# Quietest UPS for TiVo ?



## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Hi,

My TiVo UPS died and I'm looking for a replacement. I was never happy with the one I had (made by Hama in Germany).

The Mustek PowerMust USB 1400 that I use for my PC puts me off the Mustek brand due to the noise level. It has a constantly running fan and is almost as loud as a quiet PC. I don't mind it making that much noise when there's power loss and/or when my PC (which is louder than it) is on. But when my PC is off, I'd like to leave the UPS switched on powering the router/DSL modem/cordless phone etc but I can't because it makes too much noise. So I have a separate UPS for the router/modem/phone.

The UPS I'm using for my router/modem/phone now is an APC Back-Ups 300VA (180W). It's quiet but it's never been up to the job. It needs more power. Plus it's 6 years old.

So I'm looking for two UPS'es, both of which I want to be SILENT. One for modem/phone/router and one for TiVo/Sky.

I've heard that the APC SmartUPS doesn't turn on it's fan unless it's running on batteries but they're hideously expensive.

What recommendations do people here have? I'm looking for around 650VA (400W) for each of them. I think Tivo+sky is < 100W but I want to have about an hour's worth of juice in a powercut. For the phone/modem/router it's probably a similar power usage.

edit: oops, meant to put this in the chit-chat forum, can't delete it.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Just change the title to "Quietest UPS for TiVo" and you'll be fine 

I have a Belkin Sliver (something or other) that's silent and seems OK, but it's not really powerful enough as it only powers my 2x TiVos + 2x STBs for around 20 minutes. I keep meaning to upgrade it but never seem to get around to it....


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

blindlemon said:


> Just change the title to "Quietest UPS for TiVo" and you'll be fine


Good idea  


blindlemon said:


> I have a Belkin Sliver (something or other) that's silent and seems OK, but it's not really powerful enough as it only powers my 2x TiVos + 2x STBs for around 20 minutes. I keep meaning to upgrade it but never seem to get around to it....


That sounds like it maybe close to what I'm looking for. 1 TiVo and 1 STB might be close to 40 minutes. Another 50% on that would be great. Do you remember what it's rated at?

Assuming sliver is a typo for silver, it's probably one of these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/202-5356754-7219057


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

350VA or 500VA I think, but don't quote me on that.


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## BrianHughes (Jan 21, 2001)

SVP www.svp.co.uk are doing these for £19.99: Masterplug 450VA UPS Power Protection Unit They're completely silent (except when beeping while on battery).

I've just bought 6 of them to run various bits of comms equipment. At that price you could give one each to sky and Tivo.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

I use a Belkin Gold 625VA, which gives me at least an hour for a TiVo and a digibox. Unlike the Silver series, these also handle brownouts. No fans, or noise that I can hear.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

iankb said:


> I use a Belkin Gold 625VA, which gives me at least an hour for a TiVo and a digibox. Unlike the Silver series, these also handle brownouts. No fans, or noise that I can hear.


That sounds perfect. I've seen them at amazon.de for only 65 quid too  If BrianHughes hadn't posted his message I'd have ordered two right now.

EDIT: Just ordered two of these from Amazon :up: :up: :up:


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

BrianHughes said:


> SVP www.svp.co.uk are doing these for £19.99: Masterplug 450VA UPS Power Protection Unit They're completely silent (except when beeping while on battery).
> 
> I've just bought 6 of them to run various bits of comms equipment. At that price you could give one each to sky and Tivo.


That's amazing value. I'm tempted to buy half a dozen myself at that price. Problem for me is getting them to Germany. They're probably as expensive to post as they are to buy 

EDIT: With the cost of shipping to Germany, and the number of them I'd have to buy, and being wary of buying something too cheap (after my experience with the similarly priced "Hama" model), I decided to go with the Belkin's.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

The Mastercare price is good and I have one in the hallway feeding a phone and my FritzBoxFON

When 1st launched they said it had a Toroidal transformer inside.

That of course is not the case.

Also check their battery run time for if they have been in storage for a long time their battery packs may have suffered irreversible damage and only yield very short run times.

Automan.


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## frogster (Jan 4, 2006)

b166er said:


> EDIT: With the cost of shipping to Germany,


SVP ship via courrier to mainland Europe for a set £8.50 which is one of the cheapest prices I know of for UK companies. I get all my disks from them.


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## GarySargent (Oct 27, 2000)

eBuyer are selling the same item for £15 http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?product_uid=105850


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Cool 
Just ordered four 

EDIT:
BTW Amazon are selling 10 packs of Panasonic DVD-RAM media for under £11.00 - Ordered six packs with free delivery 

Automan.


GarySargent said:


> eBuyer are selling the same item for £15 http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?product_uid=105850


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## geekspeak (Oct 1, 2002)

Automan said:


> Cool
> Just ordered four


So anyone received their masterplug from ebuyer or svp yet? Any comments? I have the belkin gold 625 but if the masterplugs are any good I may get a couple at this price for other applications!

P.S. (I will say this very quietly so as not to annoy anyone  ) but ebuyer have knocked off another pound - 13.99 inc VAT !


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

No news yet 
However my DVD-RAM media is on its way

Automan.


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## BrianHughes (Jan 21, 2001)

geekspeak said:


> P.S. (I will say this very quietly so as not to annoy anyone  ) but ebuyer have knocked off another pound - 13.99 inc VAT !


Oh Rats! - However I bought my 6 when SVP were offering shipping for 1p - even to N. Ireland! EBuyer always stick the arm in and I pay £20 extra minimum for delivery. They'd have charged me a fortune for these.

They certainly seem to work well. I keep yanking the plugs out to test them - (I'm really annoying to work with  ) and everything just carries on. We haven't had any real power cuts or surges yet so here's hoping.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

iankb said:


> I use a Belkin Gold 625VA, which gives me at least an hour for a TiVo and a digibox. Unlike the Silver series, these also handle brownouts. No fans, or noise that I can hear.


I got my new Belkin Gold 625's yesterday. I gave one a 24 hour charge and just did a test with my TiVo (with single Samsung 250GB drive) and Grundig 2000 Sky STB connected. It managed 52 minutes before switching off. That'll do me just fine. The 24 hour charge may not have even achieved a 100% charge, but knowing I've got a good solid 45mins plus is excellent.

I'd be interested to see how long these masterplug things last. Although I don't want one for my TiVo, I might have other uses for them. Anyone willing to do a test?


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## DeadKenny (Nov 9, 2002)

Didn't realise UPS's make any noise , at least not unless it's a big rack mount kit with fans .

Besides that though, in the computer industry generally APC are the most recommended for a UPS. They're considered the most reliable and long lasting batteries, with good support. Some of the cheap brands have poor quality batteries (some even are rumoured to have batteries explode or leak). Most people I've spoken to for advice about UPS have said to pay the extra and get APC.

For the home, I can strongly recommend the Cyberfort series which is more like a powerstrip than the bulky car battery look of other models and yet still has the controls to shut down a PC via USB (even on linux using apcupsd).

The big bonus is it takes regular 3-pin plugs (for the UK models).

Got mine from ebuyer and works great, though I use it for my server not TiVo.

Only thing is the duration is short, but then it depends how much power your gadgets draw. Mine is quoted at 7 minutes, but the monitor app on my server says it's more like 20 mins for the amount of power I'm drawing. For a TiVo I guess it will depend on whether you want it to continue recording or just safely shut down, and also how long a typical power cut is. Chances are a powercut will be during a storm and that will have knocked out Sky anyway . Though I find I only get brief cuts or brown outs, so a short time is fine.

A TiVo + digibox will likely be low power though so you could probably get a decent amount of time out of it. I wouldn't run your telly off it though!

The bigger APC UPS are widely used and will last longer but they get very expensive if you want them to run for an hour or more (e.g. the APC Smart UPS range).


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

There are three types of UPS and, in increasing order of cost, they use their battery power during ...
Blackouts (zero voltages),
Blackouts and brownouts (out-of-range voltages), and
All the time
The latter needs considerably more battery capacity, is much more expensive, are heavy and bulky, provides clean power, and may give out enough heat to require a fan.

Consumer versions nearly always fall into the first two categories (e.g. Belkin Silver (1), and Belkin Gold (2) ), while companies such as APC also do commercial versions for the third category.

*Thought for the Day ...*

Since the internals of a UPS are not much more than a battery charger, a battery, and an inverter, and 240V inverters that run off a car battery are now relatively cheap, I do wonder whether one could build a basic UPS of category 3 out of cheap and high-capacity car accessories. It might not have the USB interface to shut down a computer gracefully, but it could handle the TiVo with a clean supply, and quite a bit more. By adding a cheap low-capacity UPS on the output of the inverter, you can even provide an additional buffer and the control interface to shut down your computer.

Any electronic engineers out there who can say 1) whether it should be possible, 2) what sort of output capacity could one get, and 3) whether it would be cheaper to buy the real thing.

I'm also ignoring the visual impact at the moment.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Yes my living room kit is powered by a "Double Conversion" (on all the time UPS).

All of the time it turns the mains into 48volts DC. This is then connected to the lead acid batteries which are kept trickle charged.

The 48volts DC then feeds a pure sinewave inverter which gives out exactly 230v AC 50Hz

Drawbacks
1. Cost
2. Power consumption
3. Noise

Positives
1. No glitch in supply when mains fails
2. Pure and perfect output with no chance of a voltage surge

It does have fun features however....
1. You can change the output voltage
2. You can output 50 or 60Hz
3. Has economy mode so can run in bypass and inverters only run during power cut.
4. Batteries can be replace while unit is on load
5. Automatic inverter bypass mode should an internal fault occur.

You will find that a lot of these budget UPS's give out a "modified sinewave" (its sort or square).

To check the quality of the sinewave output of a UPS try running a AC table fan and see how much noise the motor makes on the less than perfect sinewave.

However most computer devices do not mind the modified sinewave as for like my main UPS the first thing the do is convert the mains into DC for the switch mode power supply.

BTW my four additional Mastercare UPS's are due for delivery on Monday which were ordered from ebuyer.

Automan.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

DeadKenny said:


> Didn't realise UPS's make any noise


The Always-on ones that Ian and Automan mention in their posts between yours and this one, can be noisy. That's the type I bought about a year ago for my main PC setup and it makes about as much noise as a quiet PC. There was nothing written in the blurb in their user guide PDF and nothing in the amazon reviews so it was a total surprise when I got it. That's why this time when I wanted a new UPS for my TiVo I thought I'd check in here with people to see which ones are quiet. I'd already been looking on Amazon at the Belkin Gold 625VA but it wasn't until Ian said that's what he has and it doesn't run the fan all the time that I knew I could confidently buy it and know that it would be quiet.

FYI - here's my main UPS that I definitely wouldn't buy again, but purely on noise grounds. It's a Mustek PowerMust USB 1400VA http://www.mustek.de/eng_/html/produkte/ups1400usb.htm


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

I got my 4 x Masterplug UPS units today.
Checked one of the units battery pack which was still over 12 volts so batteries should be okay.

On the end of the box is the code 982/8843 which looks just like an Argos stock code.

My original one came from Argos but I don't have an old copy of their catalogue.

Units are good value for money and come with 4 way 13 amp block which plugs into one of the UPS's outputs.
1 x male female kettle type lead (UPS to PC power)
1 x Serial cable & CD (UPS shutdown)
1 x US style phone lead with UK adapters

No mains input lead is provided - Ideal being you use the one that came with the computer you now wish to protect.

On the front and in the manual it still talks about a toroidal transformer - from what I recall the unit has a standard shape transformer inside.

Automan.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Well I left one Masterplug UPS feeding my music server / home automation PC I found it off this morning.

It must have switched off between 06:45 and 07:15 for it had turned on the lights in my bedroom.

Nothing in the event logs to say why and the lastest bill gates patches were applied the night before.

I have tried pulling the mains lead and the UPS does seem to work but this is the first time ever this PC has turned itself off and thus I susoect the UPS.

Another one I tried to setup last night to feed my bedside hifi etc failed completely with the unit switching on & off.

i then checked its battery that was only giving out 10.52 volts

Tried charging it on an external sealed acid battery charger but no joy.

I suspect on of the cells has failed.

I have a nasty feeling these UPS's have been sitting in a warehouse for an excessive period and the batteries are now nearing life end.

I have ordered this one a new lead acid battery (well actually I ordered five - cheaper).

The battery fitted is a Ritar RT1250 (12V 5.0AH / 20HR) but from the dimensions the current battery for that size is 7.0AH

From what I can see the Shenzhen Ritar Power Co Ltd was formed in 2002 and no longer has a website.

Automan.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

I was in error 
The Masterplug UPS does have a toroidal transformer in it.
Mounted at the top of the unit and about 2.5" in diameter.

Unit has a 40 Amp fuse on the 12volt circuit!

Automan.


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## BrianHughes (Jan 21, 2001)

It has to be 40A or so for a 450VA unit (40 x 12 = 480).


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## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

Automan said:


> I have a nasty feeling these UPS's have been sitting in a warehouse for an excessive period and the batteries are now nearing life end.


These are now being listed as *USED* on the *Ebuyer beta site*, but not on *the original site*.

Do Ebuyer have two separate stocks of this item, or, more to the point, do we trust them to keep them separate?

Final verdict, Automan? Are these worth buying?


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

I have been away from home for a few days (and still am) so not sure how they are working.

I suspect they may hav been Argos (or other stores) unsold returns.

The snag with all devices powered by lead-acid batteries is their batteries have a limited life e.g. 3/4yrs but also self discharge over time (6/12mths for modern cells).

After this the cells start to sulphate which reduces the working surface of the cell and thus its ability to hold a charge.

When buying any device powered by Lead Acid batteries try and confirm they have not been in storage too long.

APC UPS's alway have a tested report label attached which includes date of test.

Halford sell booster chargers / compressors / inverters. These have their last charged date on the outside of the box.

See http://www.batterystuff.com/tutorial_battery.html for a general guide into caring for your lead acid batteries.

Also beware of some cheaper camping lamps with lead-acid batteries in.
These do not have regulated charging circuits and if left plugged into the mains all the time will boil the batteries dry (which also gives off excess hydrogen gas - dangerous).

Automan.


ericd121 said:


> These are now being listed as *USED* on the *Ebuyer beta site*, but not on *the original site*.
> 
> Do Ebuyer have two separate stocks of this item, or, more to the point, do we trust them to keep them separate?
> 
> Final verdict, Automan? Are these worth buying?


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

I have performed a basic runtime test on one of my Masterplug UPS's

The load was an ordinary 60watt lamp

On Provided battery
23 mins to low batt alarm
26 mins to total shutdown

With new Yuasa NP7-12 battery
48 mins to low battery alarm
51 mins to total shutdown

Installed battery has a new capacity of 5.0ah
The Yuasa has a new capacity of 7.0ah

Ignoring all losses a 60watt lamp should draw a 5amp load at 12 volts (w/v=i)

It can be seen however that the new battery with a 2ah greater capacity had twice the run time of the old partialy sulphated battery provided in the unit/s.

Note.
NP7-12L batteries would suit unit better as has full size connections blades rather than dual .187 /.25" ones.

Automan.


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## chimaera (Nov 13, 2000)

The APC ES range have a quoted noise level of 45 dBA, but what does that mean exactly? I don't think they have a fan, so is that just a low level hum or something? They have a couple of new models coming soon, I was looking at maybe getting a couple of these for my AV and NAS/server/PC requirements:

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BE700-UK


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