Switch off at the socket?

In article ,
says...

Mr repair man is talking rubbish to get out of telling you what the real
problem was. When I first went on cable tv the installation guy from Nynex
(as it was then; later C&W then NTL and finally Virgin Media) wanted the STB
left permanently on standby so they could send messages to the television.
Now it gets turned off whenever I am out and overnight and, apart from it
taking a minute to settle down when first switched back on, there are no
problems.

I would suspect so too, except that another symptom of the failure was
that a green LED on the front of the TV stayed-on for a long time
whenever the TV was put into standby. Googling this suggested that the
LED indicated that the TV was trying to update.

What, exactly, it was trying to update, I dunno, but if it was trying to
update Freeview channels or firmware version when someone turned it off
at the plug, I can see how that could corrupt something.

In message , Ian
writes

"David Skinner" wrote in message
et...
In article dd11dcee-9b58-4d46-899e-


My parents' 1-and-a-bit-year-old TV broke down the other week. Stopped
receiving DTV and the settings menus became unavailable.

The repair man reloaded the firmware from a memory card, which fixed it.
Then he asked whether it got switched off at the mains a lot. It did -
every night. He said that that may well have been the cause of firmware
corruption and that they should leave the set on standby.

It's a Toshiba Regza something or other, if that matters.

Mr repair man is talking rubbish to get out of telling you what the
real problem was. When I first went on cable tv the installation guy
from Nynex (as it was then; later C&W then NTL and finally Virgin
Media) wanted the STB left permanently on standby so they could send
messages to the television. Now it gets turned off whenever I am out
and overnight and, apart from it taking a minute to settle down when
first switched back on, there are no problems.

They wouldn't be sending messages to the TV. They would be sending
messages to the STB.

Assuming you're talking about the old analogue STB, it was common
practice (indeed often necessary) to send information about frequencies,
displayed channel numbers, pay services etc (not unlike the various
changes and updates which go on for off-air DTT). Most of these changes
were sent continuously (cycling through the data 24/24) and, in large
cable TV systems, it could take several hours between one update and the
next.

If a STB was totally switched off when not in use, it was not uncommon
for it to miss the latest data - especially if it was addressed to that
particular unit. This was particularly important for new installations
which, when first installed, might not be authorised to receive all the
services requested by the customer. This often resulted in an
essentially un-necessary call to the customer services department, who
would have to do a manual re-send of the data applicable to that STB.
Depending on the workload etc, this could take some time, during which
the customer might again have totally switched off the STB (or might be,
say, be at work, having home with the STB switched-off).

As a result, the customer services people were sometimes led a merry
dance and, despite their best efforts, the customer became more and more
dissatisfied with the apparent lack of service! Hence the request from
the installation guy to leave the STB at least in standby.
--
Ian

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:10:50 +0100, Halmyre
wrote:

On 14 Sep, 23:30, Mike Swift wrote:
In article
.com, NT writes

There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.

The phantom power issue is much over stated. In most cases it isn't
worth getting up to switch things off.

Have you ever driven through most towns late at night, the shops are lit
up like Blackpool illuminations, and they want us to switch off at the
power socket.


I wonder what the residents of Blackpool use as a comparative
reference when they want to comment on levels of illumination?


A floodlight football pitch with a double decker bus on it that has come
from Wales?

Fred X

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:14:51 +0100, No Spam Please suggested:

"Halmyre" asked in message
...

I wonder what the residents of Blackpool use as a comparative reference
when they want to comment on levels of illumination?

Las Vegas?

My exact same thoughts. Some facts and figures at

http://green.thefuntimesguide.COM/2007/04/las_vegas_energy_use.php

Is it not the case that without the Hoover Dam, the bright lights of
Las Vegas would not be possible?

On Sep 15, 3:12*pm, "Ian" wrote:
"David Skinner" wrote in message

t...

In article dd11dcee-9b58-4d46-899e-

My parents' 1-and-a-bit-year-old TV broke down the other week. Stopped
receiving DTV and the settings menus became unavailable.

The repair man reloaded the firmware from a memory card, which fixed it..
Then he asked whether it got switched off at the mains a lot. It did -
every night. He said that that may well have been the cause of firmware
corruption and that they should leave the set on standby.

It's a Toshiba Regza something or other, if that matters.

Mr repair man is talking rubbish to get out of telling you what the real
problem was.

What is the real problem, then?

MBQ

"Man at B&Q" wrote in message
...
On Sep 15, 11:16 am, "Zimmy" wrote:
"Norman Wells" wrote in message

...



Zimmy wrote:
"Norman Wells" wrote in message
...

However, he ignores the fact that he's also losing 45 watts of heat.
To keep his house at exactly the same temperature, an extra 45 watts
of heat need to be pumped out by whatever heating system he has, for
as much of the year as he needs any heating at all. Admittedly,
that may be a bit cheaper if it's gas-fired, but it's still the same
amount of energy, so it's unlikely to have a huge impact on climate
change.

You are assuming that those 45W of electricity are converted to 45W
of heat with 100% efficiency which is clearly not true.

Where else do you think it goes?

Hmm, maybe powering the standby circuitry, IR receivers, etc?

Which is ultimately turned into heat.

OK! Thanks to all who put me straight. Ultimately, yes it ends up as heat,
but its an expensive way to heat your house. I think I'll be sticking to gas
CH instead of filling my rooms with wall-warts. :-)

Z

On 14 Sep, 23:30, Mike Swift wrote:


Have you ever driven through most towns late at night, the shops are lit
up like Blackpool illuminations, and they want us to switch off at the
power socket.

Mike

It's not just town and city centres. Our local councillors are
trumpeting about their reaction to a suggestion that a tree in the
area be lit up at night. They think they've triumphed by providing
different coloured lights on the tree according to the season. The
formal switching on was the other night.

We've just completed a questionnaire put out by the council about
saving power and telling us to save money by turning down the heating
by one degree. We can't, it won't go any lower than 10C. Yet they've
spent our money on the installation of these lights as well as the
running costs.

You can tell that I'm not pleased ...

Mary

--
Michael Swift * * * * * We do not regard Englishmen as foreigners. * * *
Kirkheaton * * * * * * *We look on them only as rather mad Norwegians. * *
Yorkshire * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Halvard Lange

wrote in message
...
On 14 Sep, 23:30, Mike Swift wrote:


Have you ever driven through most towns late at night, the shops are lit
up like Blackpool illuminations, and they want us to switch off at the
power socket.

Mike

It's not just town and city centres. Our local councillors are
trumpeting about their reaction to a suggestion that a tree in the
area be lit up at night.


Well they are sort of half right. It would be a complete waste of energy to
light it up in the daytime.

Adam

The message
from (Zero Tolerance) contains these words:

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:39:13 +0100, "Norman Wells"
wrote:

However, he ignores the fact that he's also losing 45 watts of heat. To
keep his house at exactly the same temperature, an extra 45 watts of heat
need to be pumped out by whatever heating system he has, for as much
of the
year as he needs any heating at all. Admittedly, that may be a bit
cheaper
if it's gas-fired, but it's still the same amount of energy, so it's
unlikely to have a huge impact on climate change.

This is an old (and thoroughly discredited) logical error. Saving 45
watts of energy is not the same as saving 45 watts of heat. For a
start, most of that energy is expended in doing the 'work' - e.g.
lighting lights, spinning discs, and so on. Any excess heat generated
after that (unnecessary) work is done is minimal.

Why do you suppose a constant source of energy input is required to
keep a disk spinning?

By your logic, if I leave a Sky+ box on standby, then the 20 watts it
spends on spinning the hard disc is converted into 20 watts of heat.
If that were true, it would turn Sky+ into a free energy machine -
which is impossible - breaking every scientific law there is.

It would be breaking the laws of physics if it didn't behave like a 20
watt heater.

Your 45 watts of wasted energy probably results in (I'm guessing here)
maybe 2 watts of heat. Whatever heating system you have is going to be
a FAR more efficient way of generating an equivalent amount of heat.
And considerably cheaper too.

No, it would be only as efficient as a classic one bar electric fire
(only in miniature).

Saving 45 watts at current electricity prices cuts about £40 a year
off your electricity bills. It's just burning money. (And, before you
even suggest it, burning five pound notes is not an efficient way of
heating your home either.)

Let's take the example of the need to keep feeding power to a hard disk
drive's spindle motor in order to maintain a steady 7,200rpm speed.
Unless the spindle bearing is frictionless and the disks it spins are
operating in a perfect vacuum, a continuous supply of power is required
to balance the generation of heat by friction in the bearings and air
drag on the platters.

Although a small fraction of these frictional losses result in
vibrational energy (120Hz vibration and windrush noise[1]), by far the
greatest representation of frictional loss is in the generation of heat
(approximately 20 watts in your example - in practice, most 7,200 rpm
drives generate about 7 to 9 watts of such heat).

Once a steady temperature gradient has been achieved (typically after
around half an hour's runtime when the components have absorbed enough
energy to reach this equilibrium temperature) the heat output will
become equal to the heat input [1].

Just because electrical energy can be converted into 'useful work' with
varying degrees of efficiency, this doesn't imply that it never finally
degrades to heat energy dissipated into the wider environment.

[1] This sort of energy loss is rarely more than 1% of the total losses
in such systems, although I would expect a jet engine to have
exceptionally higher percentage losses in terms of such sound
vibrational energy emissions. In any case, if most of this energy (sound
and mechanical vibration) were largely absorbed within the case of the
apparatus, they too would contribute their small part in raising the
temperature of the local environment.

HTH & HAND

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

coughed up some electrons that declared:

It's not just town and city centres. Our local councillors are
trumpeting about their reaction to a suggestion that a tree in the
area be lit up at night. They think they've triumphed by providing
different coloured lights on the tree according to the season. The
formal switching on was the other night.

We've just completed a questionnaire put out by the council about
saving power and telling us to save money by turning down the heating
by one degree. We can't, it won't go any lower than 10C.

How do you live at 10C? I can see 15C with a wooly jumper, but 10C is pretty
chilly.

Yet they've
spent our money on the installation of these lights as well as the
running costs.

You can tell that I'm not pleased ...

It's the job of councils to do dipweed inconsistent things. Read more
Dilbert - it will help you to mentally adjust!

I wish they'd just build some bl**dy nukes so we can get back to worrying
about world hunger and terrorism instead of debating reducing global
warming by 90% of 8% of 1ppm or whatever... Cynical - moi?