Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
mitchgrrt
Newbie

I have FIOS with the HD QIP6200-2 set top box.  This may sound really basic but I want to understand how to turn it on and off.

There seem to be two different ways of doing it.  One way is with either the remote control or the on/off button on the front of the box.  Doing either of these, when the unit is "off" it shows the time and when it's "on" it shows the channel for a moment, then the time.

It seems like it works completely differently if you shut off the power, for example by pulling out the plug and then plugging it back in.  After doing that, the display is completely blank.  Pushing the on-off button on the front of the box, or the on-off on the remote control, does nothing at first.  After pushing one of these buttons about 5-10 times, eventually it starts to work again.

I'd like to understand how this works, and I would like an easy way to turn it back on after completely turning it off, cutting the power.  The reason is that this is part of my quest to turn off "vampire electronics" in my house when devices are not being used.

Can anybody shed some light on this?  Thanks.

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Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
jmw1950
Specialist - Level 2

Turning the box off does next to nothing. All that happens is the normal programming output is changed to the screensaver. It DOES NOT measurably reduce the power consumption. To be honest I no longer understand why they bother to provide an on/off function.

I have measured the power consumption on QIP6416-2 with wattmeter, it is about 40 watts, on or OFF. The only way to save any real power is to unplug it from the wall. The problem with doing so is that it will take several minutes after you plug it back in before it is ready for use.

One more thing. The ONT consumes about 20 watts.

Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
Hubrisnxs
Legend
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Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
mitchgrrt
Newbie

@jmw1950 wrote:

One more thing. The ONT consumes about 20 watts.


What's the ONT?

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Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
Hubrisnxs
Legend

the ONT is the optical network terminal, and it's the main fios box that they installed either outside or in the basement/garage

it's where all the main cables come in. 

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Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
mitchgrrt
Newbie

The measurement I did was for my TV plus home theater plus cable box, and it was about 700 watts/day when they are off, which translated to around $30 per year.  So that's not a huge amount of energy or money but it's enough that I'd like to figure out how to turn it all completely off when not in use.  I tried out a SmartStrip

{edit}

but when you turn the power back on it takes a lot of work to get the set top box to work again.

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Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
Hubrisnxs
Legend

what state are you in?

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Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
Hubrisnxs
Legend

and how many cable boxes?

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Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
Hubrisnxs
Legend

oh you're in Mass,   yeah it's crazy expensive out there, the ONT alone annually will cost you a little over 20 bucks, not including the router which will probably be triple that annually (20 watts vs 60 watts) and then each cable box will be double that annually, times the number of boxes you have (20 for ONT vs 40/each for cable boxes)  

so potentially upto a 100 or so a year.     your big energy bandits is your Router, and also your cable boxes.  I don't know how much energy it takes to boot up, I think that is the answer you are looking for.    my understanding is that it isn't more than normal run time, but I could be completely way off on that.

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Re: Power on/off for FIOS HD QIP6200-2 set top box
matcarl
Master - Level 1

Naturally it takes longer to turn back on after you unplug/plug it back in. The box has to reboot itself. I wouldn't recommend you keep doing that. The box might not get the updates it's supposed to.

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