From our equipment only two really consumes a lot of power when are theoretically turned off:

• Scaler (DVDO iScan VP20): 13.7 W
• Cable TV converter (Motorola): 27.5 W

A scaler – also known by other names like line doubler and upconverter – is a device that gets non-HD contents and converts them into high-definition. This equipment isn’t so popular because of its price, but all high-end home theater setups must have one of them. The problem with our scaler is that when it was “turned off” it was consuming only 1 W less than when it was turned on and working. This is insane.

But what was really hurting our electricity bill was something that everybody has at home: the cable TV converter box. Turned off this device was consuming the same amount of power as when it was turned on: 27.5 W. That is ridiculous. Of course we are talking about a specific model from Motorola and your converter may not have this problem.

Way before we bought our power meter we had the impression that our converter was wasting a lot of power, by the simple fact that it was hot even after 24 hours “turned off.” This was a hint that it was consuming a lot of power even turned off.

Because these two items are part of our home theater with these results we recommend everybody to use a surge protector with their home theater systems and turn it off after watching TV or a movie. This will save you a lot of money (in our case we were wasting over 40 W 24/7).

Note that if your cable signal is digital by removing your cable TV converter from the AC outlet you will lose access to the programming grid. When turning the equipment back on you will have to wait to up half an hour for it to download all channel information.