Cable Box Rant Related to Power Consumption - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2018, 07:17:29 pm
content: The cable company here named Spectrum (used to be Charter) is coming out with new boxes to present a "new guide customer experience" meaning the on-screen TV guide is all gussied up. They said if you don't get them before Set 11, you would not be able to see the new guide. So I went ahead and said OK come bring 'em and let's see what you got. They brought three to replace my old ones.When they arrived I saw the design has been changed. Now the thing doesn't even display the time or the channel - there is NO display of any information at all other than the power button, a hamburger menu button for the guide (who would use this button?), and a "reset box" button. No more channel display for those that loved it. See attached pic. And since the new remotes are now RF/IR not just IR, each remote RF is paired to each box, you needn't even see the box anymore. Simply place in closet or under a shelf and say goodbye.What really irks me is the power consumption. It's as bad or worse than the older boxes. The older ones were always very warm to the touch even when "off". By "off" I mean the consumer presentation/level of "off" by which they turn it off via the remote, but we all here realize that it isn't off at that point. It's only truly off when the thing has it's plug yanked out of the wall socket.So these new boxes are really bad, even when off (consumer off not plug pulled off) the area at the F connector is so hot it's nearly burning hot, it hurts to touch it. All three boxes I got are the same way. So I decided to measure the power consumption.I used my Killawatt and found that the power consumed when "on" was 13W. But wait - the power consumed when "off" (not plug pulled off) was 12W! In fact I'd say more like 12.5W because the display was flickering between 12 and 13 W.One really wonders why this design had to be so wasteful of power when off. One also wonders why there is even an "off" action on the remote, what of necessity is really being turned off?Any thoughts/comments would be well received in this thread.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2018, 07:47:46 pm
content: It does seem wasteful but at $0.35/kWh, it would only cost about $38 per year to run 24/7. I spill more money than that! It just isn't a number that rises to a level where I would care. $3/month?I have no idea what our 2 Comcast boxes cost to operate. Don't really care!

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2018, 08:03:15 pm
content: The ancient SD boxes from Comcast (2006-era) ran quite cool while in standby. Years later I switched to DirecTV 720p boxes and they had a warmer standby, but nothing worth of notice. Around 2010 we switched to Verizon (now Frontier) and the 1080p + DVR box runs very hot at all times, but since it records programs while "off", that is expected. Our other box (a simple 1080p receiver) operates at a very high temperature as well (not as much as the DVR) regardless of its standby status.Good idea measuring the consumption with the Kill-a-watt - I haven't thought of that.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2018, 10:29:24 pm
content: The right answer is to get rid of overpriced cable TV altogether. I wonder how long before someone starts a conspiracy that those new cable boxes are using the extra power to mine cryptocurrency for the cable companies. They are known for charging every extra fee they can get away with...As for the IPTV alternative, the only way I can get my Nvidia Shield TV to use 12W playing media is to scroll a lot in 3D mode, and that's only for short peaks. Average in even that power hungry mode is more like 7W. More usual 2D content would be down to about 5.6W. On but idle is about 4W and "off" (but network still connected) is about 2W.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2018, 11:15:54 pm
content: One of my former jobs was at a company that made settop DVRs. One of our old devices was popular because it worked well but the power consumption was almost 100W. When we had racks of the things around the office we'd often be wearing shorts in the winter with the AC on.I'd wager the "off" button simply turns off the display and mutes the video. It exists because some people expect it, not because it does anything really useful. Well in a sense it does, we actually had a lot of customers wanting a feature to turn off the front panel display because a lot of people have one in the bedroom and are bothered by the light. I know I would be.

author: klunkerbus
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 11, 2018, 11:34:05 pm
content: I think the boxes retain a "hot" cable connection in order to keep the channel guide info updated, accessible for downloading box updates, etc. Yeah, I find the heat annoying and wasteful.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2018, 11:39:07 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on August 11, 2018, 11:15:54 pmThanks james. It just seems so "dumbed-down", if as you say, it has a sort of pseudo-off button because people expect it. But, people also expect the clock and/or channel number too. My mother used to always tell me to make sure the cable box had the time displayed when I would go over there to fix whatever she had mucked up by changing the wrong things in the menus.I don't get that design decision by the company who designed the box for Spectrum. I say "by the company who designed it" because unlike the previous boxes, the manufacturer is hidden on this one. There is absolutely no indication of any manufacturer anywhere on the outside, and you cannot see inside or take it apart. I suspect there are going to be a lot of customers who will not like the missing clock or channel number display. If some people want the display to be blank they could have had a menu setting to blank it.Anyway - it is what it is ...

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 12:30:34 am
content: Settop Boxes from providers are always on, because they need to keep the smartcard updated.If you would fully turn off the device, then the smartcard would not be receiving EMM/ECM and thus would not get the required updates.You can notice this if you physically disconnect the device from power for a few days: when you turn it on again, it might take up to 10 minutes to get a pictures, because this is how long it takes the operator to cycle the messages to all corresponding smartcards.This means that the tuner needs to be always powered on and so does the CPU, which contains most receiver functionality and demodulates the transport stream and communicates with the smartcard.Of course this sucks, but technically CATV boxes are a one way communication medium and providers need to implement strong security to keep people paying.What I don't understand is the standby of IPTV boxes. These communicate bidirectionally with the provider and should be allowed to fully turn off. That is not always the case and I think it is due to end users expecting a quick power on.Regards,Vitor

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 12:34:37 am
content: That's not entirely true, at least in the US. Most of the boxes use CableCARDs, those do require a hit from the headend for validation but they will stay validated for quite some time when not powered.The reason the boxes stay powered up all the time is that they're almost all embedded Linux PCs that take a few minutes to boot up, and nobody wants to wait several minutes each time they want to watch TV. That's true of the IP boxes as well.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 12:56:54 am
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 12, 2018, 12:30:34 amThe Shield TV does have a full off as well as a connected standby mode. The 2W or so it uses in connected standby isn't too bad, especially considering it still works as a server in that mode.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 01:55:08 am
content: The CPUs in these are probably more powerful than a typical desktop PC 10-15 years ago and also require as much cooling, but being a cable box the users would really not like to hear a fan nor do the manufacturers want to pay for huge heatsinks. Hence the burning-hot F connector---it's being used as a heatsink and the designers probably tried to use it to conduct the heat away through the cable. Imagine how hot the internals are, if the connector is already that hot...Look up the FCC ID and you may be able to find the OEM.Typical "modern" dumbed-down UI which I also hate too. Some older ones even had a brightness adjustment for the display...

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 02:25:49 am
content: Quote from: amyk on August 12, 2018, 01:55:08 amHa - yea good explanation.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 02:41:02 am
content: Quote from: rstofer on August 11, 2018, 07:47:46 pm$38/year to run the box and another $38/year for the AC power to dissipate the heat that the box generates. NO thanks. I plugged the cable, box, TV control box, Ray Ray player, the TV and all the rest of that crap into an outlet strip and it gets turned OFF when I'm not watching it. Side benefit; the TV no longer turns on in the middle of the night when the cable jerks decide to run their updates!

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 03:02:23 am
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on August 12, 2018, 02:41:02 amI just tried it - it takes about 3 minutes for the damn thing to present a picture after unplugging it. I might just start doing that to all of them. My gosh do life events have to be that instantaneous?

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 03:27:00 am
content: Quote from: james_s on August 12, 2018, 12:34:37 amPFFT! Hardly!Cisco boxes not only have no clock, just indicator LEDs, they will also invalidate and BSOD while you're watching them to the point they don't work again till after they're unplugged!

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 06:29:56 am
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on August 12, 2018, 03:27:00 amI'm just speaking from experience here. I spent around 10 years working with this stuff, the two main standards are Cisco and Motorola, the latter now owned by Arris. Both platforms support a CableCARD which is provisioned with a system that Motorola calls a DAC and Cisco calls a DNCS. They can be unpowered for quite a long time before they require a new provisioning hit.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 07:01:44 am
content: Quote from: amyk on August 12, 2018, 01:55:08 amThe CPUs in these things are dead slow.When I was at a European manufacturer of set top boxes, we were shipping 400MHz MIPS Broadcom chipsets in boxes that ran YouTube and Netflix apps.To say they were slow (especially given there was no native Java bytecompiler for our MIPS CPU) is the understatement of the century.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 12:11:39 pm
content: OK experts - why do they put USB ports on the front and the back? This new one has USB ports and there is no explanation of why, the installers had no clue either. It adds to the cost to put hardware on. Also on the back - an ethernet port.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 12:43:33 pm
content: Quote from: xrunner on August 12, 2018, 12:11:39 pmIn the Motorola DVR box I have, the manual says you can attach a USB drive for extra storage. I have never tested this, though.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 01:30:06 pm
content: I don't miss the Spectrum cable boxes. We went with Roku and PlayStation Vue at a savings of $55 USD a month and the loss of 2 channels. We have it long enough that we've long made back the cost of the Roku boxes with the savings. Now I just have to convince Mrs GreyWoolfe to get rid of the house phone through Spectrum and just keep the internet service. Funny you mention upgrades, we just had to upgrade the MTA for 'new and improved' services coming. I am just happy the download speed didn't change. Still running a 12 ms ping and 111 Mbps download on 100 Mbps service for $64.95 a month($84.95 with phone service) with my company paying $60 of it.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 01:40:19 pm
content: Quote from: GreyWoolfe on August 12, 2018, 01:30:06 pmWe keep our landline for the 911 locator. Yes, the other systems work, more or less, but the AT&T variant (landline) works best.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 01:53:15 pm
content: You could just keep an old cell phone lying around for emergencies. It doesn't even need a SIM, just has to be able to get a signal.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 02:32:45 pm
content: I know we can. We all have cell phones and I have a couple of old cell phones that the granddaughter that lives with us can use but she wants the phone so she has the phone.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 02:59:23 pm
content: Get one of those boxes that connects to Google Voice and gives you an analog line.

author: doobedoobedo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 03:01:59 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on August 12, 2018, 12:34:37 amHmm. I'm a little dubious about this. I use kodi as a mythtv frontend on an old (>10 years) nvidia ion nettop. It boots to kodi in under 30 seconds from an HDD running absolute bare minimum Ubuntu.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 03:39:08 pm
content: Quote from: doobedoobedo on August 12, 2018, 03:01:59 pmBecause you've got decent hardware and optimised software.Working in the STB industry you notice how that the software is rarely written to be fast or even optimised, and the hardware is always slow. Support from manufacturers like Broadcom is spotty despite you buying millions of their chips a year.We were shipping one box at one point that had 1GB of RAM because the software guys insisted they needed it - it was a basic HD tuner box with no recording/trick play capabilities, no smart capabilities, just a basic box. Yet it was still dog slow, and it took two minutes to boot too.Probably didn't help that at one point, our core software product was going on for 1,000,000 SLoC.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 04:44:04 pm
content: Quote from: xrunner on August 12, 2018, 12:11:39 pmThe USB port has several uses, support depends on the specific firmware running on the box. The way it works is a lot of times one manufacture will build the hardware which is then sold to several other companies that build and support the firmware, sometimes these are MSOs themselves, other times it's a third party that develops the platform for sale to MSOs so the hardware needs to be somewhat generic. The USB port can be used for an external hard drive to expand the storage, it can have HID support for connecting a keyboard or mouse for apps that support that, it is used during development for debugging and configuration and it can be used for firmware updates in situations where the device is unable to connect to the headend for one reason or another.The ethernet port is required in certain setups, one MSO which I'm not going to mention by name here had painted themselves into a corner with some of their infrastructure so they require a split WAN arrangement so as to not expose their back end to the customer side. The cable modem built into the box is only used to talk to the headend to get guide data, provisioning, and 2-way communcations for things like video on demand and pay per view. For things like streaming Netflix or DLNA content it requires being connected to an external cable modem.Another application for ethernet is on multi-room capable DVR devices it can be used as an alternate to MoCA (coax) for connecting the remote players.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 05:27:48 pm
content: Quote from: GreyWoolfe on August 12, 2018, 02:32:45 pmWise man...Regarding cutting the cable... With our twin kids it is still a lot easier with the STB/DVR than chasing the different services around and trying to find all the cartoons they like.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 05:37:46 pm
content: Salt, a mobile carrier here (with some fiber and ISP ambitions) recently launched its IPTV offering, using an Apple TV with custom app as the settop box. Now, those things are fairly beefy in terms of CPU/GPU speed compared to a typical cable settop box. But because the Apple TV is essentially an iPhone with no screen, it’s extraordinarily efficient. 1.2W standby, 2.4W during playback (measured during Netflix streaming).Why every settop box maker isn’t just basing their boxes on Android mobile hardware is beyond me...

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 05:39:22 pm
content: I haven't had cable at home in over 15 years. For a while I was buying a lot of used DVDs from Amazon. More recently I bought an 8TB hard drive and ripped all of my content and set up a Plex server. It's like Netflix except the content never changes unless I change it. Streams to my TV, laptop, phone, etc both in my house and remotely.

author: doobedoobedo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 06:10:08 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on August 12, 2018, 03:39:08 pmI guess a dual core Atom 230 @1.6GHz probably outperforms a cheap ARM based SOC, but I'm shocked that there would be no optimisation.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 06:25:32 pm
content: These things are heavily cost engineered. The hardware is as cheap as possible and is usually an older generation of processor. Then the software stack tends to be layers and layers with loads of old cruft. The software development process is very expensive and there is a lot of esoteric almost blackbox type stuff like encryption that very few people really understand how it works.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 12, 2018, 08:07:31 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on August 12, 2018, 05:27:48 pmThe granddaughter has a better grasp of finding and saving channels she likes than I do. She does watch more TV in 1 day than I watch in a week or more, though. I am not sorry about cutting the cable. Both Mrs GreyWoolfe and I have decided that if Spectrum wants us back that bad, they will match the price I pay for PlayStation Vue which I don't ever expect. Like I said, we save $50 a month. When we can ditch the phone service, I will get my own modem and save that monthly charge. For me, it's either Cable or Roku. Neither of us want a satellite dish. Good Lord, she complains about the 10' 2 meter vertical on the 20' mast and the 275' 80 meter loop around the property as it is. Add the fact that we got a brand new roof thanks to Hurricane Matthew, she wants nothing attached to the house so there is no clear path for a dish as we have lots of trees on the property. We also can't get the DSL that satellite offers, too far from the central office.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2018, 11:17:39 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on August 11, 2018, 07:47:46 pmNow add up the numbers for all the devices that omit proper off switches. How does $30 to $60 a month sound?

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2018, 03:39:00 pm
content: Several years ago I installed one of those Efergy energy monitor things that shows me the real time draw and found that the quiescent draw of my house is around 220W. I went around with a Kill a Watt and made a spreadsheet accounting for most of it but I still haven't got around to working out everything. A few Watts here and there, it all adds up.