# Disk is spinning in OFF mode



## orenr (Jun 10, 2004)

Shouldn't the disk spin down when the 622 is "off"?

I know off isn't really off, but as far as I can tell all it does in the "off" mode is to put up the screen saver and turn off the LEDs on the front panel.

I rememeber reading in the user guide that the off mode helps reliability. They must have meant the reliability of the TV, because of the screen saver


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## caam1 (Dec 7, 2004)

The 622 hard drive spins all the time when the power cord is plugged in. The reason the user guide says turning it off helps reliability is the 622 will only download the program guide updates, software upgrades, etc. when the receiver is in the off or standby mode.


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## orenr (Jun 10, 2004)

I'm trying to think what else it would do if I didn't turn it off. The only thing that comes to mind is buffering the two tuners. I guess that saves something...


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## Cyclone (Jul 1, 2002)

Its also records the VOD movies when you have the receiver "off".


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## R_Childress (Jan 4, 2006)

More than that , I'd say it also performs some disk maintenance. Alot of data is transferred to and from that drive during the course of a day.


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

My 622 uses about 53 watts on or off so no real reason to turn it off as far as I can tell.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

gitarzan said:


> My 622 uses about 53 watts on or off so no real reason to turn it off as far as I can tell.


Several reasons to turn it off. Some of the circuits do turn off, and maintenance can be done. Disk activity is reduced (its not recording the streams), although it is still spinning. The guide information can download. Unless you disable or change it, the default is to power down after 4 hours of inactivity anyway.


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

I did a search to find if any of the set top box manufactureres are getting 'energy star' certifications. I was disappointed to learn that the government as of 2004 no longer certifies STB's for the 'energy star'. Reasons stated were that the STB manufactures lobbied to discontinue the rating for STB's because they needed to be on when turned off and that no STB manufacturer had a significant edge with the current state of technology.

How hard could it be to update the 622 software to have it go to a low power mode when it is not downloading guide updates, recording, or performing other maintenance?


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## foghorn2 (Jun 18, 2006)

gitarzan said:


> I did a search to find if any of the set top box manufactureres are getting 'energy star' certifications. I was disappointed to learn that the government as of 2004 no longer certifies STB's for the 'energy star'. Reasons stated were that the STB manufactures lobbied to discontinue the rating for STB's because they needed to be on when turned off and that no STB manufacturer had a significant edge with the current state of technology.
> 
> How hard could it be to update the 622 software to have it go to a low power mode when it is not downloading guide updates, recording, or performing other maintenance?


Right, so it can behave like a Windoze machine, when it goes to sleep mode, it goes into "COMA" mode instead!

Leave it like it is. We don't need problems.


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## orenr (Jun 10, 2004)

Good point 

In my original post, I wasn't complaining - I'm new to Dish and I just wanted to make sure that my box wasn't misbehaving


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

Much of my entertainment budget goes to dish. I have high expectations for their service. Just like my landline phone, it just should always work and work very well for a long time.

I measured the energy consumption of my 622 for a few days with a watt meter. I found that it used more energy than my 18 cubic ft refridgerator (manufactured in 2001) for the same period. That is just absurd, and not just for the energy but also for the life of the box.


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## foghorn2 (Jun 18, 2006)

gitarzan said:


> Much of my entertainment budget goes to dish. I have high expectations for their service. Just like my landline phone, it just should always work and work very well for a long time.
> 
> I measured the energy consumption of my 622 for a few days with a watt meter. I found that it used more energy than my 18 cubic ft refridgerator (manufactured in 2001) for the same period. That is just absurd, and not just for the energy but also for the life of the box.


Not really absurd, considering all the marlelous things the Vip622 does so reliably.

You might just wanna lease a single tuner non-dvr box if energy is a concern.


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

My 622 has been plagued with problems. First few months the audio hiccups were not acceptable. Then the reboots until getting support to tell me to run in single user mode. Unresolved intermittent jerky video that I am told will be fixed in some future software update. 

Conservations should be everyones concern. I turn lights off when I leave the room. The 622 remote has a power button but it doesn't work.


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## Vettman (Mar 5, 2006)

I too am interested in the power consumption issue. Both the 411 and 622 generate a lot of heat (even turned off) I emailed Tripplite the other day as my UPS 1000 LCD get very hot to the touch (when off and no current is being drawn) They said is was perfectly normal Our PG&E bill was over $200 last month, and we conserve. Our neighbors are as high as $500-$700! It may pay to unplug them when not in use as I usually have to reboot them every other day anyway to keep them up and running. I've lost the HDMI on the 411 (last week) and yesterday I lost audio on the 622 *FIX your software *


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

From a Forbes article I ran across on Yahoo this morning on electricity that electronics on standby use. It supports my claim that the 622 uses more electricity than my kitcher size refrigerator.

Digital video recorders and cable/satellite converter boxes are among the most profligate. These devices, known as "set-top boxes," draw a constant 30 or more watts of power, says Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental advocacy group in San Francisco. By contrast, refrigerators draw only 40 watts.

The problem, he says, is that these boxes don't ever shut off. "To the extent there's an off button, all it does it dim the LED, which is half a watt," he says. TVs, by contrast, are quite chintzy, often drawing less than four standby watts, though in-use wattage can balloon to 240 watts for plasma sets.

For the full article which talks about Cisco going on to reduce set top box power consumption by 22%. http://biz.yahoo.com/special/allbiz101106_article3.html


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

gitarzan said:


> From a Forbes article I ran across on Yahoo this morning on electricity that electronics on standby use. It supports my claim that the 622 uses more electricity than my kitcher size refrigerator.
> 
> Digital video recorders and cable/satellite converter boxes are among the most profligate. These devices, known as "set-top boxes," draw a constant 30 or more watts of power, says Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental advocacy group in San Francisco. By contrast, refrigerators draw only 40 watts.


Isn't 40w greater than 30w? Looks like the fridge still draws more than the set top box.


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

James Long said:


> Isn't 40w greater than 30w? Looks like the fridge still draws more than the set top box.


The 622 uses 53 watts on or off 24 x 7.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

It just seems like a bunch of "to do" over nothing to me... Do people unplug their refrigerator when they don't need it? Like during the winter time you can just store food in a plastic bag outside overnight instead of using a refrigerator... like in the old days!

And unplug the microwave when not in use so it doesn't draw power. Oh, and any device you have that has a transformer in it (whether at the wall or in the device) is always drawing power whether on or off... so most of your stuff plugged in is wasting power anyway all the time. Hey, and why have a cordless phone? That takes extra needless power. The phone lines provide power enough to run a standard phone so just use that and not a cordless to save on power.

I'm all for conservation and being frugal, but some things are insignificant compared to others when you get right down to it... and if the DVR wasn't "on" all the time, then you'd probably see lack of performance in other feature you like so much and would complain about that.


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## DanoP (Sep 29, 2006)

gitarzan said:


> My 622 uses about 53 watts on or off so no real reason to turn it off as far as I can tell.


So can any of you electrical engineers check the math/logic.....

53 watts = .053 kw
Cost of electricity = $0.135/kWh (for me anyway in TX)

.053 * 24 (hours in day) * .135 = .17172 (cents/day) = $5.15 per month.

:whatdidid


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## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

I think you should be very happy with the cost of electricity in Ft Worth!

Like Vettman, I'm a PG&E customer and paid only 11.43 cents/Kwh for my first 461 Kwh. Then 13 for the next 138 Kwh, then 22 for the next 322 Kwh, then 30.3 for the next 461 Kwh, then 34.65 for the next 387 Kwh. Anything I could drop would be a savings of almost three times your 13 cents. But you shouldn't expect to see significant savings from spinning down the drive. I guess you could say my 942 uses 53 watts, but that comes from a 32 watt draw of the 942 itself and the power supply for the legacy SW64 is drawing 21 watts. I'm assuming the people that measured 53 watts are feeding DishPro LNBs. If a DPP44, it might draw less - dunno.

As far as spinning down the drive, I've found a few ways to make my 508 spin down and measure 14 watts w/o the drive and 21 watts with the drive. Different drive, but it gives you an idea of what might be saved in terms of power if the 622 did stop the drive. 

Not terribly important, but when I push and hold power on the 508 long enough, the drive will stop. It starts again when you let go of power and is right back to 21 watts but will drop back to 14 watts within 5 minutes (and I see the "Please wait for disk drive" message. Something happens during the middle of the night reboot and VOD check that sometimes leaves the 508 drive spinning. Once it gets out of the spin down mode, it seems to stay out of spin down until a power switch reboot. 622 does NOT behave similarly.


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## DanoP (Sep 29, 2006)

Of course, the rates vary somewhat depending on season but I'm quoting the published average for my provider. We have many to choose from in TX thankfully.


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

My electricity is much cheaper. I estimate my 622 costs only about $2.30/month or approximately 6% of my total electric bill.


"Standby power can be 10% to 15% of the energy load of a state," says Andrew Fanara, team leader for product specification development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "In California they went to homes where everything was shut off, and even then they consumed 100 to 105 watts of standby power at all times."


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## gsarjeant (Sep 15, 2006)

HDMe said:


> It just seems like a bunch of "to do" over nothing to me... Do people unplug their refrigerator when they don't need it? Like during the winter time you can just store food in a plastic bag outside overnight instead of using a refrigerator... like in the old days!


Does your refrigerator's compressor run all the time, even when it doesn't need to be in use?

Drives fail. Electronics generate heat. A lot of us keep these units in cabinets where heat and airflow are concerns. We have folks hooking fans up to their 622s to keep the internal temperatures down. What sort of an effect would spinning the drive down have on the average internal temperature of the unit?

This is a support forum. A lot of us have a question about the way the unit operates. I assume that the people at Dish decided to keep the drive spinning for a reason; I'd simply like to know what that reason is. That doesn't seem terribly unreasonable to me. But instead of a direct answer, I can only find vague statements to the effect that STBs have to stay on all the time or speculation like this:



HDMe said:


> if the DVR wasn't "on" all the time, then you'd probably see lack of performance in other feature you like so much and would complain about that.


What could that feature be? We're talking about spinning the drive down when it's idle. Pretty much by definition, that's a state where we aren't using any of the features of the system. But I'm willing to entertain the notion that it would have a detrimental effect on one of the features. It's possible, but it's not documented anywhere as far as I can tell. That's why I and others have come to a support forum asking why the drive doesn't spin down.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Just like light bulbs most often burn out when you are turning them on (surge of power at on-time) hard drives seem to fail most often during start-up phase.

If the DVR hard drive spins down... then it has to spin-up again to do anything. This means it will spin up when it needs to do its nightly maintenance or EPG downloads... and it will need to spin-up whenever you have a timer set to fire. It also does not "come on" as fast when you first power-up if the drive has spun-down. These are things you would notice during regular use, and probably other customers complained about past DVRs that did spin-down in standby mode.

I do understand where some of this comes from... but anyone who has a DVR has lots of other things in the house that can probably be turned off if conservation of electricity is really a concern... so I don't know why the DVR in particular is singled out here. It just seems like the wrong place to start when so many other things in the house are wasting more electricity that could be addressed first.


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## gsarjeant (Sep 15, 2006)

Of course, it takes more force to get a stopped drive spinning then to keep a spinning one going, which results in more stess on the moving parts and all. I get that. But it still seems to me that for most people, the majority of time is idle time on the unit.

I'm not convinced that you would notice spin ups during regular use, since the unit is always recording the live buffer. When you're watching tv, the 622 is writing to the hard drive. It can't go idle in that case. Once you power the unit on, the drive would start spinning, and it wouldn't be able to spin down until you turned it off. Then it would have to spin up again for timers and maintenance as you say.

People who are concerned about conserving energy are likely also reducing output from other sources where possible. The reason that the DVR is singled out here is that this is a support forum for the DVR. There's no sense in asking Dish to get our refrigerators to run more efficiently.

But it's not just a conservation issue. In my case, it's also plain-old curiosity. Maybe the reasons you gave are the reasons they keep it going. Maybe it's something else. My issue is that we don't know.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

This issues definitely comes up from time to time. With the 921, 942 and now the 622. Also with the 50x series.



> I'm not convinced that you would notice spin ups during regular use, since the unit is always recording the live buffer.


True. and the buffer is on the drive not a memory buffer so any writing to the buffer would require the drive spinning as I understand it.

As for spinning up. It definitely would effect user experience from coming out of standby and accessing a channel quickly. How the user experience would be effected is hard to say without actually trying it, but I am sure there would be a delay and one most users would find annoying.

That is just one issue that comes to my mind, however, I am sure there are other issues, but that is one related to gsarjeants comments.


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## gsarjeant (Sep 15, 2006)

Ron Barry said:


> As for spinning up. It definitely would effect user experience from coming out of standby and accessing a channel quickly. How the user experience would be effected is hard to say without actually trying it, but I am sure there would be a delay and one most users would find annoying.
> 
> That is just one issue that comes to my mind, however, I am sure there are other issues, but that is one related to gsarjeants comments.


Thanks, Ron. That's the sort of thing I'd like to know. Are DVR users generally very particular about the time between powering the unit on and accessing a channel? If it's the sort of thing where 10 to 15 people on a forum are going to complain about the drive spinning down but people are going to start rioting in the streets and kicking their pets if the unit takes an extra half-second to respond on startup, then of course you keep the drive spinning.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

It takes a couple of seconds for my set to warm up and display the HDMI picture. About the same time as it took for my 501 to spin up when it is first turned on. I probably wouldn't notice the difference unless I turned on my set and waited before turning on the receiver.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

That is my experience with my 501 as well... I'm not complaining about the newer receivers keeping the hard drives spinning... but I'm also not complaining about the delay on my 501 startup either. Like JL says, my TV needs a few seconds to warm up and usually this times out just fine with my 501 spinning up and ready once the TV is good to go.

But I gather other folks in the past have complained of the delays in startup... perhaps folks who watch a lot of DVDs or something and have their TVs already cooking and then want to switch to the Dish receiver and don't like waiting the few seconds for it to start up? I dunno.

But I gather there were complaints, and coupled with the drive wear/tear during spinup that made them change their philosophy for the newer receivers.

As for the folks on the purely electricity-conservation side... I just look around my own house and see so many other things (lights inside and out, water heater, central air, refrigerator, tv, computer, radio, stove, and on and on) that I'd have to cut off before it got to a decision about how much (or little) I could save by cutting off the DVR that it seems like once I got to that point if I couldn't afford that small amount of electricity then maybe I would be better off without the DVR entirely.


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

Spin up time should be no more than a few seconds. If the 622 just discarded any bits while the drive was spinning up I doubt anyone would notice. I also suspect the hard drive uses less than 10 watts power when runing and only about 1.5 watts on standby (if it could). 

So I to am curious what the technical reason or motivation is for not allowing the hard drive to spin down or more importantly why the whole unit can not hibernate for me on weeknights from say midnight to 5pm the next day or whenever the next scheduled timer or maintenance event.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

If couple of seconds were added onto the delay coming out of standby mode (which I do regularly), I can assure you I would notice. I am not saying it should be a deal breaker, but something I would definitely over time find annoying.


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## articos (Oct 10, 2006)

Does the buffer still record in the "off" state? I don't believe it does - the few times I've had mine off and brought it back up, if I hit pause, there's nothing in the buffer prior to when I just powered it back on. I had thought it only recorded guide data, updates, dvr timers, and did house cleaning during it's off state. FWIW, I'd rather the disk spin down if it's not buffering and it's off, but I'm not bothered by the delay either.

Ok, so this thread leads me to another question I've been wondering about: Why does the software need the box to be in it's off mode in order to do guide updates/software updates/housecleaning? I don't believe any of the other box vendors need to put their boxes into an off state - they just download in the background and do all of this on the fly. One of the things that bothers me about Dish's engineering is they make me work around the box, as opposed to having the box work around me. Really unintuitive.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

In the "on" state the software is decoding a television channel stream and displaying it for your viewing pleasure. The background stuff that requires the use of a tuner (such as guide downloads, VOD downloads and software updates) waits for you to stop using your receiver (turned "off" with no DVR events in progress).

The box does a fair job of working around you. Except for the nightly update (which you can schedule to occur any time you wish) it waits until you turn it "off" to do it's maintainance. (And even that nightly update gets bumped if you have a DVR event scheduled.)

Perhaps they could do more with the second tuner and not wait for the entire box to be "at rest" before doing simple maintainance such as guide updates and possibly more complex work like VOD downloads. But for now they are working around your use.


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## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

Ron Barry said:


> If couple of seconds were added onto the delay coming out of standby mode (which I do regularly), I can assure you I would notice. I am not saying it should be a deal breaker, but something I would definitely over time find annoying.


Did you ever have a 50x receiver? For years, they would display "Please wait while the disk spins up". I can still get it on my 508 if I've put it in standby and left it off for about 10 minutes. Something in VOD may leave a flag set to block it from spinning down (not predictable). The banner, video and audio all come up while it displays the "Please wait", and after about 3-4 more seconds, it is buffering through the disk again. If I turn on the receiver before the TV, you don't see it because the TV takes longer to turn on. Annoying is slightly too strong for me - it is a text reminder that I've saved 7 Watts for maybe 12 hours.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

I wouldn't call the "coming out of standby" delay of the 50x receivers annoying; it's a pretty insignificant delay compared to the overall delay of all the other equipment coming up to full power (particularly the television, depending on technology).

Honestly the 622 should do the same thing, particularly if it is going to have the same kind of drive longevity as the 921 (read: extremely poor) when left running constantly.


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## articos (Oct 10, 2006)

James Long said:
 

> In the "on" state the software is decoding a television channel stream and displaying it for your viewing pleasure. The background stuff that requires the use of a tuner (such as guide downloads, VOD downloads and software updates) waits for you to stop using your receiver (turned "off" with no DVR events in progress).
> 
> The box does a fair job of working around you. Except for the nightly update (which you can schedule to occur any time you wish) it waits until you turn it "off" to do it's maintainance. (And even that nightly update gets bumped if you have a DVR event scheduled.)
> 
> Perhaps they could do more with the second tuner and not wait for the entire box to be "at rest" before doing simple maintainance such as guide updates and possibly more complex work like VOD downloads. But for now they are working around your use.


Ok, thanks, James. I can understand the reasoning, but I still think they can do a better job with the box working around me. Yes, it does work around, but it's far from optimal. As evidenced by the last software patch that downloaded during primetime, causing some boxes to not record, and the fact that it needs to shut down completely to download guide data (and comparatively, Dish's EPG is one of the worse I've seen - Tivo's isn't flawless, neither is D*, but they have so far been much more accurate as far as catching recordings/recording times/new v. repeats than Dish) - other boxes don't need to do this. I'm spoiled I guess, from years of Tivo and DirecTV boxes where they simply don't need to be in the off state for anything. Even my cable boxes - which I hated - didn't need to be off every night to stay up to date. They did all of their guide downloads via sat (or phone line) in the background, while decoding channel streams, etc. Even software updates are downlinked in the background, then it waits til it senses there's nothing going on, and waits til 2-4am, and then does a 5-10 min reboot to update itself, after displaying a message asking if it's ok. And that's only a few times a year. If Dish wants to update as often as they do, I think they can take a page from other vendors and do it a little more intuitively, y'know? I'm not saying I hate Dish - the picture quality is stellar, comparatively, and I'm relatively happy - or I will be once they get these recent bugs dealt with, if they don't introduce new ones - but I do think that since everyone else does it better, so can they. Just like Dish does certain features that no can else can touch.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

CABill said:


> Did you ever have a 50x receiver? For years, they would display "Please wait while the disk spins up". I can still get it on my 508 if I've put it in standby and left it off for about 10 minutes. Something in VOD may leave a flag set to block it from spinning down (not predictable). The banner, video and audio all come up while it displays the "Please wait", and after about 3-4 more seconds, it is buffering through the disk again. If I turn on the receiver before the TV, you don't see it because the TV takes longer to turn on. Annoying is slightly too strong for me - it is a text reminder that I've saved 7 Watts for maybe 12 hours.


Yep.. had a 508 and I do remember seeing that message thought it has been a long time. Well maybe you don't get annoyed as often as I do, but then again on my HT were I toggle between DVD and TV mode regularly and when I do this my 622 goes into Standby I would expect to see that type of message more frequently.

Is the annoyance worth the savings... In my book if this is the only reason for not spinning down I would say spin down... However, my gut tells me there might be other technical reasons for not spinning down.


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

I wouuld like to see the disk spin down for standby. Then coming out of standby the first priority would be to get a picture with sound and then start recording the stream when the disk is ready. If a few seconds of the replay at the start was lost would you really notice. It doeesn't need to tell me it is waiting for the hard drive to spin up. My remote control has a power button. I would like for that to work also. When powered off it should use no more power than my clock radio. And like my clock radio it should wake up at the time I have programmed.


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## gsarjeant (Sep 15, 2006)

Ron Barry said:


> Yep.. had a 508 and I do remember seeing that message thought it has been a long time. Well maybe you don't get annoyed as often as I do, but then again on my HT were I toggle between DVD and TV mode regularly and when I do this my 622 goes into Standby I would expect to see that type of message more frequently.
> 
> Is the annoyance worth the savings... In my book if this is the only reason for not spinning down I would say spin down... However, my gut tells me there might be other technical reasons for not spinning down.


I know I keep harping on this, but is it possible to find out whether this is the case? It would be fantastic if our eyes could confirm what your gut suspects.


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