Like others have said, the power button is the best option. I have a customer that has driven me nuts over his cable boxes. Before spectrum took over time warner, a video sensor worked 99% of the time. But when spectrum took over, he had boxes start dying and the new boxes became a real problem. I found neither video or audio sensors would work. It seemed that even when the box was “off” it still had some signal. Current sensing didn’t work because the stand by mode and on mode doesn’t have enough change in power usage. They have taken away the outlet on the back of the box, or if it is still there it’s no longer switched, so I couldn’t use a wall wart and voltage detector. One of the guys at Elan suggested a light sensor. Well, the optical audio doesn’t shut off when the box is “off”, so I couldn’t put it there. And the only thing that changes on the front is one little blue LED light. But, the front display is set back about an inch from the front “glass”. So you can’t get a light sensor close enough for it to detect a change. I wasted hours trying to solve this problem and only determined that the cable companies have screwed us all the way around.

What I did find though, is that recently Spectrum has started bringing number power on back on some boxes. The other feature I found is along with disabling power saving mode, they have added auto power on. So I set all this customer’s receivers to automatically power on at 8:00am every morning. This worked fine until Spectrum came out and replaced his main receiver