Humming box
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[Deleted User]
Posts: 9 Forum Member
Does anyone else's box 'Hum' all the time, even when switched off ? Apart from that, have cured all my other issues with the help of you guys and it works just fine, THANKS. ( maybe I shouldn't have said that ) One last thing, do you think BT look at this site to address the issues raised about the problems, or are they more interested in looking at the money rolling in.
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The fan does click in and out sometimes and hard drive does operate when on standby
If you mean when in standby have you tried placing your hand on the top of the case to see whether the sound of the "hum" changes? Could be case resonance. For info mine is almost silent. You have to put your ear very close to the box to be able to hear anything.
Re your BT question, I've told them about this site many times so, hopefully, they do look at it. But it may just have gone in one ear and out the other :rolleyes:
It seems the fan is variable speed as when performing a reboot it runs at maximum for a few seconds then slows down.
Don't know if thats just standard for HD recorders though.
I am considering a cabinet to shut it away in.
After I "fixed" my noisy box by giving it a squeeze and a twist (hold the bottom left and top right and push together) it stopped my resonating problems. But it would still be too noisy for me to sleep in the same room. It's a shame they don't have a proper power off option (obviously one that wakes it's self up for the next scheduled recording) - I realise there's the argument that a constantly spinning disk has a longer life span, but surely it's a waste of electricity and it's certainly not silent.
I really don't like just pulling the power cable - but on the occasions where our living room has become a guest room, that's exactly what I do.
Its not good for any of the components inside the box but at the end of the day when you call up BT Vision to cancel your subscription as your Vision box as went AOT you will most likely get a free one. It's very dodgy just leaving everything on like that.
There's no reason why BT can't do this as part of a firmware upgrade. There seems little point in having the standby button if all it does is change the light from green to orange :rolleyes:
No, it's not standard. I have a Humax PVR that is completely silent when in standby (and even when it's on, it's a lot quieter than the BT Vision box).
I've had the BT box for a week and the only real opinion I have formed about it is -- it's so noisy.
There is serious case resonance, which as others say you can reduce to a certain extent -- I stick a phone book on top of it. And the fan is absurdly loud for a set top box.
My wife, who does not normally notice these things, complained about the noise from the box last night -- and we're sitting some distance away in a fairly large room. I unplug the box when I'm not using it, which is silly.
Worst of all though, is just how "ungreen" this is. As others have said, the only difference between on and standby is that the box outputs a black signal when in standby. The hard drive keeps spinning, the fan keeps going.
From what I've read elsewhere about power consumption by hard drives etc, I'd guess that the BT box is using anything up to 20 watts in "standby".
That's unforgivable. And completely unnecessary. My Humax box will happily wake itself from a proper standby to make any scheduled recordings. For me, this is by far the most pressing problem for the BT team.
EDIT: Actually, having thought about this logically for a moment, the box will presumably use the same power whether it's on or in standby. The tech specs in the user guide don't give power consumption figures. Does anyone know them? I want to take this issue up with BY as soon as I can.
I bought it as at the time Vision had not been released.http://images.digitalspy.co.uk/forum/smilies/rolleyes.gif
:rolleyes: As soon as I did that Vision was released. As I was offered it free, I took it. Vision is far superior technically but Noisy and less reliable.
Here you'll a few links of interest including the OEM V-box tech specs, BT's environmental policy commitments, and a power consumption report from the Energy Saving Trust.
Someone in the linked thread used a power meter to measure consumption, and found there was little difference between power consumed whether "on" or in standby.
Something Must Be Done....
Poor design and something easily fixed in firmware, surely?
this is not poor design, hard drives last longer when in continuous use, this is a fact,
and i for one prefer my box to be on all the time
if you don't want yours on then pull the plug....
if you want to save the planet diconnect yourself from the mains supply.:D
Compaire the Vbox and it is quite.
Until they get rid of moving parts i.e hard drives and fans and the technology for large amounts of data storage in solid state is down to the every consumer and affordable then I am affraid there is going to be some sort of noise.
Ain't necessarily so. The Humax box I referred to above is very quiet. If you're very close and listen carefully you can just about hear it writing to the hard drive. There doesn't seem to be a fan, or if there is, it's very quiet indeed. And standby is proper standby, and completely silent.
So it can be done. It's just a matter of good design and good components. There's no excuse for the noise the Vision box makes, or the fact that its standby is not standby. It's just poor product design.
The noise is the price you pay for it being able to record whilst on standby mode. Disk has to run and I assume needs fan.
Bigger fault to me is boot time if you switch it off at mains, as I do with my Evesham PVR.
But that's just it, it's not necessary. The Humax wakes itself from "proper" standby a minute before a scheduled recording. That's how it should be done.
And if you're referring to the PVR's ability to record whatever channel it's tuned in to, whether or not you're actually doing a scheduled recording, I believe that the Vision box does not do this while on standby -- it's one of the few features that actually gets switched off.
I doubt that one spin-up/spin-down cycle per day will adversely affect the longevity of the HD - but switching the box off when it may not even have a power-down cycle is more than likely to damage it!
Irrespective of 'green' issues I do not like consuming energy needlessly.