a large difference IMO.


If 17W is the consumption of a system with no hard drive and my Tivo with 2 x 250Gb hard drives uses 39W then it appears each 2 platter Samsung HA250JC 250Gb drive uses 11W, assuming that the extra power consumption of the Cachecard and 512MB of RAM is in fact perhaps negigible.

I wonder how much power consumption I would save by using a single 1TB Western Digital Green Power drive while doubling my total hard drive capacity........


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Heh, tivo + WD 1TB drive + sata convertor.... 24W  

The maplin meter is only accurate to +/- 1W , but I've just repeated my above tests, particularly the surprising samsung one with 2 seperate HD400LD drives with the same results.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> Heh, tivo + WD 1TB drive + sata convertor.... 24W


0.015KW x 24 x 365 = 131.4KW per annum compared to my current 39W Tivo consumption.

131.4KW x 10p per hour after latest price rises = £13.14 per annum.

As they say at Tesco - Every Little Helps..............................


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Automan said:


> ... beware of digital power socket time switches.
> These with anything other than a resistive load can suffer electronic nervous breakdowns resetting them all to zeroes or just locking up when they turn off the load.


I use radio-controlled time switches from B&Q. They keep totally-accurate time, and handle BST automatically. Not that I would ever use one with my TiVo.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

iankb said:


> I use radio-controlled time switches from B&Q. They keep totally-accurate time, and handle BST automatically. Not that I would ever use one with my TiVo.


I considered those but they suffer from the massive design defect that when the batteries they rely on (due to high current drain by the wireless time updater facility) run out the timeswitch then remains permanently in the off condition until the battery is renewed.

Whereas my Masterplug digital time switch is powered primarily from the mains and has an onboard capacitor (that never needs renewing) that powers the clock for several days in the event of a power cut.

I considered the latter timeswitch more robust against failure, even though I do have to update the time manually at least a couple of times a year.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> 0.015KW x 24 x 365 = 131.4KW per annum


To be a pedant, the unit is kWh, not kW.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

Power strips with management interfaces exist. You could write a script on the tivo so that it runs "sync, _power down command_" to save it from errors then have a power up script on a PC that turns it back on.


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## Rob Nespor Bellis (Feb 17, 2001)

iankb said:


> I use radio-controlled time switches from B&Q. They keep totally-accurate time, and handle BST automatically. Not that I would ever use one with my TiVo.


Ian, do you have a product name for these? I did a few searches on their website ( and google ) but turned up nothing.

Rgds,

R.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Rob Nespor Bellis said:


> Ian, do you have a product name for these? I did a few searches on their website ( and google ) but turned up nothing.


They were in B&Q over 2 years ago when I saw them. They weren't there when I last looked for electronic time switches in B&Q a couple of months back.

A google search does not seem to turn up any alternative suppliers.

Still of course you won't be reading my replies. Can someone else please PM the grumpy Mr Bellis with this information.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

I noticed that they aren't on the website, but I got mine in-store over a year ago. They were just mixed in with the normal switches, so they weren't that obvious. I use mine as a wake-up alarm, together with a mains doorbell - I tend to sleep through most alarms.


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