TiVo power saver

[mln01]

I have 5 TiVos currently installed at my house, but only 2 of them get regular use. When I walk by the TiVos I don't use too often and hear them humming I cringe slightly about the electricity I am wasting. With each TiVo pulling about 35W I'm using about 175W just to run the TiVos 24/7. If one of my sons left on the lights in a room using that much electricity I would make him turn them off.

That got me to wondering why TiVos can't be set go into a low-power standby, suspend-to-RAM mode like a PC, and then wake up only when it is time for a scheduled recording or when a user actually wants to watch a program.

The Standby mode currently available lets the cable signal to your TV bypass the TiVo, but the TiVo hard drive keeps running.

Could this be incorporated into an upcoming TiVo service release? Would the current hardware support this feature?

[Mikeguy]

People will say that the TIVO is an always-on machine so that it can capture content all the time (e.g. for TIVO Suggestions). But I agree with you--if one does not really care about that feature, why not have the ability to shut the TIVO down for periods of time such as overnight or when one is away and does not want to record shows? And this does not even get into the issue of the TIVO waking up to record at a certain time--just a "basic" timer function that I would think could be added easily enough. Good (and enviro. friendly) idea.

[classicsat]

The Tivo hardware, as designed, does not support such a Standby mode. At best they could put some hardware into a low power mode, such as spinning down the HDD.