Mercury II Power Switch

[mreaves53]

My Mercury II seems to generate a lot of heat. I was wondering if you can turn off the power switch in the back to cut down on the heat being built up in my entertainment center? I almost need a fan inside it to cool all of my equipment.

Thanks,

[bill190]

I have shelves and wire racks to separate everything on my entertainment center.

The worst thing to do is place several boxes on top of each other. Better to have a few inches space between each box to allow for ventilation.

Whatever works. I found a wire rack at a second hand store which was to keep a hot plate or pan off a table top. It was just the right size to hold my Vbox up a few inches from my Mercury II and allow them both good ventilation.

[mreaves53]

I have my receivers stacked on different selves also, but I still would like to know if I can turn off the Mercury II with the power switch on the back without causing a loss of data?

Thanks,

[wejones]

Originally Posted by mreaves53

I have my receivers stacked on different selves also, but I still would like to know if I can turn off the Mercury II with the power switch on the back without causing a loss of data?

Thanks,

Sure, you can turn it off, and perhaps a good way to do that would be with an X10 switch or something, that's what I used to do with sat receivers.

My question though would be why the thing is getting hot. My fta receivers, including the Mercury run pretty cool. If yours is getting hot, then I'd start to wonder if perhaps there is a short in the lnbf coax, or perhaps a bad power ground somewhere, or perhaps you're slaving without a DC-block. It should be slightly warm to the touch, but really shouldn't be hot... although I guess you never really said hot, just "lot of heat". Warm is OK... HOT, I'm guessing something is wrong.

[csmith704]

Compared to my DISH 6000, the Merc II runs cool :-). My Merc II is warm but not hot also.

[mreaves53]

The Mercury II is in a cabinet with my Motorola DSR 922 and the HDD 200. The HDD 200 produces a tremendous amount of heat,even off, compared to the 922. I was just wondering if I could cut down on the heat issue, possible stave off damage to the Mercury II and save on electricity at the same time. It would be scary to determine how much electricity we now pay for to keep equipment on standby for remote controls.

Thanks,

[bill190]

I have everything in my entertainment center on a power strip which is high up on a shelf and easy to reach. I turn off the switch on the power strip when not using anything. No problems with Mercury II losing any memory, or with anything else for that matter.

Pretty much anything these days will not lose anything from memory when power is turned off. Of course the clocks will not have the correct time.

I do this with almost everything electronic in the house - have it on a switch or power strip and turn off power when not in use. Saves on the electric bill...

[wejones]

Originally Posted by mreaves53

The Mercury II is in a cabinet with my Motorola DSR 922 and the HDD 200. The HDD 200 produces a tremendous amount of heat,even off, compared to the 922. I was just wondering if I could cut down on the heat issue, possible stave off damage to the Mercury II and save on electricity at the same time. It would be scary to determine how much electricity we now pay for to keep equipment on standby for remote controls.

Thanks,

Boy that's the truth. I have several computers with their peripherals like printers, scanners and network switches and routers, 4 TIVOs, and 8 sat receivers that run 24/7, and a couple TVs, audio receivers, DAT recorder, DVD player, CD-player, and a Roku, which stay in standby, like you say, waiting for a remote to turn them on. Also, I have multiple devices running off wall wart DC supplies, that are using power even when not in use. I'm thinking that I could probably cut my power bill in half or perhaps even better than that, if I'd find a way to turn these things off when not in use.
One of my TVs is an old type that doesn't use a remote, and I have it hooked up via X10 switches, which is nice. I'd do that with more of my devices, except that some of these new computerized devices take a long time to boot up. The new DirecTV receivers for example, particularly those with a built in TIVO take a LONG time to boot up, something like about 5 minutes, so they have made that extremely inconvenient to turn off. Some lose their clock when they lose power. Another thing making it difficult to turn things off is that some of my equipment has to be turned on in a specific sequence, or it won't work right. For example, my computer downstairs has to be turned on, and a server started up before my Roku is turned on, or else the Roku won't find the music server running on the computer, and also the network switches have to be powered as well.

Right now, we users seem a bit powerless to deal with this, without losing much of the convenient features we paid for, but it should have been possible for the equipment manufacturers to design these things so that they use minimal power when not being used. Perhaps in the future, we'll see a "green rating" or something like that on these things, which will give buyers an idea of how energy efficient they are.

I have two stacks of A/V equipment, one free standing, but the other one is in a cabinet, and I used to have some heat issues with certain items. My TIVOs for example generate a LOT of heat, as does my Roku. I've found that I could control the temperature inside the cabinet a bit by separating those heat generating items. Ie the Roku is sensitive to heat, so I keep it away from my TIVOs, and have it elevated with 1" squares of wood under it's feet to give it more ventilation. My audio receiver also used to automatically turn on the DAT recorder and CD player whenever it was turned on, so I disabled that "feature". Anyway, now, my cabinet is pretty cool.