Sky decoder - worth turning off?

Xbigman

Does anybody know if its worth putting a sky decoder on standby when not in use?
I turn everything else off or put on standby if its not practical to turn off but this is the one thing thats always on.
Regards



X

Hunnymonster

Putting a Sky digibox on standby only turns off the video output from it - to all intents and purposes it's still full on. So ordinarily, I'd say turn it off.....

However (there's always a however lol) - if you turn it off, then your box will never get software updates overnight while you're not watching it, and will get them at the most annoying times possible instead, forcing a reboot of the box just as the horses approach the line neck & neck for the Grand National and you've got a tenner-to-win on the 2000-1 shot that's currently a short nose in front.

As the box only consumes 37W (source, the rating plate of my Panasonic TU-DSB30 digibox) when full on, that's about 1 unit of electricity per 27 hours - you aren't going to save huge sums - but what you might end up doing by the constant heating/cooling effect of turning it on & off is to shorten it's life and lead to you needing to acquire a new box (several years of savings gone there)

theloft

Xbigman wrote:

Does anybody know if its worth putting a sky decoder on standby when not in use?
I turn everything else off or put on standby if its not practical to turn off but this is the one thing thats always on.
Regards X

I'm sure when I got my Pace Box, it mentioned that it was best to switch to stand-by when not in use, in order to save electricity. Even if it is a small saving, just think of the millions of Sky users, each one saving a teeny bit !!
It is also safer to have things on stand-by I believe. Anyway it is only one push on your Sky remote, I never find it a problem and if you turn everything else to stand-by, why leave this one out !!

scattycat_3

Hi X,
You are probably stuck with leaving it on standby, purely for operating reasons, as we do with our cable box.

If you are concerned about consumption whilst on standby, you might consider getting one of the plug in LCD power meters, as sold regularly on offer by the German linked Supemarkets ( Lidl, Aldi or Netto ), and Tchibo for about £6.99. With these devices you can see, price, log and compare units used or cost, appliance by appliance, thus seeing whether there would be much saving. At just under 7p per KWHr, we found leaving the computer on standby was wasting £'s, now it is switched off when unused.

I have to disagree with the Loft's statement that it is safer to leave things on standby, though he probably didn't intend to refer to personal safety. Any appliance that is left plugged in to live unswitched mains socket, even if the device is switched off, can be a fire hazard if it develops a fault. Very low risk with modern approved items, but not unheard of.

HTH's Scat

Xbigman

Thanks for replies. The reason I started looking at this was because I think my DVD recorder is overheating. The didibox sits on top of this (or did) and I noticed it is always hot, although it seems anything that is plugged in gets hot somewhere because of the way they use electricity. I tried turning off the supply to the TV, digibox, etc but the DVD recorder takes 3 or 4 minutes to reset all the channels and loses the time settings if off for more than a few minutes. Obviously this is a pain in the rear.

After thinking about it Digibox and broadband modem go on standby when not in use now.
Regards




X