@Jeremy12 I truly, truly do sympathize with your circumstances. Others have requested the same over the years.
This behaviour is common to pretty much every IPTV set-top box out there, whether its from Rogers, Bell, or some other smaller provider. If that timeout was not there, the set-top box would stream endlessly in too many homes, and would tie up network resources and streaming resources in the back-end.
The ads/promotions are something that Rogers added to Ignite TV and there is also no way to turn these off. They do this to (try to) boost their ARPU metrics. Before, the screensaver used to display landscapes, pictures of animals, etc.
Another item to add. Governments have been working with Industry to lower the power consumption on devices, especially devices like TVs, STBs, etc. Although they have not "mandated" that industry incorporates a power saving mode into devices like STBs, etc. they have "strongly recommended" that this takes place and would "mandate" if industry did not comply with the recommendations.
So, all items that can have a power save mode, should/will have a power save mode of some sort, sometimes time-selectable, sometimes not. Although the box itself doesn't save much power when in standby, the TV that is connected to the box (especially when using HDMI-CEC) will also shut down or go into some sort of screensaver if no signal is received.
If no one has touched a button on the remote (especially after getting the "are you still watching" popup), it's a very likely indication that no one is in the room. I realize this doesn't apply to your wife, but it applies 99+% of the time and Rogers cannot/will not, change this. A single press of any button on the remote should provide another 4-5 hours if that's the current power save setting.
@james039 wrote:
There are a number of legitimate situations where one would want to leave a TV unattended and expect the program to play continuously. Airports? Cafes? Sports bars? Dentist waiting rooms?
It makes sense from a design standpoint that the default on a consumer STB would shut it off after a few hours unattended to reduce bandwidth consumption across the network, however, I think there should be an option available, buried somewhere in the settings for people who know they need their boxes not to shut off on their own to be able to change that behavior.
The Ignite Gateway and Ignite TV set-top boxes (and the Comcast Xfinity equivalent) are a residential solution.
Rogers still uses legacy set-top boxes for their Business TV service, and I believe that Comcast also does the same for their business TV customers and/or has them stream with an app.
@Jeremy12 I did an Internet search -- pretty much every one of the cable companies who use Comcast X1 gear have customers who need their set-top boxes to remain active, either indefinitely or for at least longer than the hard-coded timers. Unfortunately, none of them were able to get this issue resolved through their cable co., and this has gone unresolved for years.
Comcast now has client apps that run on the Fire TV stick, Roku, Apple TV, and select smart TVs, and it looks like they have something in place (for Business customers only?) that will allow those apple to stream without. However, it's not a user-friendly solution for those who like to "channel surf" with a conventional remote control. Those apps are also not friendly to those with accessibility challenges. This is also a non-issue for us because we do not have an Ignite TV app for anything other that iOS and Android mobile devices.
Some have worked around the timeouts with home automation tech, that sends an IR code every hour to simulate activity and keep the set-top box alive.
As for your wife, what content or tv channel does she like to watch? There may be ways to get that content without Ignite TV, on a streaming box + app that won't time out... but that is not a viable option for anyone with a standalone Ignite TV service without Ignite Internet.
The bigger problem for legacy Digital TV customers in the long-term care home, who require the TV to be on all the time, will be when the Digital TV service gets shut down and they are forced to switch to Ignite.
I'm not sure how it works at your wife's LTC facility, but at most facilities the person is not alone in a room 24/7. There are pills to take, bathroom procedures, bedtime procedures, etc. often several times a day, there's breakfast, lunch, dinner (often in other areas of the facility). There is a TV in the common area.
The person who moves your wife around or provides the pills, etc could be asked to turn the TV off/on as part of the procedure(s). Your wife could spend the daytime in the common area? What about a "radio"? Just trying to offer helpful options.
My father was in LTC for several years. Good luck trying to change how an entire industry functions or finding an alternate solution, especially with the technology that Rogers uses for IgniteTV coming from the US (Comcast).
I just responded to someone who wants to put a timer on his TV and box. If that were to work, perhaps an electronic programmable timer could turn the TV and box off every 4 hours during the daytime and back on 1 minute later. Obviously, it would take a bit of time for the box to reboot and display the cooking channel again. As I stated in the post below, I'm not sure if this works.
https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Ignite-TV/Turn-off-Screensaver-at-Startup/m-p/512564#M17549
@alicjafrancis wrote:
Is there a new way to sign a waiver of any kind to remove this feature, even if it is a government rule?
No IPTV service provider wants to have any set-top boxes streaming endlessly, consuming finite resources in their back-end infrastructure or consuming/wasting network bandwidth. I once responded to an RFP where an idle timeout, that could not be disabled, was a REQUIRED feature.
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