Power Saver and Screen Saver

[mb340]

Hello -

I have an X1 box and use Power Saver when we are not watching it.  It used to just stay as a blank screen when in Power Saver mode.  Now, in less than a minute the Screen Saver kicks in.  I have the Screen Saver set to 5 hours, but once I go into Power Saver it comes on very quickly.  I called in to Support and the guy I talked to had no clue.  He didn't know why it was coming on or how to disable it.

Also, is there a way to disable hitting any button on the remote to "wake" the X1 box from Power Saver mode?  I would like it to come on only when I hit the Power button.  If any other gets bumped, the X1 box is coming on and we don't want that.

Can anyone please help me? Thank you...

[mb340]

Follow up question...

I found elsewhere on this forum that when the X1 box goes into Power Saver, it is supposed to shut down the HDMI port.  That makes sense because our screen used to go blank when it was in Power Saver.

As of this week, that is definitely NOT happening.  The screen saver is coming on so the HDMI port is very much active.  

Is this by design?  Was this a recent change?  

[fedup978]

I am also seeing this as any issue because if I powered down the cable STB, my TV 's would all say "no signal" and now that has changed.  This new change keeps the HDMI port open and my TV's will not shut down automatically after a timeout of no signal.  I found this out late the other night as I see flashes of lights out in my living room and I am the only one in the house so needless to say that I was not sure what was going on.  That is when I found out that comcast again made a change to their system and never posted a thing about it.  I did some research and found that they made this change.  Now I have to make sure that I turn the TV off as well as power down the STB  Thanks comcast for another wonderful upgrade to your system that will cost me more on my electric bill each month.   As for a fix just put a "Never Turn on" option for the screen save option so it will shut down the HDMI port as it did prior to your latest and greatest upgrade.......

[unicat]

Same here, Screensaver comes on about a minute after powering down the box. This just started recently. It used to stay a blank screen. I don't like this, it is wasting electricity. Can you put it back the way it was ?

[mb340]

I contacted Comcast tech support twice about this.  Both times, they went through the standard questions and then sent a signal to reset our X1 box.  Same problem.  Both said they couldn't figure it out and said I could go to a Comcast store and swap out the box.

I asked both of them if this was a new design "feature.". Both said that it's possible but they didn't know.

If anyone from Comcast is reading this, please switch this back!  The whole idea of Power Saver is to use less energy and send no picture or data to the TV.  This is causing some of us problems.  The worst part is they didn't tell us about this and there is no way to deactivate it.

[fedup978]

The fact that you called support 2 X's and they could not tell you for sure if this was a change or not is a sign of a poorly run support organization, but I have found that on far to many issues when I have had to call into their organization.  I was in and ran support for many years and any changes that were coming out were ALWAYS communicated to the front line techs prior to it coming out and on the day that it was pushed out to the customer base.  I continue to shake my head  at what I see coming from the support organization.  Getting off the soap box.  I just wish that I had another option for cable and Internet services in the area I am currently living at as I would fire comcast very fast.   Yep not a happy customer

[lesmikesell]

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@unicat wrote:

Same here, Screensaver comes on about a minute after powering down the box. This just started recently. It used to stay a blank screen. I don't like this, it is wasting electricity. Can you put it back the way it was ?

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Why don't you put in the code for the remote to control your TV power so it all goes off at once?  Why do you want a powered-on TV at a blank screen?

[unicat]

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@lesmikesell wrote:

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@unicat wrote:

Same here, Screensaver comes on about a minute after powering down the box. This just started recently. It used to stay a blank screen. I don't like this, it is wasting electricity. Can you put it back the way it was ?

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Why don't you put in the code for the remote to control your TV power so it all goes off at once?  Why do you want a powered-on TV at a blank screen?

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For one, our remote is programmed for our tv, but it is just the tv that turns off, you have to power down the box by either saying power down in the Mic or by powering down in the settings. Secondly I never said that the tv stays on, I said the screen saver comes on after powering down the box. So when you turn the tv on, not the box, just the tv, there is a screensaver on the tv. Which means even though the box is powered down there is still a signal going to the tv when there should not be. Wasting electricity. Power saving mode is supposed to save power not waste it.  

[lesmikesell]

I thought HDMI connections sense when there is something on at the other end.  So it probably goes off when the TV is off.  Or at least would not have a complete circuit to waste any power.

[fedup978]

I have the TV's programed in for power control, but when I use the options to power down the STB it does not turn of the power to the TV's for some reason.  This happens on all three of different brand tv's connected to the three different boxes.

[lesmikesell]

Do you mean the power button on the remote doesn't control the TV, or going to settings and powering down the X1 box doesn't also shut down the TV?   My remote contols power and volume on 2 diffent brands of TVs as expected.

[unicat]

Wow, Comcast has yet to even acknowledge this issue. Has anyone else had any luck yet?

[fedup978]

Nope, have not seen or heard anything from comcast, but that does not surprise me one bit.  Just like this change did not have any notification that it was coming out to make their customers aware of it.  

[UNCNU]

I've had the same problem for over a week.  The X-1 box used to shutdown after a period of inactivity and then the tv would be grey--the TV settings would then cause the TV to shut off after about 15 minutes as it detects no activity.  Now the X-1 box goes off and the screen saver comes on instead and I'm guessing the TV detects the screen saver so it won't shut off.  I have two differnet and fairly new X-1 boxes (a larger 4k box for a 4k tv and a smaler box for a regular hdtv).  This problem is on both so it can't just be the box or tv and would seem to be on comcast's end.  This also happens if I shut down the box using the remote--it immediately goes to the screen saver.

[lesmikesell]

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@UNCNU wrote:

  This also happens if I shut down the box using the remote--it immediately goes to the screen saver.

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Why isn't your remote also powering the TV off immediately?  Is it paired with it?

https://www.xfinity.com/support/remotes/

[fedup978]

I have 3 TV's and 3 STB and I have tested each of them yes, all 3 are paired to the boxes, if I hit the "all power" button to turn EVERYTHING off the Tv's go off but the STB will stay powered up until it reaches the power off timer limit, that wastes power no matter how little it is using it is wasting power.  The only way to get the STB to power down is to use the power down option in the settings option.  If I forgot to turn off the TV, after using this option, the TV's are all set to power down automatically after about 5 minutes of no signal to the HDMI Port.  This recent change that comcast installed has changed that and now they keep the HDMI Port open so after a minute or two the screen saver comes on the TV.  I hope this helps for an understanding of what the issue is, and what the people here are compalining about.  comcast changed something again and it is not helping those of us that are concerned about power usage.

[lesmikesell]

Personally I'd rather have mine stay on all the time with the channel I usually watch captured in the rewind buffer so, for example, I could go brush my teeth, turn on the bedroom TV, and back up to the place in the show where I stopped watching in the living room - and then catch up by fast-forwarding through the next commercials.

[fedup978]

The key is that comcast does not give the customer the option to do that.  It is their way or the highway.  A customer focused company would allow the customer to select what option they would like to have but that is not the case with this company.  I understand what you may want but they need to understand that there are others that don't want that.  They don't seem to get that and they remove options for many others that were there before to satisfy one other group of customers.  It should be very simple for their programmers, this is not rocket science.

[lesmikesell]

You might make a more pursuasive argument if you measured the difference in power usage and asked for a refund of the cost difference.  Not likely you'd get it, but at least you could talk about an actual cost.   Then again, isn't most of the electricity used to send anything to your TV just wasted along with the time watching it?

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[unicat]

Still no response from comcast. No acknowledgement, no eta on a fix,  no nothing. Longtime loyal customers getting no explanation or acknowledgement. That equals not very good customer service to me. Even if you call customer service, they have no clue what is happening. We are on a limited budget and any wasted energy is not good, no matter how small. If we were not under contract, I think we would switch to something else. Comcast does not seem to care about their customers very much. They keep adding new features, which is fine. But don't fix what is not broke and fix what is broke, before adding new features.

[Rustyben]

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@unicat wrote:

Still no response from comcast. No acknowledgement, no eta on a fix,  no nothing. Longtime loyal customers getting no explanation or acknowledgement. That equals not very good customer service to me. Even if you call customer service, they have no clue what is happening. We are on a limited budget and any wasted energy is not good, no matter how small. If we were not under contract, I think we would switch to something else. Comcast does not seem to care about their customers very much. They keep adding new features, which is fine. But don't fix what is not broke and fix what is broke, before adding new features.

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because the devices are energy star efficient there is not much energy to save. the set top boxes don't turn off they just go into a standby mode. the most recent DVR ver4 (HD) even uses a very efficient solid state drive instead of the spinning disk 'hard' drive. the savings for the older DVRs if left on standby (not used) for 24/7 and 365 days saves approximately $1 per year in electricity. they have not told us yet how little power the XG1v4 DVR uses so can't compute savings. the version 4 doesn't even have a clock display using power. 

[mb340]

Energy savings aside, why is “standby mode” sending any picture to my TV at all? Standby mode should do just that. I don’t want nor need a “screen saver” pushing pictures, time, weather, and Comcast ads to my TV. That is not standby mode.

There is no way that uses the same energy as no picture at all. Even in standby mode I can here the fan running.

Why does standby mode send ANY information to my TV? It used to be blank so why is Comcast doing this to us? Why can’t I shut this off?

[Rustyben]

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@mb340 wrote:
Energy savings aside, why is “standby mode” sending any picture to my TV at all? Standby mode should do just that. I don’t want nor need a “screen saver” pushing pictures, time, weather, and Comcast ads to my TV. That is not standby mode.

There is no way that uses the same energy as no picture at all. Even in standby mode I can here the fan running.

Why does standby mode send ANY information to my TV? It used to be blank so why is Comcast doing this to us? Why can’t I shut this off?

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the set top boxes are always 'on' the previous standby mode turned off the video path and LED's other than clock.  the cutting off of video has caused a lot of problems with home theater setups so they may have decided to leave the port open since the TV is off. the 'data' used is not part of customer measured data.

[fedup978]

While many of us understand what others have been complaining about now comcast has a whole group of customers that liked it as it was.  Why is it that comcast does not allow each customer to select the option that they want???   We know that they can provide an option to do that but instead they select one group over another.  Come on they could easily program it so the customer could select the option that they want, but no they are not a "customer focused" company so they do things that really make me shake my head.  Getting off the soap box.  I know nothing will be done just like many other issues that they do nothing about I hate to say.

[unicat]

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@fedup978 wrote:

While many of us understand what others have been complaining about now comcast has a whole group of customers that liked it as it was.  Why is it that comcast does not allow each customer to select the option that they want???   We know that they can provide an option to do that but instead they select one group over another.  Come on they could easily program it so the customer could select the option that they want, but no they are not a "customer focused" company so they do things that really make me shake my head.  Getting off the soap box.  I know nothing will be done just like many other issues that they do nothing about I hate to say.

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I agree after all these months there's still been no response to any of our issues from Comcast themselves. I personally do not like to turn on the TV and see a screensaver, there's no reason to have a screensaver there at all. If I wanted to see the screensaver I would let my DVR sit paused for a long enough time and then it will come on and then I can watch it. I don't want to have the screensaver on when the DVR is off or in standby. Why do we not have a choice of whether we want it there or not? It's fine if some of you want it there but there should be a way to turn it off if we don't want it. We pay for our service and we pay it on time, we have just as much right as any other customer to be heard. If certain people are having an issue with a certain part of the DVR, then instead of changing it totally from one extreme to the other. Why not give us the choice of whether or not we want one way or the other? But I can probably answer my own question and that is because Comcast really doesn't listen to all of their customers.

[RobertWy]

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@unicat wrote:

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@fedup978 wrote:

While many of us understand what others have been complaining about now comcast has a whole group of customers that liked it as it was.  Why is it that comcast does not allow each customer to select the option that they want???   We know that they can provide an option to do that but instead they select one group over another.  Come on they could easily program it so the customer could select the option that they want, but no they are not a "customer focused" company so they do things that really make me shake my head.  Getting off the soap box.  I know nothing will be done just like many other issues that they do nothing about I hate to say.

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I agree after all these months there's still been no response to any of our issues from Comcast themselves. I personally do not like to turn on the TV and see a screensaver, there's no reason to have a screensaver there at all. If I wanted to see the screensaver I would let my DVR sit paused for a long enough time and then it will come on and then I can watch it. I don't want to have the screensaver on when the DVR is off or in standby. Why do we not have a choice of whether we want it there or not? It's fine if some of you want it there but there should be a way to turn it off if we don't want it. We pay for our service and we pay it on time, we have just as much right as any other customer to be heard. If certain people are having an issue with a certain part of the DVR, then instead of changing it totally from one extreme to the other. Why not give us the choice of whether or not we want one way or the other? But I can probably answer my own question and that is because Comcast really doesn't listen to all of their customers.

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Are you saying you can't turn Screen Saver off?

[unicat]

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@RobertWy wrote:

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@unicat wrote:

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@fedup978 wrote:

While many of us understand what others have been complaining about now comcast has a whole group of customers that liked it as it was.  Why is it that comcast does not allow each customer to select the option that they want???   We know that they can provide an option to do that but instead they select one group over another.  Come on they could easily program it so the customer could select the option that they want, but no they are not a "customer focused" company so they do things that really make me shake my head.  Getting off the soap box.  I know nothing will be done just like many other issues that they do nothing about I hate to say.

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I agree after all these months there's still been no response to any of our issues from Comcast themselves. I personally do not like to turn on the TV and see a screensaver, there's no reason to have a screensaver there at all. If I wanted to see the screensaver I would let my DVR sit paused for a long enough time and then it will come on and then I can watch it. I don't want to have the screensaver on when the DVR is off or in standby. Why do we not have a choice of whether we want it there or not? It's fine if some of you want it there but there should be a way to turn it off if we don't want it. We pay for our service and we pay it on time, we have just as much right as any other customer to be heard. If certain people are having an issue with a certain part of the DVR, then instead of changing it totally from one extreme to the other. Why not give us the choice of whether or not we want one way or the other? But I can probably answer my own question and that is because Comcast really doesn't listen to all of their customers.

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Are you saying you can't turn Screen Saver off?

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No, I know how to adjust the screensaver. I am talking about the screensaver being on still after powering down the box. Read all the other posts, I am not the only one saying it. When we turn the tv on, the screensaver is on even though the dvr box is powered down or in standby mode. When you power down the dvr box or put it in standby mode, the tv screen goes black but then a minute later the screensaver comes on and it stays on, because when you turn the tv on later, the screensaver will still be on. When the box is powered down or in standby mode there should not be any screensaver on the tv. Or at least give us the choice to not have it on after powering down the box.

[lesmikesell]

My guess is that it is a deliberate choice based on experience with many TV models having issues or slow response with handshakes, input switching, and resolution matching when the HDMI cuts off completely and comes on again.  Even having it as an option might cause them more customer service calls.