Satellite receiver power usage

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

Thr lnbf on the satelite dish needs to be powered 24/7. The receiver sends either 14 or 18 VDC. One voltage gets you 1 polarity, other voltage gets you other polarity off the orbiting satelite. When you shut off the receiver it only shuts off the vidio audio part. usually just let my Starchoice receiver turned on 24/7. Solarvic

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

a few years back I used a kill-a-watt 110v device on my Satellite receiver, to find it uses about 24 watts regardless of it's on or in stand by state. when I look thru the vents on the box I can see what appears to be an AC to DC converter. Ideally I would find this output voltage to be 24volts, or less so as to step down near the device. regardless a Direct TV Satellite receiver must be turned off with the remote and not unplugged, otherwise takes several hours to repopulate the guide and loss of autotune selections., so will always draw some amps.

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

We used a Dish Network HDTV receiver for two years and unplugged it every night. It took about ten minutes to boot and load the guide every time we powered it up, but it suffered no ill effects. We upgraded to a Dish 722 DVR recently and I put it on a digital timer that shuts it off about 10PM and doesn't start it again until 10AM or so. Still no problems, other than a little longer wait for the thing to boot and load the guide. The old receiver used about 25W, the DVR was about 45 when I measured it.

As for the OP, I am in Wayne's camp. I've seen voltages range from 22.8 to 32V on my batteries. How much efficiency are you really gaining running all electronics on DC, and what would the cost be if you blew a few of them up one day during an EQ, or low battery temp absorb? It's just so much easier to let the inverter do its job, live with the inefficiencies and know that anything with a 120V plug on it will work.

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

Logan5 wrote: »

... a Direct TV Satellite receiver must be turned off with the remote and not unplugged, otherwise takes several hours to repopulate the guide and loss of autotune selections., so will always draw some amps.

My non-DVR Directv receivers only take about 60 seconds to come completely back (including reading the guide data), from unplugged. The DVR is another beast, taking at least 10 minutes and a long delay after that getting the guide completely back.

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

yea, I just unplugged and restarted, 60sec. to viewable TV and the first hour of the guide shows up right away, the rest seems to fill in over a longer period of time. did not have an autotune set so IDK if it losses those setting or not? but it also maintained my custom channel list selection. seems I remember it was much longer on an older receiver I have since retired.

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Shall we slice these receiver power posts off into their own thread? It's no trouble to do it.

sure, that may be helpful for those more interested in just the TV receiver issues. Thanks.

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

i'll confirm the dish network took about 10min. every time we had a power bump back then it would reboot and if this was an ongoing occasional bump it made tv viewing a pain to do that day. our 2yr contract was up and we wanted to renew with another agreement and package deal, but they refused and wanted to charge very high rates for less programming. we dumped dish after their unwillingness to renew a contract with a good customer and soon found them trying to pull fast ones on us including making up that the service lasted longer than it did and trying to bill us for more months after they made us ship their equipment to them via ups as they refused to go get their stuff even though these same guys ride around putting it in. scheisters.

we thought of comcast at the time and tried to get it, but after their blowing off many appointments and saying they couldn't find us we told them we changed our minds and told them forget it. funny as they showed up about a week or 2 later unannounced to give us an install after we already had our final and current selection installed, verizon fios. (fyi, we had verizon dsl while on dish)

i found the fios dvr does also reboot, but it takes maybe a min at best and it has a full recovery of all info and programming. the drawback is an extra modem for the fiber optics that needs backed up. (note it does have a 7ah agm battery for that backup) i have not placed my killawatt meter on it to know the dvr's draw and i will do so today while i'm thinking of it. i do know one thing, the picture is far better than dish. my complaint for all of them is that they over charge for tv, but the other half got the net and phone too. i agree with the net in with it, but they give far more bandwidth than i'll probably ever need so if they had a smaller tier for the net i'd be on it. ftr it's supposed to be 15/5mb and we typically see 25/5mb. i was happy at 1mb.:roll:

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

Dish will renegotiate a new 2 yr contract and loan you new equipment at no charge, especially now that the Hopper is out and they have a bunch of 722s coming through their refurb house. When I first contacted them they told me I had to purchase the new equipment but I called back three weeks later and got a rep that made it happen. You just have to keep trying till you get a CSR that knows their stuff. When we signed up, Dish was the only company that would let us run the thing without a phone line attached. Directv needed a phone line and wouldn't budge from their position. Once in two years, we lost a bunch of HD channels but a phone call got it set right in ten minutes. We never needed a rehit in all that time and unplugged it every night.

I think Canadian providers might be quite different in this regard than USA providers.

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

PhilS wrote: »

When Primestart (later bought by DirectTV) first came out, I was gonna get it but asked some questions first because of the "off-grid" situation. They said the receiver was "queried" during the middle of some nights and it was s'posed to 'phone home'. Without power all the time, after the third unsuccessful query, they'd shut it down and it would be a phone call to get it back authorized again.

Phoning home isn't an issue with Directv, they don't require a phone line attached to their boxes. I've been with them 8 years and never had one attached - now I don't even have a wired home line. The problem is they send authorization codes every so often via the sat, and eventually they expire if the box is off too long.

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

Echostar was a big player that made Cband receivers for the older satelite big dishs. Also had another brand Houston Tracker. The owner of Echostar went off and started the Dish System. The dish system and direct tv enticed all the owners of the big cband satelite system to move over to thier little dish systems by lieing to them and using deceptive business practices. General Instruments come out with a receiver that would receive digital signals that allowed the owners of Big Satelite sishs to still make use of thier equipment. Notorola bought the cband system so they could get into the cable system and really didn,t want to suport the new big dish system called 4dtv, so let it die a slow death. People with the 4dtv receivers can still get some programing off a cable system that has a lot of channels on one satelite. 4dtv and Starchoice called had the same receiver first made bt General instrument that still used the big satelite. Starchoice went to the small stationary dish system and all receivers were built by Motorola. 4dtv receivers are no longer made and the diehard users are still buying them. If you still have a big dish you can still get a lot of programing free with an Mpeg receiver. A lot of people don,t know that as dish and direct tv told everyone that there is nothing there which is a lie. They receive first generation signals from the big satelite dish and descramble the programing and upload it to thier own satelite dish so they can charge you to make your direct tv or dish tv to work. The FTA receivers I previously mentioned can receive all the programing off the big satelite dish that hasn,t been encrypted yet. :Dsolarvic:D

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

I'm wondering how this relates to my Wild BLUE internet satelite receiver and the amplifier for my cell phone booster/antenna......now where did I put those kill a watt thingees?

Re: DC voltage TV's and Computer Monitors at Best Buy.

waynefromnscanada wrote: »

Well that was two months ago. Now after that two months of being shut down, all power removed 8 hours per night, some of the channels have again began to go red, unavailable. So there we go. Appears power must be totally uninterrupted 24/7 except for the occasional power outage, otherwise programming is lost. That really sucks as it uses more power than my fridge! Where is Energy Star when it comes to sat receivers?

What provider are you on ?? Do you know how to do a " Hard Re-set " on the box ?? Mine is holding down the up arrow key and using the on / off button. Some providers have a way with a on-line account where you can make it take a " New Hit " from the satellite. I keep mine off for days at a time and overnight with no problem. I have DTV.

Something I have noticed lately is that for some reason the LNB use to be either on signal or completely off signal . Now for some reason it can get to a point where I only get half of the channels and I have to re-aim it. I don't have HD or multiple satellites, but it still gets off.

They are huge power hogs.