Can I leave the Apple TV plugged in all the time?

repair56,

If your Apple TV runs hotter than another box that slow-roasts hard drives, it is possible your Apple TV is defective. Judging by the anecdotal posts in this forum in a number of "hot" topics, there seems to be a lot of variation in how hot individual units run, from "lukewarm" to "burning hot."

Some of the overly hot ones may be too hot because they don't receive adequate ventilation or are placed in already hot locations, but mounting evidence suggests a few of them inherently generate unusually large amounts of heat, perhaps because some out-of-tolerance part found its way into their manufacture.

You may want to take yours to an Apple Store to have it checked out, or at least to call AppleCare about it.

As for general cooling ideas, it is not a good one to stack an Apple TV directly on top of another unit that generates much heat, or to place it on a shelf where the air around it is heated by other components. In closed-back entertainment centers, it might be a good idea to cut a hole in the back of the unit & mount a "whisper" fan in it such that it exhausts air out the back, rather than on spacers near the top which might just recirculate hot air through the compartment.

Any solution that draws cool air across the device should work, though.

the heat is unlikely to be a problem and unlikely to "cook" the hard drive. The heat you're feeling is directly from the processors which use the top of the case as their heat sink. The HD is underneath the board attached to the bottom of the case and uses that sheet of metal as it's heat sink. So the drive will probably be considerably cooler than the top of the case feels, though you can put your hand on the bottom and find the warm spot where the HD is.

You can look at the various take apart pictures on the internet to see why the top is hot, but the rest of the inside of the case will not be that hot.

I would guess that the main reason it doesn't turn off is because set top boxes generally dont turn off. My TiVO doesn't turn off, my cable box doesn't turn off. If the box is actually off then you wouldn't be able to turn it on from the remote. The sleep more is more like what the "off" is on a set top box or a remote controllable tv. I may pick up one of those "kill-a-watt" boxes to measure the consumption of the thing in standby vs playing a movie mode. Has anybody already done this?

I'm not so sure you can assume the drive is that much cooler than the case top.

The sheet metal bottom plate is thin & isolated from the drive by an adhesive pad, as well as being backed by the rubberized base. It is thus unable to contribute much to directly cooling the drive. To compensate, there is an unvented fan in the case that circulates air around the components below the top-mounted motherboard -- everything except the LSI chips (CPU, GPU, etc.) attached to the top side of that circuit board. The circulating air distributes heat among the drive, power supply, ethernet card, etc., & more importantly to the case sides, where it is transferred to the outside air.

IOW, the drive is cooled primarily by transferring heat first to air in the case, from that to the case itself, & finally to the outside air. Since heat only flows passively from higher to lower temperature masses, the drive will be at no lower a temperature than the case sides (at equilibrium), which are themselves also heated by the case top.

The analog to cable boxes etc., is not exact, since most of these devices do have an "off" mode that turns off everything except a low power subsystem that "wakes" the higher power, main systems on demand. Frequently, this includes a small, separate power supply, the basic IR receiver, a micro-controller or similar programmed device, & so on.

It may be that the Apple TV, as a comparatively low priced device, does not have such a subsystem, which would explain why Apple does not provide a more energy efficient standby mode.

Seems to me that it wants to be "on" or at least in "standby" mode (whatever that means) so that it can stay in touch with iTunes. So, I would answer the various questions here as follows:

Can you leave it plugged in all the time? Yes.
Must you leave it plugged in all the time? Not really.
Can you turn it off? Not really.

repair56,

If your Apple TV runs hotter than another box that
slow-roasts hard drives, it is possible your Apple TV
is defective. Judging by the anecdotal posts in this
forum in a number of "hot" topics, there seems to be
a lot of variation in how hot individual units run,
from "lukewarm" to "burning hot."

Some of the overly hot ones may be too hot because
they don't receive adequate ventilation or are placed
in already hot locations, but mounting evidence
suggests a few of them inherently generate unusually
large amounts of heat, perhaps because some
out-of-tolerance part found its way into their
manufacture.

You may want to take yours to an Apple Store to have
it checked out, or at least to call AppleCare about
it.

As for general cooling ideas, it is not a good one to
stack an Apple TV directly on top of another unit
that generates much heat, or to place it on a shelf
where the air around it is heated by other
components. In closed-back entertainment centers, it
might be a good idea to cut a hole in the back of the
unit & mount a "whisper" fan in it such that it
exhausts air out the back, rather than on spacers
near the top which might just recirculate hot air
through the compartment.

Any solution that draws cool air across the device
should work, though.

I have already considered everything you say before i posted.my ecenter is open back and the atv sits on a cold unused dvd player that is unplugged and cold and actually acts more like a heatsink to keep it a little cooler,but still gets to hot for my liking.This is my 2nd one and seemed like it was cooler for about 8 hrs just plugged in and turned on,but when i got the time to actually put material on the atv,it got hot,stays hot,even in standby(slightly cooler)even though i pulled the plug an let it cool,it gets hot right away when plugged back in.I really believe there will be problems,but time will tell.-thanks for response.-

I use a Watts-Up pro device ( https://www.doubleed.com/secure.html) between the aTV and the outlet to get different power readings. When the unit is on playing movies and podcast it consumes between 17 and 19 Watts. In standby mode and after the unit was on for a couple days the power consumption dropped to 13.8 Watts.

iMac, couple Dells Mac OS X (10.4.9) XP too

Dispite the heat issues around Apple TV being constantly powered, it also sounds like the hard disk spins continuously even when put in standby. I would have thought they could have let the disk spin down when not used for a while.

Hopefully we'll not get hard disk issues because of it.

Also, the light on mine stays lit even when I put it in standby, although the instruction book says that it should go out. Anyone else experiencing the same?

Paul

I am able to place the Apple TV in standby (light goes out) but it remains on and runs quite warm. In the standby mode it mounts in iTunes and I can even sync it. Does it really turn off and consume less power ?? Can it be turned off ??

I don't think so.... I thing all standby does is stop outputting video to your TV. That is about it. The hard drive continues to spin in standby mode and everything also goes on as usual. I think to keep the form factor of the unit small, Apple didn't incorporate anything that is required for the device to work. A seperate power supply for standby mode and processor etc. would require a larger unit.
I'm not too worried, if after a year everybody's unit is dying, I'm sure Apple will do something about it. It has a one year warranty for now.

After reading all the stuff..

Apple TV should be able to be turned off.

Why?

1. It is unacceptable for a electronic device to be wasting energy (any amount) when not in use. Or at least nothing more than a blinking LED. Although you could be able to pay the bill, no one like that attitude anymore.. think it again

2. Hard drive spinnig 24/7 reduces its life considerably. Why such a feature? Sync 24/7.. what for?. Unplugging the cord everyday a couple of times, might do the same for the HDD.

3. Turning it off manually via menu or via remote shall be easily implemented. So, let's do it in next firmware update, Apple guys!

By the way boys, please turn on Product Feedback for Apple TV now that the thing is launched, so I don't have to write in the deep realms of a forum how ****** I am about the fact that the fine device of yours I bought is wasting precious energy I don't want to spare, given that in my house we don' want to do such thing although we could pay for the bill of the whole building, ok? And for the record, if the thing brakes down because the HDD fried, well, we wil not buy another one.

Got it?!

P.s.: I am sure Apple people will have this issue solved soon. I am positive. It makes no sense.



MacBook pro Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I would have thought they could have let
the disk spin down when not used for a while.

In normal use, this would slow down menu response a lot (3.5 second spin up time for the OEM drive), but I can't see why standby mode could not allow this.

In fact, standby mode seems to be essentially no different than normal mode, other than that it (maybe?) turns off the LED indicator.

3. Turning it off manually via menu or via remote
shall be easily implemented.

Not necessarily. As has been mentioned repeatedly, special circuitry is required for electronic equipment to manage energy-efficient "sleep" modes. The same is true to turn them off (or on) other than by manual, mechanical means (IOW, with a physical power switch).

I guess a lot of people don't realize this because so many products do include these circuits that they don't give it a second thought, but if you do you should soon realize that "soft" power switches are electronic devices themselves & therefore require a power source of their own. If you design them to turn themselves off, or make that the default state, there would be no way to turn the device on!

Guys, your talking like the AppleTV is an old 1980s Television!

The AppleTV uses the same parts found in typical notebook computers today: low power Intel Dothan CPU, NVIDIA G72M mobile graphics accel, 2.5" HD. All three of these have simple power management built in that cut power to a small fraction of full power.

As others have pointed out the AppleTV in standby burns > 14-watts (from my WattsUp meter). The extra power burned while it is "on" seems to just be dynamic switching power to me.

As an EE I have to echo what others have said:

1.) Spin down the HD in stand-by. This is harmless and notebook computers do it all the time. The extra few seconds to resume from stand-by during a remote sync or power on seem trivial to me.

2.) Put the NVIDIA G72M GPU in sleep mode when the display is turned off. It seems hard to believe from the WattsUp meter data that this is happening.

3.) Use the Intel Dothan CPU sleep instruction in the OS X idle loop instead of just buzzing away waiting for something to do. I mean really, how hard is that?

If all three of these were done in SW that would probably cut standby down to < 5-watts. That would qualify for the Energy Star rating for computing devices.

Come on guys please fix this? It can't really be that hard? Personally my wife and I won't buy the second/third AppleTV that we planned on getting if this isn't fixed.

Windows XP

I have left on my AppleTV since I set it up. Yes there there is some heat from the unit but my set up has pretty good circulation.

By the way, the Extreme that supports N also generates quite a bit of heat ...

A device like Apple TV (also,satellite receivers and cable receivers, etc.)that do not have an on/off switch were designed to be left ON ALL THE TIME!

Components like hard drive(s), circuit boards and their components that go into hardware device(s) have MTBF ratings of approximately 100,000 hours. This means that an APPLE TV that is never powered off has a very good probability of providing for over 4,000 days of service or approximately 11 years of service before it fails!

Believe it or not by powering a device on/off or putting in standby, you actually lower the MTBF. Similar to light bulbs, the more on/off cycles lowers the MTBF rating of a light bulb. With respects to cost of running Apple TV 24/7/365 based on my electric rates--about 13 cents per month.

Believe it or not!

iMac + MacMini Mac OS X (10.4.9) Cinema Displays