[MikeekiM]

I was dinking around with my TiVo settings this morning and was reminded of TiVo's energy savings setting.

I currently have it set to "manual" which keeps my TiVo on 24/7/365 unless I manually put it into standby.

Is there any real/meaningful benefit to using the High, Medium or Low settings?

I wasn't planning on a poll, but what the heck...vote if you know your setting, or ignore it... Just curious what setting you are using, and some discussion on whether there is a benefit at all.

 

[lhvetinari]

Somewhere around here there's a guy who took measurements with a Kill-a-watt for his base-model Roamio. The difference wasn't too spectacular, especially considering the weird litany of issues that boxes in standby can cause when they don't wake properly.

Personally, I have mine split - my frontroom Bolt (where my Minis connect and where most recording happens) is set to Low. My bedroom Roamio which is only used a bit in the morning and late evening (and records some primetime bits) is set to High since it's not in use all day.

 

[snerd]

Is there any real/meaningful benefit to using the High, Medium or Low settings?

This isn't something that is subject to opinion, since it is measurable.

My Roamio Plus consumes 20.4W when fully awake, but "only" 15.8W when in standby. So, there is a measurable benefit since the power draw is reduced by about 23%, amounting to less than $5/year at the rate I pay for electrons. This $5/year saving would require the Roamio to be in standby 24/7. Note that remote access to recordings remains active while a TiVo is in standby, so if you no longer make new recordings or watch live TV, there is no benefit to keeping the box awake.

This is a significant improvement over the TiVo S3, which draws 38.4W when fully awake and 36.8W when in standby, for a mere 4.2% reduction in power consumption. An awake Roamio draws only about 53% as much power as an awake S3.

I haven't measured my Bolts or Minis yet. I suspect they use less power than the Roamio.

 

[BigJimOutlaw]

Is there any real/meaningful benefit to using the High, Medium or Low settings?

Meaningful is subjective but the hard drive spins down on the medium and high settings after 2 or 4 hours, which will be a savings of up to ~5 watts during those off times.

 

[lart2150]

For me the reason I use the energy saving mode is to decrease writes on the hard drive from keeping a buffer on 4 channels all night long or while I'm at work.

 

[MikeekiM]

I ended up switching to automatic standby, and what I found was that the TiVo Roamio itself woke up rather quickly... But any TiVo mini has to wait almost a minute for the "mothership" to wake up and be responsive...

Not acceptable in my household, as the TiVo Mini actually gets more usage than my main TiVo... So I am going back to "Manual" mode with no automatic standby... It's a shame really...I would like to put it to sleep when it's not in use and save some energy and hard drive activity (as insignificant as it might be).

 

[JoeKustra]

I ended up switching to automatic standby, and what I found was that the TiVo Roamio itself woke up rather quickly... But any TiVo mini has to wait almost a minute for the "mothership" to wake up and be responsive...
Not acceptable in my household, as the TiVo Mini actually gets more usage than my main TiVo... So I am going back to "Manual" mode with no automatic standby... It's a shame really...I would like to put it to sleep when it's not in use and save some energy and hard drive activity (as insignificant as it might be).

Send TiVo a Tweet or feedback about it. It broke a few years ago.

 

[MikeekiM]

Send TiVo a Tweet or feedback about it. It broke a few years ago.

Oh, is it not supposed to work like that? I thought I read a warning in the UI that it could take up to 30 seconds for TiVo to wake up from standby... I figure maybe this was normal behavior... It's a very bad and unacceptable behavior in my opinion...but nevertheless I thought it was "expected" behavior based on that warning message.

 

[KevTech]

A five watt difference between on and standby would save you about a penny a day if the Tivo was in standby for 24 hours.
Personally I do not use standby on Tivo.

You should have another poll option Off as TE4 does not have manual.

 

[JoeKustra]

Oh, is it not supposed to work like that? I thought I read a warning in the UI that it could take up to 30 seconds for TiVo to wake up from standby... I figure maybe this was normal behavior... It's a very bad and unacceptable behavior in my opinion...but nevertheless I thought it was "expected" behavior based on that warning message.

When I do wake even a Roamio from Standby it only takes 5 to 10 seconds. Many messages are from the Series 4, which is pretty slow. But that box only takes about 15 seconds. A TE4 Roamio needs about 10 seconds, but for network operation it can take a minute or more. I always use Standby for my 3 active Mini but never for my TE3 Roamio. My TE4 Roamio is online about 90% of the time, mainly since I used it for storage and now just for streaming.

 

[JoeKustra]

Money saved was brought up in a previous post. Right now I'm 900 miles from my house dog-sitting. I can see my electricity daily use from any internet location. My current rate is $0.06546 per KWH. At this time all that is running is:
2 Roamio
cable modem
router
wireless bridge
fridge
So no heat/ac, hot water, lights or any other on-demand device. I am using 5 KWH per day. Also, just to get service is about $30 per month. I'm not going to do the math. The house next door only has a door bell transformer running and it uses .0512 KWH per day. My supplier changed meters a few months ago to measure four decimal places.

TiVo Online shows me all my 1P are working. That's nice.