CLARK HOWARD: DVR USES $15 TO $20 ELECTRICITY PER MONTH

[gregg75]

He says even some of your big appliances don't use that much electricity.
The problem is when the DVR is off......it's really on (almost at full power
in STAND BY mode).

You could unplug it, but then it takes several minute to reboot.

Clark says the best way to stop this is to CUT THE CORD. Get rid of your
cable/satellite and save yourself $75+ per month.

Here's a shorter print edition of his WSB news story.......
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/28732034/detail.html

 

[flashback]

and if you do you run into the problem of trying to get a regular decent picture and sound on all channels and not have dropoffs on sound and the channel itself.

this goes back to the terrible track record of over the air DTV television signals.

i tried to deal with that for a year.it was a constant struggle.i ended up going back to cable.

 

[cd637299]

Glad I don't have cable/sat, and I still use VHS, and DVD recording is very rare.

cd

 

[landtuna]

He says even some of your big appliances don't use that much electricity.
The problem is when the DVR is off......it's really on (almost at full power
in STAND BY mode).

I can't speak for every DVR but my CM7000PAL OTA DVR uses 2 watts on "standby" (off) and only 8 when operating.

Two watts is 1/30th of a normal incandescent light bulb left burning which will, even at the highest kilowatt-hour rates in the country, not burn $15-$20 per month. But.....it is a good idea to unplug the unit if you will not be using it for an extended period of time to save wear and tear on the internal hard drive as it spins even when the unit is in "standby".

 

[PTBoardOp94]

I call foul on the findings. At $0.15 per kWh, a device would have to suck an average 148 watts all month to cost $15 in power. Not entirely unreasonable for a device that contains the kind of hardware a DVR contains. A typical office PC is equipped with a 300 Watt (peak) power supply.

Here's the rub. A look at this news story, which references the same research, indicates that the typical DVR uses 275 kWh in a whole year, or about 23% of what Clark Howard said.

The Channel Master device landtuna has would use about 5 kWh a month, around $1, if in its active mode all the time.

 

[WPPCProductions]

What in the hell is this guy talking about.those old boatanchor style vcr would not draw that much power running.

 

[landtuna]

Just for grins, and since I still have three VCR's, I looked up their power draw. 65W operating and 3W on standby.

A VCR doesn't do anything on standby except keep listening for the remote. The DVR does the same plus spins the hard drive (doesn't take much once it spins up though).

Either Clark made a serious math error or is about to fire a flunky.

 

[Mediafrog+]

I call total B.S. on most of these so-called studies. It inevitably is apparent that no one bothers to actually do any math. One such report I heard recently claimed that a cell phone charger, if always plugged in, would cost twenty dollars per month. Nonsense.

Always be careful of statistics put out by advocacy groups, as an agenda is usually at work, and the truth is often bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.

 

[azumanga]

I call total B.S. on most of these so-called studies. It inevitably is apparent that no one bothers to actually do any math. One such report I heard recently claimed that a cell phone charger, if always plugged in, would cost twenty dollars per month. Nonsense.

With that rationale, I agree. My power bill range from $95 in winter to $185 in summer. The main culprits? Air conditioning, the hot water heater and the fridge. I generally run four loads of laundry every other week, use the stove mainly for small meals and the toaster oven for toast, the plasma TV is on in the living room only occasionally if we want to watch a DVD or of my wife wants to watch something on the DVR.

With that in mind, my cell phone's always plugged in, my computer's on for several hours each day, we have three cable boxes plugged in and four TVs on "standby" most of the time. If the power consumption's as presented in these news reports, my power bill would have been through the roof.

Long story short -- save energy, and your intelligence, by not watching TV news.

 

[nathannah]

I think this study is mainly targeted towards the junky and inefficient DVR's of old like the first Moxi or the older Motorola and SA boxes, which all ran way too hot and needed heavy-duty computer fans to cool them off like I used to have (I went through three of them in five years and they had an unexpected second use as the perfect heat source for the cats to lay down on during cold evenings). Since I got a TiVo and a new DVR from my provider my bill plunged immediately down $15 because those devices were designed to get an EnergyStar mark. I also call a little bull on the cell phone charger thing because since 2007 most phones shut off their charge from the adapter after it hits 100%.

So there is a good purpose to this study at least; the newer devices do alot more powerwise with a lot less energy, but the cable companies need to get the older DVR's out of their supply chains first before many who don't choose a TiVo or HTPC DVR see a benefit. Although I do enjoy Clark's advice though, I'm not about to kill my cable bill because of energy costs.

 

[gregg75]

Now your $15 savings would tend to support Clark.

But $15 a month would break down to 50 cents a day, 2+ cents a hour........that sounds
semi-reasonable from Clark's standpoint.

 

[kenglish]

and if you do you run into the problem of trying to get a regular decent picture and sound on all channels and not have dropoffs on sound and the channel itself.

this goes back to the terrible track record of over the air DTV television signals.

i tried to deal with that for a year.it was a constant struggle.i ended up going back to cable.

You probably didn't have a real antenna.

 

[kenglish]

"If you want to save money, kick cable and satellite to the curb.... Instead use Netflix or use Hulu plus. Even if you use the two of them together, you'll only be at $16 a month and you'll be counting all the dough you’re saving month by month."

Why do these "Guru's" never mention the fact that you can replace your (Cable or Satellite) Pay TV with free, over-the-air TV, and pay nothing at all per month?

 

[FreddyE1977]

Radical environmentalists want to take us all back to the 18th Century.
That's pretty much what I think is going on here.

 

[TexasTom]

Radical environmentalists want to take us all back to the 18th Century.
That's pretty much what I think is going on here.

Broadcast TV existed in the 18th Century? That's certainly news to me...

In all seriousness, the reason why DVRs are relative power hogs is because many (most?) of them are really on all the time, with the hard drive and dual tuners and whatever else is in them active 24 hours a day. But I'll note that isn't true for all DVRs -- my antique Zenith HD DVR uses very little power in standby, because (like a VCR) it only turns on when you're actually recording or playing something.

That seems like it would be a good general approach to DVR design -- or, at the least, DVRs could be designed to give each customer the choice as to how much of the hardware will be active in standby, since not everyone cares about having that always-available buffer of the last half hour of programming. Those who don't want that capability would be able to save a fair chunk of money, while those who do want that buffer would simply have to enable that feature.

 

[BlueWanderer]

Always be careful of statistics put out by advocacy groups, as an agenda is usually at work, and the truth is often bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.

Whenever I hear the local or national news reporting on a study, I lose interest very quickly. There's only so many times you can hear things like coffee, tea, chocolate, or whatever it might be bad one day and the next day be good. Then the day after be bad again and so on.

The key is moderation, although that seems to be a lost concept these days.

 

[flashback]

and if you do you run into the problem of trying to get a regular decent picture and sound on all channels and not have dropoffs on sound and the channel itself.

this goes back to the terrible track record of over the air DTV television signals.

i tried to deal with that for a year.it was a constant struggle.i ended up going back to cable.

You probably didn't have a real antenna.

i live in an apartment so an outdoor antena is out of the question.

over the air tv should work with any good antenna.if it doesn`t the law switching to digital tv came too soon before the bugs were worked out.

 

[Markxxx]

I hear you, I live in Chicago, and the buildings are so dense, unless you have an outside antenna it's hard to pull in anything. What even makes it more confusing, is I'll go to the library with my laptop with a DTV tuner. In the morning I get everything but WBBM (Channel 2/ RF12) so strong. The by 3pm all the channels are lost. The signal strength is excellent at 9am but by 3pm the signal strength drops to poor or non existent.

The really sad part was a pair of rabbit ears with a loop gave me excellent analog reception.

 

[flashback]

^exactly before DTV all you needed was a good pair of rabbit ears.in city limits at least.

 

[KeithE4]

I hear you, I live in Chicago, and the buildings are so dense, unless you have an outside antenna it's hard to pull in anything. What even makes it more confusing, is I'll go to the library with my laptop with a DTV tuner. In the morning I get everything but WBBM (Channel 2/ RF12) so strong. The by 3pm all the channels are lost. The signal strength is excellent at 9am but by 3pm the signal strength drops to poor or non existent.

Where are you (or your library) located in relation to Downtown? I've had a similar problem in Phoenix, where our UHF stations tend to fade in late afternoon for about an hour - right when the sun is over the South Mountain towers from my direction (the towers are WNW of me, about 5 miles away). It only happens during that time. Has anyone done a study about solar noise or other solar effects on digital reception?