On 4/19/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">David Rees</b> <<a href="mailto:drees76@gmail.com">drees76@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 4/19/07, Kevin Dalley <<a href="mailto:kevin@kelphead.org">kevin@kelphead.org</a>> wrote:<br>> My 4-5 year old Tivo uses about 35 Watts average, measured with my<br>> power meter over about 1000 hours. I was hoping to cut the power
<br>> under that, and replace the box with something more flexible than<br>> TiVo. I'm undecided on whether this is encouraging or not. I could<br>> replace my TiVo, but I would use more energy, though not much more.
<br><br>It will be tough to build a MythTV system that uses less power than<br>that. Pete's backend-only system (you still need a frontend) uses 37w<br>at idle. To get it lower than that you'd need lower power components.
</blockquote><div><br>Actually, it idles at 35, but the average comes out at 37. Commercial detecting sends it to 41 or so.<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
The PVR-350 he uses should draw about 10w (would be nice if he could<br>confirm it) and PVR-150s should draw less, but I don't think anyone<br>has actually measured it. If you have a PVR-150 and a Kill-A-Watt I'd<br>
be very interested to see how much system power usage goes up by<br>adding a card when idle and when in use!</blockquote><div><br>I can probably measure with/without my PVR-350 some time this weekend. I can also unplug the DVD drive and see if it makes a difference.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">A notebook drive instead of a standard 7200rpm IDE/ATA drive would<br>further reduce power utilization, but at a cost.
<br><br>> Is it possible to suspend the computer when it is not busy, yet still<br>> wake it up in time to record shows? This URL mentions attempts to<br>> suspend computers, but this discusses end-user computers more than a
<br>> server.<br><br>Yes, it's possible to put MythTV machines into standby when not<br>recording, but support is hit or miss depending on whether or not your<br>motherboard is supported by the nvram-wakup application. Spinning down
<br>the disk could be done with some careful system tweaking as well to<br>prevent unnecessary disk activity.<br><br></blockquote></div><br>