Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

"Ed" wrote in message
ups.com...
SKY is to introduce technology that automatically switches digital
boxes to standby mode overnight - slashing energy bills by £7.5MILLION
a year.

How does a sky box know if it's not being used?

Why should all the houses in Wolverhampton get free lighting?

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

"Light of Aria" wrote in message
...

"steeler" wrote in message
.. .

"Beck" wrote in message
...

"Ed" wrote in message
ups.com...
SKY is to introduce technology that automatically switches digital
boxes to standby mode overnight - slashing energy bills by £7.5MILLION
a year.
The boxes will go to "sleep" after 11pm if they detect they have not
been used for two hours.
The technology will be transmitted to Sky HD boxes from today and to
all Sky+ boxes from April - a total of more than two million. Sky said
Auto Standby could save enough energy to light all the homes in
Wolverhampton for a year. It could also cut UK carbon emissions by
32,000 tons a year.

Great idea. The amount of difference between on and standby may not be
much, but collectively with all the thousands of boxes it will make a
difference.
Hope they brace themselves for zillions of support calls from people
saying their sky is shutting off overnight though.

Actually on a + box it cuts the power significantly, turning off the HDD
and the fan. I remember someone hooking it up to a meter and posting the
results.



I have just down an experiment on my 500 VA UPS power supply system with
my setup which includes a Pentium IV 2.4 processor and 3 hard disks. My
UPS has a remote power meter management application.

With just the main hard drive running, the load was 17%.

Spin up drive 2 (+1), the load was 18%.

Spin up drive 3 (+1 and 2), the load was 19%.

Turn on the 15 watt low energy light bulb (also on my UPS) the load goes
to 22%.

Ergo very subjectively and approximately 1% = about 5 watts which sounds
about right for my disk drives each.

I've had all 3 drives on for 3 years, LOL, but I've recently enabled the
power management to spin down unused drives after 10 minutes of inactivity
really to reduce heat and that awful whining noise one of the drives
makes.

Anyway, nice to know I am saving a whopping 10 watts of energy even though
I doubt it covers the cost of my UPSs.

;-)

Hope this adds / helps.


Perhaps it is disabling the decoder output that saves the energy then - if I
remember correctly standby on a plus box should use about a third of the
power.

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

"Jono" wrote in message
. ..
Paul Hyett submitted this idea :
In uk.tech.tv.sky on Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Mark Carver wrote :
On Mar 20, 9:49 am, "Ed" wrote:
SKY is to introduce technology that automatically switches digital
boxes to standby mode overnight - slashing energy bills by £7.5MILLION
a year.

The boxes will go to "sleep" after 11pm if they detect they have not
been used for two hours.

The technology will be transmitted to Sky HD boxes from today and to
all Sky+ boxes from April - a total of more than two million. Sky said
Auto Standby could save enough energy to light all the homes in
Wolverhampton for a year. It could also cut UK carbon emissions by
32,000 tons a year.

Just Sky+ boxes then ? I hope so, it'll cause chaos for communal
systems etc if it's introduced to standard boxes.

Not to mention I often record several hours of the music channels
overnight - the above will screw that up! :(

But Sky+ will still record your music channels - or do you mean you record
it to another device?

I wonder if it will switch the boxes into standby if live pause has been
used - ie. if you leave the station playing back 10 minutes behind real
time.

Sky+ will still record in stand-by mode.

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

Ed wrote:

The boxes will go to "sleep" after 11pm if they detect they have not
been used for two hours.

This is entirely optional.

What a long thread about nothing.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/8vef5
UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
BBC/ITV reception trouble? ; http://www.astra2d.com/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

In uk.tech.tv.sky on Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Bob Lucas wrote :

"Paul Hyett" wrote in message
...

Just Sky+ boxes then ? I hope so, it'll cause chaos for communal
systems etc if it's introduced to standard boxes.

Not to mention I often record several hours of the music channels
overnight - the above will screw that up! :(

Why are so many people scare-mongering about imagined problems, that
have not yet occurred?

Auto standby won't screw up anything (provided the subscriber wants to
record programmes to the Sky HD (or Sky+) internal drive, as opposed to
an external recorder.

That's the thing - I only *have* an external recorder.

Hopefully it won't affect standard boxes, otherwise I may have to
program a universal remote to send a signal every so often...
--
Paul 'Charts Fan' Hyett

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

In article , Jomtien
writes
Ed wrote:

The boxes will go to "sleep" after 11pm if they detect they have not
been used for two hours.

This is entirely optional.

Yes, as I found when I got home last night and promptly turned it off.

There is also an option to disable the need to enter your PIN when
watching certain things after the watershed, although you do still need
to enter it when watching a recording before the watershed, apparently.

For anyone with HD boxes, the HD channels have changed from the red
button, on the TV guide front page, to option 2. The red button will be
used for Anytime, when that's activated (which will also be optional, I
believe).

Although, I'd still prefer they had an option to switch off anytime and
use the reserved disk space for my own use, as the 160gb available is
rather limiting for recording HD stuff.
--
Sean Black

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

In article , Jomtien
wrote:

Ed wrote:

The boxes will go to "sleep" after 11pm if they detect they have not
been used for two hours.

This is entirely optional.

What a long thread about nothing.

Yes, apparently there is an option to disable it: but this wasn't made
clear in the initial reports.

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

In article , [email protected]
aggs.demon.co.uk says...
In article , Jomtien
writes
Ed wrote:

The boxes will go to "sleep" after 11pm if they detect they have not
been used for two hours.

This is entirely optional.

Yes, as I found when I got home last night and promptly turned it off.

There is also an option to disable the need to enter your PIN when
watching certain things after the watershed, although you do still need
to enter it when watching a recording before the watershed, apparently.


Hasn't that always been there? I'm sure my Sky+ box is already set up
like that.

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:58:16 +0000, Dave Fawthrop
wrote:

If there were rules to say that " the standby current taken by any device
using Infra Red controls must be less than 1 watt", that would cure the
problem and not be difficult or expensive to do.

Seems fair enough. If we can have chemical waste limits for cars, then
it isn't conceptually different to have electrical waste limits for
domestic equipment.

Rod.

Sky 'auto standby' to roll out from today
 

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:37:29 +0000, Mark Goodge
wrote:

They'll be pleased - remember, they made a PROFIT from their 0870
numbers. Every incoming call is more money for them.

Where is this mystical call centre where the staff are paid 2p per
minute or less, then?

Not all the time on the call will require the attention of call centre
staff. The caller is paying for the privilege of being on hold, but it
isn't costing the company anything to keep them on hold.

Isn't there a law now about how long a premium number phone service is
allowed to keep a caller on hold?

Rod.