No. It would be pretty easy to design it so that it takes very little power to just watch the clock and then spin up the hard disk and high speed encoding hardware when it is scheduled to record.
ome of this is related to the fact that providers push software updates in the middle of the night, while another issue is that customers expect their television to be “instant-on.”
Ditto. Checking the network is very low power. Also, it doesn't need to check constantly. Once an hour should be vastly more than enough.
The problem with my old ReplayTV is that even when it is "off" all that happens is the output is shut off. It still is constantly recording what it is tuned to, so I can turn on the box and say "That looks interesting. I think I'll rewind an hour to see how it started." That functionality means it is using 42 watts constantly whether it is "on" or "off". That's 368 kilowatts-hours a year (and the same amount for the downstairs one). Just being able to turn off live recording and a good stand by mode could save a lot of power.
One cable company promotes a box that lets you rewind a show back to the beginning that you weren't watching or recording. That's got to be an energy hog.
I don't honestly believe that they are as energy-hungry as a refrigerator but I do think there must be several ways they could be made to run less when they are turned off. The problem is that customers don't want to wait for a boot-up time with their hard drives or program guides. I wish customers were given the option to be energy-efficient or "instant on".