Jeff Liebermann wrote:
My DirecTV R15-500 DVR burns:
Operating power: 22 watts or 42 VA
Standby power: 21 watts or 40 VA
That's only 8 cents per day or $29/year (at $0.15/kw-hr). Much
better. However, the 0.5 power factor isn't very impressive but it's
under 75w so it doesn't have to comply with EN61000-3-2.

Using the revised numbers, yields:
12.5 watts for the 120GB Seagate hard disk
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_7200_9.pdf
3.5 watts for my single LNB
Subtracting from the 22.0 watts total leaves:
6.0 watts for everything else including switcher efficiency.
I don't think there's room for much improvement (except for power
factor correction).

Spin the disk down when it isn;t being used! I.e., the device
knows when it needs to turn itself on to *record* a show. So,
it can conceivably spin down the drive when it knows it does
NOT need to record anything! (it can spin the drive up 6 seconds
before air-time and thus ensure that nothing is "missed").

Likewise, it can see when you are *using* itself to play back
video so it could safely spin down the drive at other times
(and force you to incur that 3 or 4 second spin-up delay
when you *do* grab the remote and start poking at it)

Done properly, even that 6W figure could turn into 1/2W as
the entire device could sleep when not in use -- and just
wake-up when the next "alarm time" is scheduled *or* when
IR is sensed from the remote.