Standby power consumption

[Kuschelmonschter]

I started to measure power consumption in standby with an EdiMax SP-2101W and FHEM software.

First test I have done is with optimized settings like:

Remote start: disabled

Automatic software downloading: disabled

There are easily 50-100 wake-ups per night which might sooner or later upset the PSU.

At least with those optimized settings, it went to deep sleep for the first time about half an hour after switching off the set (going from ~20W to 0.5W).

This test was done with the antenna cable unplugged. It might very well be that the TV therefore fails to update the EPG/services, retrying every X minutes.

@Anonymous @Peter_S. Maybe you guys can find something out about Sony standby behavior? That does not look too healthy...

Next night I will try with antenna cable plugged in.

[Garymjh]

Thanks for that. I'm still amazed that Sony won't even address this issue let alone fix it. I still have my Ethernet cable unplugged and only briefly plug it back in when watching Netflix or Amazon video. 

[mpiet1]

I can confirm that the new update do not fix anything for the wake-ups in standby.

But i found out, that it is possible to get debug of the wake ups. Android buffers its debug for some time. So after some wake-ups in standby you can get a debug on next wake-up.

I started the tv with connected LAN cable but with blocked internet by fritzbox. Then in standby the tv wake-up every minute, probably to get a time sync by internet. So i suggest, that the wake-ups are forced by a stupid time sync. I am sure that i activated time sync via epg, not via internet.

I will check if its possible to kill the time-sync package and check again.

During the wake-ups i saw also the package YOUVIEW. This could be also a reason. I read that youview works only in the UK, so why it is started on tvs in germany?? I will also try to kill this package.

[Garymjh]

Excellent work. I hope you find a way of killing it.

[mpiet1]

Setting time sync to off in system setting menu did not help.

When stopping process in system app menu of youview and time sync, the processes are restarted automatically by the system.

Trying to disabling them via "adb shell pm disable" or "adb shell pm hide" did not work, probably root is needed.

I do not want to uninstall the packages for youview and time sync because i am afraight that the system will crash and i will have to perform a system wipe. I will try this before i will have to perform a factory reset anyway...

[Kuschelmonschter]

With all due honor for your efforts, but this is going way too far in my opinion. I said it many times before, I think this is buried deep down in the system and we as users can't do anything about it anyway.

It is easily reproducible and we can only hope for Sony to fix it, also in their own interest, as I don't think that this behavior is too good for several HW components. It is sad to see that Sony's focus clearly lies on things that ***** people off, like for example this Samba spy which most probably is quite lucrative for them.

[mpiet1]

Of course i hope that sony will fix this. I have a open ticket and sony will send a service partner to check the issue on my tv. I know, this is stupid, because it is 100% reproducible and i wrote this to sony. But this is the next step to keep the issue open. I am also afraid that after the limited waranty time the HW got damaged by the wake-up issue. 4-6 wake ups per hour are about 30.000 power up cycles per year, that are complete unnecessary.

If sony will not fix this issue in one year, i will give the tv back. I had already success with bringing back my old 55XD8005, so its possible.

So @ALL create via email support ticket and do not stop claming. TVs must not power up during standby, that is an EU regulation!

[Kuschelmonschter]

Talking about it...

I submitted a support ticket about a year ago with lots of complaints in the hope that they would take back this crap. They answered that they submitted my ticket to a higher level, but never heard from them again... until some days ago. They wrote that they wanted to talk about the issues I had and still have. So I talked to them on the phone, basically going through my review and bug list. Yesterday I received another mail that they want to send a service partner. What is he supposed to do? How is he supposed to fix all those software issues and deliver the unkept promises (like missing VP9.2 support in my case)? All he can do is change the mainboard. Problems will persist. So I declined. Sony still seems to be unwilling to acknowledge any issue. I have no clue why they contacted me after a year.

[Kuschelmonschter]

Here is what I found around wakeups in logat:

11-07 15:26:51.088  1611  2376 D PowerManagerNotifier: onWakeLockAcquired: flags=1073741825, tag="*alarm*", packageName=android, ownerUid=1000, ownerPid=1611, workSource=WorkSource{1000}

To me it looks like that indeed something is setting up RTC timers.

[mpiet1]

I read that the RTC_WAKEUPs are responsible for the wakeups in Standby.
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlarmManager.html

Reading out the alarmmanager via command:
adb shell dumpsys alarm > wake.txt

RTC_WAKEUP #3: Alarm{ee005d2 type 0 when 1511853722474 de.prosiebensat1digital.seventv}
RTC_WAKEUP #2: Alarm{1bc0ed0 type 0 when 1511853721789 com.youview.tv.servicehost}
RTC_WAKEUP #0: Alarm{1e59e01 type 0 when 1511859600000 android}
RTC_WAKEUP #1: Alarm{ba2f356 type 0 when 1511886070966 com.android.vending}
RTC_WAKEUP #0: Alarm{bea82c type 0 when 1511910000032 com.sony.dtv.tvinput.tuner}
RTC_WAKEUP #0: Alarm{edf12cf type 0 when 1511924400000 com.youview.tv.servicehost}
RTC_WAKEUP #0: Alarm{1841b18 type 0 when 1511938992028 android}
RTC_WAKEUP #0: Alarm{f60c0e1 type 0 when 1512210850529 com.google.android.partnersetup}

Then i tried to cancel the wakeups via command:
adb shell
cmd appops set com.android.application WAKE_LOCK ignore

But after that, they are still available in alarmmanager...

[Jecht_Sin]

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@mpiet1 wrote:

4-6 wake ups per hour are about 30.000 power up cycles per year, that are complete unnecessary.

I am not sure why you says so. The power supply is always active, providing at least 0.3W/h, and so is the TV. Going into deep sleep doesn't imply any power cycle,  all circuits are always alive.

As I am not sure the sporadic spikes from 0.3W to 20W would really damage the HW. The sleep/wake mechanism in our TVs is the same we have in the mobile phones, computers and video game consoles. Power supply apart in the phones and laptops, which is partially replaced by the batteries. If it was really so dangerous my 10 years old MacBook, which was on 24/7 (including sleeping time) would have probably lasted less than half of that time (while both power suppliers and MacBook are well alive and perfectly working. Well, I have to admit I had to change the battery once, but that was defective).

Unless I am missing something, but from the little I remember about electronics when I studied it in high school, the power supplies should have some capacitors to gradually raise the amperage if or when needed. And also keep some charge in case of a power disconnection. I know that when I unplug the power supply I have to wait few seconds because otherwise the TV doesn't (abruptly) turns off, rebooting after plugging back the power supply. It stayed as it was, at least the couple of times that I unplugged and plugged it back too fast.

Maybe I am wrong, but personally I am not too concerned about the health of the HW due to the sleep/wake. I mean, that stuff is designed by electronic engineers, some probably with a Ph.D., they should know what they are doing. And one of their jobs is to prevent the screw ups made by some SW engineers!!