If you’ve got a DVR set up as part of your home theatre (and you should – it’s almost 2010 fer-cryin’-out-loud!) you’ll know that those things are always sucking up juice. Even in standby mode, they’re power hungry, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice to record something for you. Well, Foxtel and Austar have decided to “invest millions of dollars” to improve their set top boxes (DVR or not) so that they are a lot more efficient and suck less power. They’ve even signed an agreement with the government to “make” them follow through with it.
Considering TVs are under growing pressure to regulate and rate their energy consumption, focussing on reducing the consumption of the devices that sit under your TV is a great move.
On the downside, the agreement doesn’t seem to include current models from the pay TV networks – it comes into effect from January 1 2010, and “the signatories will work to ensure all new set top boxes procured after this commence date will not exceed Maximum Energy Consumption Targets.”
Still, any green improvements are a step in the right direction here. Hopefully we’ll see other STB and DVR manufacturers jump on board as well.
[Foxtel]
Aden
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 2:05 PMEven though the existing boxes weren’t necessarily manufactured to be energy efficient, the latest iQ2 upgrade (the one with the blue menus), there’s an added “Energy Saving Level” option in Settings -> Foxtel iQ2 Setup. Putting it on high seems to turn off/spin down the hard drive entirely and makes the box completely silent when in stand-by.
It still records scheduled programs/fetches on demand items on a Thursday, it just spins up when it needs to.
Rob
Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 5:26 PMI have an IQ2, and you can keep your dinner warm on the top of it (or under it).
One of the reasons, I suspect, is about 1/3 of the drive is reserved for pushed downloads of movies, that you might want to view.
I assume it is always quietly (cough) pushing downloads into that secret third of the drive.
Even after hours of standby, you can keep your dinner warm on top of it.
I have just placed 1″ supports under the corners, to aid circulation.
I would like to have the ability to block those pushed downloads, but I have never seen any mention of that possibility ?
In addition to my 1″ supports, I am going to start turning it off at the power point.
Any one know how long I could do that, without it’s internal battery going flat, and losing who knows what ?