We live out in the sticks where there are frequent power cuts.
Mostly early morning about 7am for 30 secs but all the clocks go and sometimes the Video has to be re set. Does the Toppy loose it all? Or does it have some battery / capacitor back-up to prevent it loosing all the programmed info. Jerry

Hi Jerry

All you will lose is anything being recorded at the time AFAIK. Re-boots are actually recommended after new channel searches on the Toppy.

If this happens a lot what about investing in some kind of UPS or temporary standy by power supply. Some here
Never used one myself.

Richard

The problem when the Toppy loses power is that it's clock resets to 00:00 and doesn't update to the correct time until the next time it comes out of standby. The Toppy shouldn't lose any timers or recordings because of a power failure.

AFAIK there are two options to alleviate this although I have tried neither.

Either, get a UPS like this:-

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=77131

or create a wake-up timer for say 00:01 every day which will alow your Toppy to re-sync the time should a power failure occur.

I believe there is an outstanding bug fix request to deal better with the Power Failure problem.

Captain747480

Edit : Richard beat me to it!

A wake up timer won't do the trick, due to the way timers are handled, I think. But a more straightforward solution - provided your TV is agreeable - is simply to leave the box powered up.

If the Toppy is in standby when the power is interrupted, it will stay in standby without tuning to a channel and correcting the timestamp.

But if it was powered up when the mains failed, it will return to that state, and so automatically reset the clock, ensuring your timers are ok for future recording.

A feature request should allow the box to wake up briefly after a power failure, to sync the time, then go back to sleep.

Nigel.

The weird thing about the toppy and losing power ( while in standby ) is that when the power returns the toppy will display the C4.56 boot message then go back into standby with the time showing as 00:00

It's a shame this kind of kit doesn't use a battery back up, like a PC or my Central Heating clock .

I'll look into the UPS. Nevertheless the list of kit is growing and they are not cheap, an aerial upgrade for two systems, atoppy and a probably a new TV to make the best of it. Mercifully the outages are in the mornings and I guess a big outage due to bad weather is just 'tough'.

Thanks folks.

on the subject of UPS thingys, how long would one keep a toppy going ( ie the UPS rating in toppy hours) both in standby and while recording?

I too am considering the Toppy 5800 PVR and live in an area of frequent power cuts, so this is the one issue that concerns me.

Just to be clear, on the one hand a power cut causes the 5800 to lose the time, but on the other hand it appears to be able to record a program after the power-cut, triggered by a timer event created before the power-cut, without any manual intervention after the power-cut. Is that right??

How does it come out of sleep mode at the right time then?

Thanks.

No, it's not right. It will only work ok through powercuts if a) you have a UPS or b) you leave the box on all the time.

If it's in standby mode, it doesn't wake up to get the time signal, and so won't wake up for subsequent recordings. Not for a number of years, anyway - I'm not sure what year the clock is reset to, but it's not 2005.

Nigel.

It is, but bear in mind this wouldn't be necessary if the Toppy was programmed differently, and sensibly checked the time as it rebooted regardless of standby mode. AFAIK all the 4TV-based boxes do this - I know that my Fusion always briefly shows 00.00 on it's display after a cold start, before immediately changing to the correct time without leaving standby.

Yep; that behaviour would be desirable, and is something that's on the to-do list for a future update.

Nigel.

From what I know....

If you are recording a program at the time of the power cut the whole program will be lost.

As for settings, none will be lost except the clock ! Therefore if you have any programs setup to record later you need to turn the toppy on for it to get the current clock data and then turn if off, otherwise I assume your programs won't get recorded.

So if you have a power cut while you are out, it's bad news.



There is no great stress following a powercut to get the thing working as you like it. The only problem is lack of recordings.