Nightly shutdown for power saving

[simonen]

I am trying to setup a script to shutdown my computer at a certain time each day and restart in the morning. This is certainly the easy part for me.

My problem is that when I start my Sage box with the TV turned off, I cannot get a video signal to the TV when I do turn it on after the PC is has started up without the TV on. I am using a DLP TV with DVI and an Onkyo receiver that has HDMI switching. My Sage box has an nVidia 6600GT card.

Does anyone know of a way to force the video output in XP if the PC is turned on without a monitor connected to it?

Thanks.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by simonen

I am trying to setup a script to shutdown my computer at a certain time each day and restart in the morning. This is certainly the easy part for me.

Not answering your question, but can you share the script you're using?

thanks
Matt

[BobPhoenix]

I use Auto Power on & ShutDown myself. If you want to purchase a product($29.95).

BobP.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by simonen

I am trying to setup a script to shutdown my computer at a certain time each day and restart in the morning. This is certainly the easy part for me.

Just curious, how do you get the computer to wake up on its own when its power-off froma shutdown? Or do you mean that you did a hibernation or standby and not a shutdown?

My problem is that when I start my Sage box with the TV turned off, I cannot get a video signal to the TV when I do turn it on after the PC is has started up without the TV on. I am using a DLP TV with DVI and an Onkyo receiver that has HDMI switching. My Sage box has an nVidia 6600GT card.

Does anyone know of a way to force the video output in XP if the PC is turned on without a monitor connected to it?

Thanks.

Again, if you did a power-off shutdown, then I don't know how to get it to detect the TV monitor. I have a sageTV client computer connected via DVI to a projection LCD, and I always put it in standby when not in use. And it can power back up with the TV-off and works fine when the TV is turned on later. Maybe going through the onkyo receiver is the problem, can you just connect the computer to the DLP cirectly through DVI?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Just curious, how do you get the computer to wake up on its own when its power-off froma shutdown? Or do you mean that you did a hibernation or standby and not a shutdown?

Not sure how simonen does it but Auto Power on & Shutdown reprograms the bios to wake the computer up at a specific time if the motherboard supports it otherwise you have to do it manually. Luckily mine does support it.

BobP.

[simonen]

Yeah, my bios supports an auto power on feature so I was just going to simply shut down the computer by a third party app. and set the bios to turn on the computer at a specific time everyday.

I guess it could be possible that the receiver is the problem, if it is, then it must be that even if the TV is off, it must give some kind of signal saying that a monitor is present when the PC boots up, whereas the receiver cannot. All I know right now is that if I start my PC without the TV on and the receiver on, I will never get a picture.

I thought about putting it in standby, but I figured a clean reboot everyday would be much better than going to stand bye. I worry about Sage not liking coming out of stand bye, but have not yet tried it.

[mayamaniac]

Certain USB devices have problem waking up out of standby, the USB-UIRT is one or at least I had problems with it when I was using it. But SageTV seems fine at least for the client, I'm not sure about server version. If the tuner works out of standby then I guess it should be okay.

You should test the booting up the PC while connecting to the TV directly bypassing the receiver to see if it works, either from complete shutdown or from standby.

[jlabrue]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Not sure how simonen does it but Auto Power on & Shutdown reprograms the bios to wake the computer up at a specific time if the motherboard supports it otherwise you have to do it manually. Luckily mine does support it.

BobP.

Thought I'd jump in here and ask a quick question on this topic. Is it possible to have Auto Shutdown to shut your machine down at night and then would Sage be able to wake it up when it is time to record or does everything have to be done with Autoshutdown?

[iwanthtpc]

Originally Posted by simonen

I thought about putting it in standby, but I figured a clean reboot everyday would be much better than going to stand bye. I worry about Sage not liking coming out of stand bye, but have not yet tried it.

I've used standby mode for over one and half years with only two missed shows (system decided not to wake up -- I blame windows not Sage). Assuming you have compatible hardware, it shouldn't be an issue. I also don't think regular reboots are necessary -- I haven't rebooted my Sage system in 37 days and haven't had a single problem.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by jlabrue

Thought I'd jump in here and ask a quick question on this topic. Is it possible to have Auto Shutdown to shut your machine down at night and then would Sage be able to wake it up when it is time to record or does everything have to be done with Autoshutdown?

Don't think so (edit: but I don't know for sure). Sage can wake it from standby but I doubt it can wake it from a completely shutdown system - what Auto Poweron & Shutdown does. I only use this on my media servers in the summer time when it is too hot in the basement to have them and my SageTV server runing all the time. My Sage Server is on 24/7.

BobP.

[simonen]

I found the problem, it is the receiver causing the issue. If I leave it on and turn off the TV, then reboot, there is no problem, the same holds true if I put it into standby.

Looks like I will have to leave on the receiver if I am going to do this.

Thanks for the help.

[CadErik]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Sage can wake it from standby but I doubt it can wake it from a completely shutdown system - what Auto Poweron & Shutdown does.

The features to wake up the computer from hibernation and S3 are built in windows. You can create a simple task in the windows task scheduler and it will wake up the computer (there is a check box for that).
SageTV has been waking my computer up even from hibernation.

Erik.

[blade]

Originally Posted by CadErik

The features to wake up the computer from hibernation and S3 are built in windows. You can create a simple task in the windows task scheduler and it will wake up the computer (there is a check box for that).
SageTV has been waking my computer up even from hibernation.

Erik.

BobPhoenix isn't talking about waking from hibernation or S3, but waking a completely shutdown system via the bios.

[CadErik]

Originally Posted by blade

BobPhoenix isn't talking about waking from hibernation or S3, but waking a completely shutdown system via the bios.

I believe this is an ACPI feature and not just a bios feature. There is an option called "Wake the computer to run this task" for scheduled tasks and I've seen other software using this feature.
Btw, on hibernation the system shuts down completly.

Erik.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by CadErik

The features to wake up the computer from hibernation and S3 are built in windows. You can create a simple task in the windows task scheduler and it will wake up the computer (there is a check box for that).
SageTV has been waking my computer up even from hibernation.

Erik.

Except with hibernation you might not get some of the IO devices initialized completely like a total shut down since your memory image is restored from Disk when Windows boots. With Auto Poweron & Shutdown it reprograms the auto wake in the bios and the bios clock wakes the system. So it is like you pressed the on button at the apporiate time.

BobP.

Edit: and before you tell me that doesn't happen - it may not now but early bios's had problems like this for me.

[perfessor101]

I'm using an ATI Radeon 9600 XT with a s-video selector (to switch between my computers and my DVD player) and as long as the TV is selected as output the Radeon detects it whether the TV is on or off.
To help a little In the Catalyst Control Center I have set the TV as the primary display and under Display Options / Display Management Options I have checked "If my TV is not detected: - Force TV detection".
For those times I want to change resolutions or monitors I have set profiles with Hotkeys to so I don't have to start the Catalyst Control Center.

I'm not sure if Nvidia has a similar option to force TV or monitor detection.
Is the TV set as your primary display?

*- Do you use a remote that has a button you could map to a hotkey to 'change' video display profiles if the monitor isn't initially detected.
so you could hit the # button on the remote (after turning everything on) and the video driver would load your 'Theater mode' profile which would detect and initialize any connected displays.

Hopefully not clouding or confusing the issue,
Bobby