The Largest Single Electricity Drain In American Homes Is...

[DominionSeraph]

Based on others, who have used the kill-a-watt..

"Power Off": 30 watts
Watching TV: 31 watts
Recording TV: 31 watts
Playing back a recorded program: 31 watts

My SA Explorer 8300HD is significantly warmer when on.
Guesstimating by the heat, I'd say 30W off and 50W while recording.

 

[Fenixgoon]

i need to get a kill-a-watt to find out how much my computer draws. my UPS beeps at me and im fairly certain it's rated to 425W, so im kinda surprised at that.

 

[SparkyJJO]

i need to get a kill-a-watt to find out how much my computer draws. my UPS beeps at me and im fairly certain it's rated to 425W, so im kinda surprised at that.

UPS could beep at you if the battery is worn out as well. I have an APC 1000VA unit that screams at me with even a 100W load because the batteries are pretty well shot.

 

[FelixDeCat]

I have DirectTV and the box looks off to me.

 

[Svnla]

If you are in the South, the largest sucker of electricity in the summer is the AC, bar none.

I just received the electricity bill for this month and it was 2x the amount of last month because of the heatwave for the last few weeks (100 + F).

No cable box/DVR/fancy nancy stuffs for me, rabit ear FTW, yo 🙂

 

[busydude]

If you are in the South, the largest sucker of electricity in the summer is the AC, bar none.

But you are putting it good use unlike the cable box.. which is draining almost the same amount of electricity even when not in use.

 

[paperfist]

Side question: How much power is required to keep DRAM continuously refreshed? We're talking about a bunch of tiny capacitors and transistors, so I'm thinking it's not going to be a whole lot.
Keep stuff in RAM, spin down the hard drive, and save power. If an input is triggered (user input or a timer), then go to a full readiness mode.

Ever see the size of a cable box? They aren't exactly springing for the good hardware to put inside.

Gigabyte use to have a DRAM board on a card you could use as a harddrive, it was backed up by a AA battery if I recall.

Anyway nice to know cable companies bone us in more ways then one.

 

[Imp]

I have a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4250. Last I checked, it runs 15W "on" and 14W "off"...

The grill on top is always warm too.

Not as bad as my receiver though. It runs 35W whether anything's playing or not. It turns off to 1W though.

 

[Muse]

Cable box, I don't need no stinking cable box. Comcast sends me a letter every few days offering cable/internet/phone for $29 each/month for six months. WTF.

 

[dennilfloss]

My digital SD cable box puts off a lot of heat. If I touch the connector to the wall cable, I could burn my fingers after more than a few seconds.

 

[dennilfloss]

...upon reading his thread, I now know that many ATOTers think the box is off when the TV is off.

My cable company told me to keep it on. In fact, if it's off for a while, they notice and sometimes call me to ask if anything's wrong.

 

[Bryophyte]

My electric water heater and my two well pumps (1/2 and 1 horse) are my major power wasters. Well, and my hot-tub.

 

[CZroe]

you're surprised?

they're on 24-7

even when you "power" them off, they're still on.

i don't even need to read the article to know this

Uhh... so is a refrigerator, AC, or a hot water heater.

What the hell are these things drawing, 100W while not in use?

I thought there was some kind of legislated push to have lower standby power consumption on this kind of device? A lot of devices like this spend a majority of their time sitting around waiting for inputs. Standby power use can't be that difficult to minimize. My air conditioner draws so little power when it's off that my cheap little multimeter can't even detect the current draw on the 120V side, and its circuitry continuously runs an internal oscillator, and the microcontroller always has to be ready to accept inputs from the buttons, the remote, or from its own timer interrupt.




Options:
- Flash memory is dirt-cheap, at least for small amounts of it. I can't imagine that these settings files would require very much space, especially with a bit of basic compression.
- Supercapacitor for memory retention. These aren't terribly expensive either.

...

Uhh, many have HDDs for DVR functions and that would be an obvious place to store settings when powered off.

Just tested that. It appears you are correct, sir! I learned something today, thanks to you, which makes this a good day. :thumbsup:

I thought that was half the point of switch-digital IPTV. Heck, they could have one recording of House M.D. at the head office for every DVR customer who set theirs to record it and it would save massive amounts of storage resources since it only streams what you are watching at any given moment.

 

[CZroe]

Ever see the size of a cable box? They aren't exactly springing for the good hardware to put inside.

Gigabyte use to have a DRAM board on a card you could use as a harddrive, it was backed up by a AA battery if I recall.

Anyway nice to know cable companies bone us in more ways then one.

Lot's of companies had those, like Platypus Technologies. Before software RAID5 controllers took off, pretty much any decent RAID card had a DRAM slot or two and a backup battery to hold the cache contents if power were killed to the HDDs or an HDD failed.

 

[Ichinisan]

My cable company told me to keep it on. In fact, if it's off for a while, they notice and sometimes call me to ask if anything's wrong.

If you completely kill the AC power source, the box's authorization may expire. I'm saying that most people turn off their TVs and leave the box on at all times. There's simply no reason to do that.

 

[lokiju]

I'll have to put my kill-a-watt on my dish network DVR and see...


Sent from my iPhone 4 using Tapatalk

 

[guyver01]

Uhh... so is a refrigerator, AC, or a hot water heater.

you have a power button on your refrigerator and hot water heater???

 

[Exterous]

I dunno. As for fridges, the article claims:

One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.

Hmmm...I wonder what the average fridge size/style is? We are shopping for one and most seem to be in the 24+ cubic foot size

They also did it with a top freezer which doesn't have all the gizmos people want on fridges today

 

[Svnla]

But you are putting it good use unlike the cable box.. which is draining almost the same amount of electricity even when not in use.

Are you sure the cable box is using almost the same amount of electricity as the home AC?

In my "unsciencitific" experience, I turn on everything and I mean everything in the house (except the home AC) and the electricity meter did not turn as fast as when I turn off everything and turn on the home AC.

 

[busydude]

Are you sure the cable box is using almost the same amount of electricity as the home AC?

LOL no.

I meant the Cable box is draining the same electricity regardless of being used or not. Not comparing that with anything else.

 

[rudder]

I have to leave my directv receiver plugged in... otherwise it takes 5-8 minutes to turn on. Surely developers can figure someway to cache programming information.

 

[Wyndru]

Hmm.. hard to believe.

I have the exact cable box pictured in the article. POS Scientific Atlanta.

I do too, and all day long you can hear the hard drive spinning up, even when there is no recording occurring and the box is turned off. It is always very hot too.

 

[ComputerWizKid]

Hmm.. hard to believe.

I have the exact cable box pictured in the article. POS Scientific Atlanta.

I too have the POS Scientific Atlanta 8300HDC box
I don't think it the hard drive that gets so hot (Although it adds to the heat). On mine (Well Charter Communications as I lease it:\) the majority of the heat is on the left side where the power supply board is located) I wish I could get a Cisco/Scientific Atlanta 8550/8540HDC as I really like the looks of that box
Anyway any Cable/Satellite Co provided equipment is a POS (I really wish they gave us the consumer a choice of equipment as after all they are used by the consumer and not them)

 

[Alienwho]

This thread has motivated me to buy the killawatt on amazon for $17. Thanks.

By the way I don't have any cable boxes, I use an HTCP with OTA programming, HD Homerun and Windows Media Center. Goes to sleep when not in use, boots up and can have TV programming from sleep mode in about 10 seconds. Gets TV programming information instantly. I will never have cable or satellite. In fact I can't stand using directv or dish at my relatives houses. It's SO SLOW. Changing channels, downloading program information, setting up stuff to be recorded. Can't stand using that stuff anymore.

 

[blinblue]

TVs use a lot of power when they are "off"
On my westinghouse 42" LCD in the default "off" mode (aka, standby) it uses 30 watts continually, with the advantage of nearly instant on. Change the setting so that it actually turns off and it uses basically no energy and takes 15 seconds to turn on.

Thankfully no cable here, so don't have to deal with that. I can't stand inefficient devices.