In my efforts to reduce power consumption in the house (specifically, vampire loads) i've been looking for a solution for my A/V gear. Ive found two products that look interesting, but i'm curious what the effect on my equipment would be, specifically my plasma. is there any damage risk when continually powering on/off devices? I was under the impression that standy mode is there to provide a soft-start to reduce damage to circuitry. i haven't been able to confirm that so i may be wrong. these are the two products i'm looking at:

http://catalog.bitsltd.us/catalog/SMART/power_strips/lbgs/LCG3.html

http://www.wattstopper.com/products/details.html?id=74

the first one looks like more appealing to me. the only device that i would have to leave on 24/7 is my STB for guide info and updates.

I'm familiar with the second of those devices, we use them at a large office building to reduce power consumption from PC workstations and headsets and other devices humans use in office cubicles.

A couple of things to know:

1) Startup times are longer - the PCs can no longer be used in Standby or Hibernate modes - they have to be completely shut down and started up every day, and in our case extra time is consumed by startup with a comprehensive Firewall - so every morning power consumption peaks as everybody starts up, followed by a peak in attendance at the Starbuck's in the building cafeteria as everyone grabs a shot of caffiene during PC startup.

2) Wireless devices like mice, keyboards, Bluetooth headsets and other conveniences do not charge in the cradles after hours, because the wall wart transformers power down. Many have given up the use of these and are again tethered to their computers, the equipment simply will not be under charge during working hours long enough to last the whole shift.

In terms of the individual equipment you have, you need to consider each piece individually to decide if the device settings are nonvolitile and whether you care. For example, my HDTV keeps the channel list in nonvolitile memory, even after a prolonged power down it will still remember the channel list. Even if this were not true, I would not care - like you I have a DVR (a dual tuner TiVo HD) and I seldom if ever watch the TV's internal tuner - only when I need to record two channels simultaneously while watching a third, which has happened only once since December '07 when I got the TiVo.

However if I lost my video calibration settings for each input that would be a deal breaker, I care about those adjustments and do not want to tweek them every time I turn on the TV. Thankfully my TV set does keep these in nonvolitile storage, so I don't hesitate to completely power down.

If you have rechargeable keyboards or mice, you might consider seperate power management for those. For example I turn off all equipment in my Home Theater (a front projector setup now used only when we have guests) via a wall switch. However I have seperate power for my rechargeable devices (Bluetooth Keyboard/mouse and InfraRed wireless headphones) controlled with a twist-type kitchen timer. After shutting off the theater, I place these devices in their chargers and give the dial a twist and they get a one hour charge before the chargers are powered off by the timer.

Thanks Gary. I've lost power at the house before and the display settings for the TV were retained in non-volitile memory. My main concern was an potential damage to electronic circuitry by constant power down/up. I assumed that there may be another reason than TVGuide updates that kept the engineers from designing the TV to go into standby rather than shut down. If there is no potential problem, I have no problem letting the TV power down and keeping the STB "always on".