Contour 2 Remote - does not shut cable box off - PART DEUX - for BP, et al
This is in response to the thread from a few months ago regarding the cable set-top box not powering off with other devices.
I too noticed this right away. The system has obviously been designed this way intentionally but no one seems to want to say that. In fact, when you go into settings, the box manufacturer has included a little graphic that shows you how much power is saved when you power down your box. So its a little annoying when measures were taken to make this practice so needlessly tedious after advocating in favor of it.
As far as motive goes, all I can figure is that they want your box to remain powered up so that they can send the box updates while you're sleeping. They even have a setting that allows you to select the time window for these updates and, not surprisingly, the default window is the wee hours of 2am-4am - while you're probably sleeping. If your box were powered down, then the update would likely start loading when you turn the box on which would likely impact the response of the box in a negative way with regard to your viewing experience.
As was pointed out, you can manually go through a zillion button pushes to manually turn the box off, or you can walk over to your box and manually push the power button, but that's annoying when the remote goes to all the trouble of handling all your peripheral devices, but does not turn your box off. I don't know about you, but from my favorite viewing location, the set-top box and the bedroom are in opposite directions. Also, I have to open a glass cabinet door to push the button, then close it again afterwards - trivial, yes, but not so much when I'm half asleep and just want to stagger off to bed.
As far as the Cox representatives either disavowing all knowledge of this issue and/or just telling you what you can and cannot do, I have found it surprising how many of them really don't know about or seem to understand the issue. The real surprise came when I was talking to a nice young woman who quickly volunteered the following, "I really don't know since we don't have the equipment here to use and I've never used it or even seen it myself." I think my response was, "Whaaaaaaa?" Yep, it turns out that the nice young woman I was speaking to was located in Texas (presumably along with a lot of other Cox employees), and apparently, Cox does not operate in Texas. Wow, right? I believe this person worked in "Sales", so here is a group of people selling a product that they've never laid eyes on before.
This topic probably was not included in their manual so they either have to improvise or simply claim ignorance - the latter of which certainly is through no fault of their own.
Having said all that, I'll conclude by saying that I really like the product and I haven't found much else I don't like about it. It's a huge improvement over the last version and this really is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. It's just high on the annoyance factor. There's a good reason I've been a Cox customer for 20+ years.
-bp
(ps - my initials are also BP, my TV is also Samsung, and my audio is also Bose. I think I found my doppelganger.)
