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

A heat sink, yes, but not one optimized for high performance. High performance heat sinks have large surface area (which is why they usually have fins or other convoluted surface features) exposed to large volumes of fluid(which is why fans are used in air cooled designs). The fluid is the actual "sink;" the aluminum or similar material is just an intermediary transfer agent.

So what you are saying is that not only should I leave my ATV on all the time but I should be constantly watching movies through it to limit the expansion/contraction of it..

🙂

Here are my thoughts:
* You can argue back and forth all day long about what is going to make the ATV fail quicker. Chances are, it'll be your boredom with it as something else will come along and you'll replace your ATV with it.
* For me, the 15watts of power bugs me in who ways: For most of the day no one is watching it. I'd never leave on a lightbulb for 20+ hours a day just to get 1-4 hours use out of it - it doesn't matter what the wattage. Also, the heat bugs me. I generally leave my apartment pretty warm during the summer as no one is there. If this thing was on all the time it just adds to the heat in the apartment and it has to be pumped out, eventually, via an A/C. So, you're not only paying for the 15watts of non-use all day long but also for the A/C to pump that heat out.

I just push a button on my powerstrip at night before I go to bed and turn the thing off. When I get home in the afternoon and want to start watching it again I turn it back on. I also don't leave my PC on all the time. It's normally in standby mode (well, not technically off, it's still better than everything being on).

All of that little stuff (10watts here - 15 watts there) adds up in both energy used ( to keep it warm ) and energy used to get rid of that heat.

I agree in general with your thoughts on energy use; however, you must remember that the Apple TV is designed to remain on so that syncing can occur as a background process. Otherwise, the feature isn't of much use.

If you don't care about that, or don't mind making sure the unit is powered up whenever you change the content on the sync source or something of that nature, then it makes sense to power it up only as needed.

Well folks tell Las Vegas about wasting all these words about power. Forgetaboutit, as Tony S. would say

G4 Dual 800 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I have a solution. I have my apple TV connected to one of these:
http://www.oneclickpower.com/acatalog/#aDSK105

My power amp becomes the master switch. When I am going to
bed at night I switch the amp of on the remote, this then de-powers
the supply to the apple TV as well as the Main TV and periphirals.

This is available in the UK at least. Not sure what availability
elsewhere but it is cheap at 15 pounds.

No unneccesary wastage and helps the carbon footprint.


Stuart

I have the my ATV plugged into the switched power port on my home theater receiver. When it is powered down it turns the ATV off.

I more or less agree with Darth_Titan:

While the Apple TV obviously is designed to survive power outages, it probably isn't a good idea to kill power to it on a routine basis, since it might be in the middle of syncing a file & the worst possible time to kill power is during a file write.

The Apple TV keeps the OS & media on separate partitions, so it probably won't hose the OS, but it could corrupt the media partition or some of its files. Not a major disaster, since re-syncing or a factory reset should set things right, but a needless inconvenience at the least.

Two observations:
1) The temperature of the AppleTV will depend on the room temperature. If the room is 70F or 82F it makes a big difference because at higher temps its cooling is less effective. This means for all of us living south - aTV gets very hot.
2) Every engineer will confirm that MTBF (mean time between failures) depends on the temperature of the device. The hotter it gets, the less reliable the silicon (circuit!) is. It also applies to the hard disk. While it may be rated for 50.000 hours (someone says in this post) I doubt this will be true at 115F (if the AC in the room is off).

I guess the best way is to use a switched outlet (or through the amp) - and make sure to put it to sleep; at least then the hard disk may be spun down if no supdate is in progress.

160GB Mac OS X (10.4.9)

This is how mine is hooked up as well. Power supply from the AMP so when home theater systems are on (any of them) the ATV is on as well. When they are shut down, ATV shuts off.

I may be thinking of re-installing the power to a constant "on" source however after I talk to Apple (Genius or other).

Mine is connected the same way. When I power down my reciever, the AppleTV turns off. Hope this isn't going to damage it. And if it does, Apple should have put a notice in the manual about how turning the device off will damage it over time.

I have worked on the Engineering of tests and test equipment for Reliability testing of hard drives for over 15 years. Hard drives are always designed for start-stop survival. It is routine to test the head/disk interface for over 15000 start stop cycles with out any sign of failure. If you shut down and then powered up the Apple TV 5x a day it should survive for 15000/365 x5 or over 7 years.
Therefore you should be able to turn it off whenever you intend to not use it for -say- 2 days or more without any damage to the hard drive. I intend to do exactly that since I expect to use it abut 1 or 2x a week

KT