V HD : virgin V+ HD box power consumption

[stockportdave]

When the V+ HD box is put into standby the power usage drops from about 28W to about 25W. Assuming you watch 6hrs a day and the box is on standby for 18hrs the standby consumption per year is 25w * 18hr *365days = 164.2 kW. At 11p per kW hour that's £18. Which is, of course, an extra £1.50 per month. (hope i got all that right!). If you sit in the tv room and the box is in standby you can hear the disk spin up and turn off quite often -say every 15mins. I don't know why it does this. I read on the virgin site that the box can be put in a low standby mode of 1mW but cannot find any info on how to do that. I suspect that in this mode the box will not record scheduled programs, which is a bummer really.

[cupcakes aka dd]

Mmm interesting. Wonder how much power the Tivo consumes being as it's running the drive continuosly. I bet my pennies are spilling through the floorboards. Mind you I'm in the process of replacing all my standard lights bulbs with LED's so that should compensate alot.

The real power consumption is with the likes of CRT TV's

[spiderplant]

Only the Samsung V+ can be put into low-power standby, but you are right it won't record in this mode so you're better off just turning off the power completely. From your figures I guess you have an SA V+ anyway.

The TiVo uses less power than either V+ because it's newer technology.

ps. Welcome to the forum!

[scrooge]

I turn my SA V+ off overnight unless I'm going to be recording something.

One annoying bug is that the (noisy) hard drive will NEVER spin down if you boot it up and leave it in standby.

Once it's booted I have to take it out of standby for a minute or so then put it into standby and the the drive will then eventually spin down.

When in standby it usually spins up and down again roughly at 17 minutes past the hour for me.