Power Consumption of Dish Receivers

[boosted-fc3s]

So I got a nastygram from my power company yesterday. They say I use 30% more electricity than my 'effcient' neighbors and 9% more than my average neighbors. So I was curious about what power load all my various toys use. I got a kill-a-watt to see. It turns out that my vip612 in standby draws almost 80 watts, and 85 when its on. That is a crazy amount of wattage for standby. I pay just over 10c a killowatt, and at that draw it costs over 6 dollars a month in phantom power draw. Pretty crazy. Are any of the newer dvr's more effcient at standby?

[Tony S]

I have seen posts like this in the past and yes, this is typical. I have seen posts from others stating that there was only a 1 or 2 watt difference between the unit being on and 'off'. As you just saw, the receiver is never really off, it only turns the video output off (and even that is not really totally off), everything else stays on.

Edit: I do not know if the actual wattage that you posted is typical, I was just commenting about there not being much difference between on and off.

[harshness]

As you just saw, the receiver is never really off, it only turns the video output off (and even that is not really totally off), everything else stays on.

The video output is NEVER turned off. It is either on or in screen saver mode.

[boosted-fc3s]

On the plus side my EHD only draws 2 watts

[upsss]

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So I got a nastygram from my power company yesterday. They say I use 30% more electricity than my 'effcient' neighbors and 9% more than my average neighbors. So I was curious about what power load all my various toys use. I got a kill-a-watt to see. It turns out that my vip612 in standby draws almost 80 watts, and 85 when its on. That is a crazy amount of wattage for standby. I pay just over 10c a killowatt, and at that draw it costs over 6 dollars a month in phantom power draw. Pretty crazy. Are any of the newer dvr's more effcient at standby?

Welcome to the club. See my post and how some of the "experts" here attacked me. http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-net...ff-button.html

If our laptops were designed by the same engineers that designed these Satellite receivers, our laptops would have been dead 2.5 hours after we turned them "off"!

[delta_charlie]

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So I got a nastygram from my power company yesterday. They say I use 30% more electricity than my 'effcient' neighbors and 9% more than my average neighbors. So I was curious about what power load all my various toys use. I got a kill-a-watt to see. It turns out that my vip612 in standby draws almost 80 watts, and 85 when its on. That is a crazy amount of wattage for standby. I pay just over 10c a killowatt, and at that draw it costs over 6 dollars a month in phantom power draw. Pretty crazy. Are any of the newer dvr's more effcient at standby?

Hi, that looks about right for the Dish receiver. BTW - my FTA receivers draw less then 5 watts when turned off using the remote. It does take a couple of seconds for the FTA receivers to come back on, perhaps that's why the Dish receiver was designed to stay on all the time but is sure seems like a waste IMO. Getting back to your original concern (30 % more power used) I would start with the big usage items - AC can suck a lot of power, what temp do you run the house at? Electric heat can suck even more then the AC. Running the AC at a higher temp in the summer and the heat if electric at a lower temp in the winter will make far more difference then any of the small usage items like the TV, DVR, satellite receiver Ect. Hope this helps, DC