[mythtv-users] Power Saving Frontend Ideas

[Jason]

>>  I agree, I'd like to know about this. Even at twice the price of an
>>  MVP it would be cheaper than most alternatives. If Hauppauge starts
>>  delivering the new devices a lot of us will have HD material pretty
>>  soon.
>
> i think it's called 'AppleTv'...
>
> ;)

I've got an AppleTV I've been using as a frontend for a couple weeks now. 
It has some occasional trouble outputting at 1080p, but I recently made a
switch to have it output at 720p and it's working very well.

The power consumption, measured with a Kill-A-Watt, during playback of HD
material is about 23W.  Idle power consumption is about 18W.  (It doesn't
seem to support S3 sleep and putting it into S4 sleep doesn't seem to
cause it to shutdown fully, so it consumes ~14W and won't wake up from USB
that I could manage.)

The AppleTV replaced a system that idled at ~75W.  Given my overall power
consumption, this difference will save me about $8 - $10 / month.

Jason