I used hundreds of Niles LS-1’s. No longer. Just turn power save off on the box and provide a power button. Box stays on 360 days a year. For those other 5, hit the power button. Customers reboot other devices more than that a year. The cable industry just doesn’t get it. Talk to some techs. One of the most common calls I’d TVs that say no signal. Proves customers are stupid. But if the cable companies would just have a screen saver that says push any button to watch TV would be helpful. Uverse does similar.

GMAFB! Read my effing post and try to understand what the words mean! I wrote that I called SC and was told that the boxes are programmed to do this when they go to the cable companies, but the cable companies omit the commands- that means the boxes were capable, but we weren't allowed to use those commands.

Adding a power button is the easiest way around this, regardless of whether someone wants it, or not.

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

To the OP, does anyone in your market have IP control for any of their boxes? Via C4, ELAN etc?

Up here, Comcast has IP control on (only) 1 of their cable boxes, that I know of. With the C4 IP driver, it works great, power on, off, repeats, all of it.

Menu, (delay) Power

Menu, (delay) Power, (delay) Power

Old school workaround...

Uh... I don’t see how that’s going to help. I don’t see how that would anchor the power state.

If "Menu" can turn it on when it's off, then it would work. First one is power off, second power on. Although one might argue that power on might be simpler with Menu, (delay) Exit.

I keep seeing this kind of suggestion, totally ignoring:

I have believed from the first post that MENU would not turn the unit on or off, since "the boxes have no shortcuts or quasi discretes."

Joe... there's no button that will ALWAYS and ONLY turn the unit on; and there's no button that will ALWAYS and ONLY turn the unit off. Is that right?

I should think if there were such a button, Joe would not have bothered us.

Totally depends on the box.

If it is capable-
Box is on: MENU goes to consumer setup, POWER shuts it off, POWER again turns it on.
Box is off: MENU goes to Installer setup, POWER shuts down Installer menu, POWER again turns it on.

OK, I’ve never considered you could use the menu and installer setup as anchor points. Thanks!

Joe, Fins,
We're talking about using remote control commands here, right?

I think that MENU only works that way when you push the menu button on the front of the unit. Otherwise, the consumer with the remote would not be able to turn on the cable box -- it would just go into installer setup.

It works from the remote. I’ve used the remote to get to the setup. Never considered using this to find an anchor point

Hmmm. I see I was following the instructions in the manual and I didn't check to see what would happen if I used the remote for this. Lesson learned again: follow the instructions, then see what happens when you don't follow the instructions.

I just turn off the 4 hour power save mode and setup a daily timer in the menu to wake up the box every day(spectrum). The fios boxes don't have a timer but they have the screensaver with the "press menu" prompt.

I hate that FIOS screen saver.