Can I leave the Apple TV plugged in 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.

The rated component life (hours) for the drive in the Apple TV is 20,000 powered on hours. (Refer to Fujitsu | MHW2040AT | Full Specifications.) Many electronic components age more quickly at elevated temperatures, particularly certain types of capacitors & mechanical assemblies like platter motors & stepper armatures. As you approach maximum rated temperatures, you must de-rate components, both for power handling & for time to failure.

Believe it or not by powering a device on/off or
putting in standby, you actually lower the MTBF.

It is not that simple. One contributor to failure is high inrush (start up) currents, characteristic of certain devices with non-linear impedance curves. Induction motors & tungsten light bulb filaments are examples. However, this can be mitigated by "soft start" current-limiting circuitry. (This is commonly accomplished in drive motors.)

Another failure source is mechanical stress caused by thermal expansion/contraction cycles. While you might think that this can be minimized by avoiding power cycling, in reality electronic components experience large thermal swings due to normal duty cycles, for example when a CPU decompresses a chunk of H.264 content, then idles until another CPU-intensive task is scheduled. Think of it like stop & go traffic vs. constant speed driving: the former is much more stressful for engines & associated components. It's the same for computers, but on a much faster millisecond time scale.

Basically, the best way to avoid failure is to balance power on & off intervals -- IOW, don't power up & power down so frequently that startup stresses outweigh the benefits of stress free, no power periods.

Totally agree with your informed responce. However, Fujitsu does also refer to a MTBF of 300,000 hours powered on. Thus, based on optimum environmental conditions-some of these drives just might last beyond the 34 month life span powered on.

Obviously my post was not based on specific component specifications, but rather consumer electronic device experience starting with an 8 track player purchased in the early 1960's. The unit still powers up and plays tape(s) but obviously the tapes have degraded to an almost non audible level. The original Com 64, Mac, IBM PC & IBM PC Jr. purchased 1979-1982 all still turn on but original operating systems on some via floppy 5 1/4 disks are beyond their serviceable life based on environmental factors over the years.

In closing, somewhere in the great state of Texas still burns a light bulb from the early 1900's. (Not aware that it has gone out yet!) I will challenge my original Apple TV to be powered on for as long as it goes. However, I do concur that per your comments that a balance between power on & off intervals is the optimum way to guarantee for most ATV units the longest life.

iMac + MacMini Mac OS X (10.4.9) Cinema Displays

That adhesive pad is a special silicon pad that is designed to transfer heat. I have used my ATV with the case off and the drive runs very cool, so I don't see it as a culprit in producing much heat to the ATV.

By the way, in case anyone is interested, I have a kill-a-watt meter that measures the amount of watts (as well as other parameters) being used by a device plugged into it. The ATV is pulling at max 24 watts while on. In standby mode, it is pulling 15 watts.

Glor

The adhesive pad may be able to transfer a little heat energy to the bottom sheet metal plate, but that plate isn't very effective as a heat sink: it's thin, has little surface area, & is backed by the rubberized base pad. Compare that to a normal heat sink: thick, finned for large surface area, & certainly not covered by anything that obstructs air flow to it.

BTW, special silicones (not silicon) are used in thermally conductive pads because of their stability at elevated temperatures & ability to fill microscopic air gaps between mating surfaces, not for their thermal conductivity alone. Still air is actually a good thermal insulator, so the polymer is used to displace the air, which would otherwise make the surface a poor thermal conductor. The pads are optimally no thicker than needed to assure good contact between more thermally conductive masses, & generally are under mechanical compression for the same reason.

The drive should run fairly cool in free air, since it only dissipates a few watts at most -- it is being in a small, closed case with other heat producing components that is the potential problem, since the un-vented fan will tend to bring everything to the same temperature.

There isn't a lot of mystery here for anyone with experience in electronic packaging design. What Apple has done is pretty obvious: optimized more heavily for silent operation, compactness, & esthetics than for high heat dissipation & low operating temperatures. That doesn't make the design bad, just not perfect for everyone.

Apple TV has to remain on at all times in order for automatic syncing to work properly. Also, as mentioned before, if you want the thing to be able to be turned on via the remote, it needs to be "on" in some form or another, listening for that signal from the remote. All VCRs, DVDs, Cable Boxes, etc. are "on" technically, as long as they are plugged in.

As far as how much power is drawn during standby and the hard drive continuously spinning, that may have to do with whether or not there's an active iTunes somewhere on the network continuously talking to the Apple TV. Remember, iTunes needs to send a signal to Apple TV every now and then to compare its contents with sync database. That requires the hard drive to spin. If a sync of new files is going on, of course, the hard drive will be spinning as well, and heat will be generated, even though you are not "using" it. When all of the computers with iTunes on the network are off, the Apple TV should be able to run at even lower power. I haven't tested this, but try quitting iTunes for all your connected computers, and see if that wattage goes down and the hard drive eventually spins down. Perhaps this hasn't been fully optimized yet, and Apple will fix it in a software update. Seems likely to me.

For those of you who are not getting the LED light to go out, my guess is something is wrong with your unit, or it's talking to your iTunes and you just don't know it. I'd have to do some testing to be sure. Mine sure goes out when I press power for four seconds or so, and my iTunes is not syncing anything.

Anyone know if Apple TV will go into standby automatically after a period of inactivity? Mine doesn't seem to. That would be another easy way to cut back on power consumption. iPod does this. Can't see why that would be hard to implement.

Either way, I figure most of us will buy a new Apple TV long before the current generation dies from over use. The software update menu is there for a reason. I'm sure Apple is working on ways to make it more efficient.

I can turn mine off (or put it to sleep) by holding down the PLAY button for about ten seconds, but it usually turns itself back on. Also, if I do this, I have to reconnect to my network, which isn't a huge pain but is a pain nonetheless. Any suggestions?

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 was having the same issues with the light staying on. It also never started the screen saver, although all the settings were set properly. So I did a diagnosis, and it said it was working properly. After RESTARTING it, it's now running perfectly.

Jon
MCOJFKflyguy

All these talk about the power consumption during standby and MTBF etc are all very enlightening but all you need is to have the engineer at Apple to think of Apple TV running on battery power then I am sure we will have a device that will shut down when idle, with a reasonable life cycle, and not going to generate so much heat that you can practically cook an egg on it.

If you want to turn it off, you have to actually pull
out the power plug for now, until Apple comes out
with a suitable solution.

Just put it on a power strip, or better yet a surge protector, and turn off the surge protector when you don't want to waste power and money.

Sometimes I want to keep some devices on a power strip on and others off. If the device doesn't have its own power switch, I own a number of small inline toggle switches for this purpose. You plug the device into the switch and plug the switch into the outlet, and you've just added a power switch to your device.

For my area, it works out to a bit less than $5 a
month, or close to $60 per year.

If that is true, well, we know AppleTV is not the only device that's manufactured to stay on all the time. If you add up all of the money consumed by these devices around the house, it is not a trivial amount. The funny thing is, this board is probably full of people who become furious at a government's attempt to raise taxes by a similar amount, but won't think about protesting the "technology taxes" caused by these devices that previous generations never had to pay.

Someone in an earlier post said that leaving AppleTV on was about the same as leaving a 50-watt light bulb on all the time...as if such behavior is acceptable!

Nope, incorrect. The apple tv in standby mode is pulling 15 watts. That's like leaving a 15 watt bulb on all the time......

This is around $1.25 per month if you keep it on and not actually use it.

Glor

Thanks for the correction. It doesn't really change the point anyway. When you add up all of the power wasted by always-on devices around the home and office and also the inefficiencies of AC-DC transformers (the ones you notice are warm all the time), there is a great deal of waste that's going on, from wasted power generation capacity to essentially a quantifiable tax on each person's use of technology.

I'm not quite sure to whom the "nope" is directed to, but please note that the $5/month figure comes from a worst case scenario, calculated by assuming the Apple TV uses the full rated power of its supply continuously. I stated that the actual figure should be less than this.

Real world energy consumption will be more than its standby draw (about 14 to 18 watts, depending on the unit, line voltage, etc.) & less than 48 watts (power supply limit), assuming it is left plugged in & used from time to time. You should also add the energy consumed by the host computer(s) to stream or sync from it/them to arrive at the total attributable to this A/V source. (Remember, they must be awake & running iTunes for streaming to occur.)

LOL

Its designed to run continuously until it fails, then be replaced. Its at the price point where replacing it with a new unit is the migration path. By forcing it on and off - pulling the power cord - you are probably doing more damage than any thing you can do short of hitting it with a hammer. The disk is designed to spin for probably 50,000 hours. It likes to be spinning. It does not like to start and stop.
The silicon components like to run at a constant temperature. Most hardware wears when it goes through a tempearture change, like in warming up and cooling off again.
If you are concerned about your carbon footprint then first of all you are at least uninformed but getting beyond the idiocy of global warming, by operating the unit in a manner that causes it to fail and need to be replaced earlier, you are doing more damage than if you just used the few ergs of energy required to let it run optimally and continuously and not have to incur the added cost of building, testing, shipping and installing a new unit.
I agree with one comment earlier about it does not have an on off button for a reason.

The silicon components like to run at a
constant temperature. Most hardware
wears when it goes through a tempearture
change, like in warming up and cooling
off again.

Which happens continuously as the load on the CPU & other components change. Optimized designs use large, efficient heat sinks & temperature controlled ventilation fans to minimize this effect, neither of which are present in the Apple TV.

My ATV is running hot. It runs so hot that it froze up on me and I couldn't get it out of the "screensaver mode". Then the picture started breaking up. I finally had to unplug it. I let it cool off for about 10 minutes and plugged it back in and everything worked fine. It is still running hot though. After reading some posts here I put it in standby mode and it seems it isn't running quite as hot but I still think it is generating more heat than it should. My guess is it wasn't intended to run so hot. I'm hoping there is a fix in the works at Apple.