APC BX1500 from Office Depot

[aaronwt]

Office Depot has a good sale on the APC BX1500 UPS for anyone. It goes well with the S3. They have them for $99. Circuit City usually has them for $200.
And if you really want longer protection you can get the external battery to connect to it from Amazon for only $127. I have three BX1500 units(including the one I bought today) and five BX1500 units with the external battery pack. I have everything connected to them, my HDTVs, SVS subwoofer, Denon 3806 receiver and of course all my TiVos and PCs.

[CraigHB]

Yea, I have UPS on all my consumer electronics. It's really nice not to have power blips interrupt operation on any of your devices. I do need a bigger one for my entertainment center. I only get about 15 minutes of operation off my Back-UPS 600. I may have to look into that deal.

My home office has a Smart-UPS 1000 with an extra battery pack. It will run one computer for about 4 hours. I love that unit. Although it was pretty expensive, I'm glad I have it.

[kucharsk]

I just wish TiVo would support something like apcupsd out of the box.

Basically, it's a driver (that runs on Linux) that communicates with the UPS via its USB port and will shut down a Linux system when the battery is about to give out rather than just drop power.

Since the TiVo is a Linux box, it would be cool if TiVo added the ability to communicate with a UPS behind the scenes to prevent possible drive corruption.

[CharlesH]

But the TiVo currently doesn't have any way to shut it down manually, so why should they provide hooks for an automatic shutdown?

Hooking your TiVo to a UPS provides two main benefits:

1) Short power dropouts won't cause the TiVo to reboot.

2) Transient dips and spikes are filtered out, and when the UPS battery is drained, the power is cleanly turned off. Often when there is a power outage, there are all sorts of nasty transients at both the failure and the restoration. (E.g., car hits power pole, lines short out arcing all over the place).

[CraigHB]

I just wish TiVo would support something like apcupsd out of the box.It would be nice if the TiVo even had a shutdown. It just seems wrong to shut it down by pulling the power cord.

[CharlesH]

It would be nice if the TiVo even had a shutdown. It just seems wrong to shut it down by pulling the power cord.That's probably coming from thinking of it as a computer rather than an appliance :) . The file system used to store the video content is custom-designed to be powered off any any step without losing its integrity (it is NOT one of the standard Linux file systems). When it is booted up, the steps to do any required cleanup are well defined (and fast). Similar to how database systems deal with server crashes.

In fact, I have heard that even the "Restart" menu item is not a "clean" shutdown; it just does something like hitting the reset line to do a hard reboot.

[classicsat]

The shut down hardware would cost money. It is simply not there.

[CraigHB]

The shut down hardware would cost money. It is simply not there.
Nah, just a few lines of script and an image thats says something relevant. In fact, the lines are probably already there, there's just nothing to send "init 0". The only real work involved would be adding another option in the system menu that says, "Shutdown the TiVo." Honestly, I've never understood TiVo's aversion to reset buttons and power buttons. It's not like you never have to reboot the things or turn 'em off.

[aaronwt]

You don't. I don't unplug mine unless I'm changing a UPS or I need to do something with the hard drive. A reboot only occurs with a software update.

[kucharsk]

There's little point in having the S3 constantly scribble two feeds to the hard drive for the eighteen or so hours a day I'm not actively watching it.

If the TiVo should always be "on" then they should get rid of "standby" mode as all it really does is shut off the video output and the front panel; I was expecting it to stop recording and spin down the hard drive, too.

[aaronwt]

The DirecTv HR10-250 will stop writing to the hard drive if it's not on an OTA channel when put in standby. I wonder why the S3 couldn't do the same thing?

[rdrrepair]

I don't unplug mine unless I'm changing a UPS or I need to do something with the hard drive.Before I shut mine off and unplug it I make sure of two things.

1) I never pull the cord if the TiVo called in for programming guide less then 2 hours ago.

2) I never pull the plug if it says "Pending Restart" I'll force the restart and then wait 2 hours.

I've done it like that for years. I think it has something to do with me reading on the screen when first programing a TiVo (initial setup) not to unplug your TiVo during setup. Maybe I am wrong but that's just my thought process. :)

[classicsat]

Nah, just a few lines of script and an image thats says something relevant. In fact, the lines are probably already there, there's just nothing to send "init 0". The only real work involved would be adding another option in the system menu that says, "Shutdown the TiVo." Honestly, I've never understood TiVo's aversion to reset buttons and power buttons. It's not like you never have to reboot the things or turn 'em off.
Software code cannot tell hardware that doesn't exist to do anything.

[CraigHB]

It's not hardware. Only the reset function is hardware based. Shutdown is a software state, not a hardware state. If you're talking APM, that's true. But the software does not *have* to power-off the hardware to do a shutdown. If the hardware is powered down manually, it's still a shutdown and achieves the same result. This was the case for personal computers before the ATX specification.

[RFEngineer]

Thanks for the heads-up on this. I don't usually have the time to scour all of the Sunday paper inserts to find the deals like this.

I just picked up three of these at the local OfficeDepot for about half what you can get them online (and the shipping on these is a killer.)

I live in a older neighborhood with many large, well-established trees and above-ground utilities in the upper-midwest. Any month that the power does NOT go off for about 30min to 4 hours is a good month.

One of these with the BP24 external extra battery will run a Tivo (S1) + Cablebox for several hours with no sweat.

[kjmcdonald]

It's not hardware. Only the reset function is hardware based. Shutdown is a software state, not a hardware state.

It's both.

The software has to cleanly prepare for the machine shutting off yes.

But for the software to actually be able to flip the switch itself requires hardware.
Hardware the Tivo doesn't have (probably because it increases cost.)

-Kyle

[kucharsk]

Correct, but a shutdown of the OS is all that's really needed to shut the machine down cleanly; for old Mac or Windows users it's the equivalent of the "You may now safely shut down your computer" message that you would see when shutting down older PCs that didn't have software power control.

[CraigHB]

My point stands, with minimal code development, a shutdown function could be added to the system menu. It would just be a manual power-off instead of the fully automated shutdown we're used to with personal computers. Of course, that implies a reset or power switch on the front panel which TiVo has some sort of aversion to. So, it will never happen.

[DeathRider]

My point stands, with minimal code development, a shutdown function could be added to the system menu. It would just be a manual power-off instead of the fully automated shutdown we're used to with personal computers. Of course, that implies a reset or power switch on the front panel which TiVo has some sort of aversion to. So, it will never happen.

Win95/PII days are here again...

No, actually, if there was a shutdown sequence that brought you to a "It is now safe to turn off your Tivo", at that point you could either pull the plug, or turn off the power strip...no switch necessary on the tivo itself or smart power supply.

[A J Ricaud]

Here's a $10 off coupon too:
http://cdn.www.officedepot.com/images/tiles/20070206wlrc-87695766.pdf

[MScottC]

There's little point in having the S3 constantly scribble two feeds to the hard drive for the eighteen or so hours a day I'm not actively watching it.

If the TiVo should always be "on" then they should get rid of "standby" mode as all it really does is shut off the video output and the front panel; I was expecting it to stop recording and spin down the hard drive, too.


Oh really??? I can't tell you the number of times in the last 8 years I've walked in 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes after the hour (or half hour), and seen something interesting on, and rewound into that 30 minute buffer. Its one of wonderful perks of TiVo. I would imagine if you polled TiVo users, that is one of the things a vast majority would NOT give up.

[aaronwt]

Special from 2/15 thru 2/17 in-store only.


http://officedepot.shoplocal.com/officedepot/default.aspx?action=storelocationzipentry&storeid=2478172&redirect=%2fofficedepot%2fdefault.aspx%3faction%3dbrowsestor elocation%26storeid%3d2478172
:eek: :eek:

Now there is a $50 rebate on top of the previous price!

[mattn2]

Thanks aaronwt,

I am off to buy one ... my main PC is complaining that its UPS battery is too old, and replacement is way more than $50.

(I already have one of these + battery pack running my TiVos + SAT multiswitch and love it!)

# Matt