Apple TV raises your electricity bills

Or you can unplug it. Or plug it into an outlet with a switch (like most powerstrips) and turn it off when not in use.

you can use such a device as this
http://cleantechnica.com/2008/05/03/smart-power-strips-the-garlic-of-vampire-ele ctronics/
and when the computer is turned off the atv likewise

of cause that would not work if it's to work with a laptop on batts but anyways

Well, given that it takes about 30-60 minutes a day to sync my ATV, turning it off at night doesn't seem to impair it's function for me. Generally, I've got my laptop and external hard drive off at night as well because I can't sleep with the fan noise so there's nothing to sync to anyway. I've got the television and the DVD player (they use power even in standby)hooked into the same powerstrip. Flip one switch and instant green!

Submit your feedback to Apple:

www.apple.com/feedback

when you are done watching apple tv, hold the play/pause button until the white light disappears. apple tv will still have the ability to sync even though the white light isn't on. give that a try and see if your electric bill improves.

Someone a month or so back did the experiment by hooking up one of those things that measures electrical usage fo an appliance. It turns out that putting the ATV into "sleep" mode basically just turns off the display. The drop in power usage is very small. Apparently, the hard drive is still going.

Can you be more precise than "significantly" when you say it raises the electric bill?

Here on Cape Cod we pay above national average rates for power and even if the TV NEVER slept (which would happen only if I failed to read the manual and understand how to put it to sleep after use), it would take a whole lot of hours of full-power activity (approx. 22 watts) to reach one kilowatt of consumption, which would cost me just under 20 cents. At its approx. 17-watt "standby" level, which I agree is too high, it would still take nearly 59 hours to rack up that 20 cent charge.

That means I would be paying between $2.50 and $3.20 a month to run my TV if I left it plugged in all the time. But I don't.

Yes, the sleep function could be improved, but it is irresponsible to throw out terms like "significant" with no support for the claim.

-dan

Significantly? By how much exactly? How many KW hours per month does an AppleTV use if running 24/7? I mean, Al Gore is on the Apple Board, how bad could it be?

-Keith

I read it in another post in this forum. A search should turn it up. However, the figures that DanH gave in his post above sound about like the ones I read.

I was, in a sense agreeing with you in that, even in "sleep" mode, the ATV still uses almost as much power as in standard mode. It does, however, seem difficult to believe that, unless electricity is very expensive where you are, that it would raise it by as much as you say your bill has gone up. You might want to check the seal on your 'fridge! 😉