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Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

Jeremy12
I've been here awhile

My wife has Dementia and lives in a Long Term Care Home. She cannot communicate or use her hands to control the TV remote. After so many hours, Rogers has pop up adds that cannot be removed, and or a question "are you still watching" Of course she is still watching. That is all she can do all day. However, she cannot respond with the remote. I currently pay someone to visit 3 times a day to either change the channel, or turn the tv off and then on again just so that she can watch the TV. Rogers Technical support says nothing they can do. There is always something that they can do, but Rogers will not address this issue.

27 REPLIES 27

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

-G-
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

@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.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

57
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

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.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

james039
I plan to stick around

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.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

-G-
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

@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.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

mebe
I'm an advisor

The default time for the power-saver mode is 4 hours, however, you can go into the settings and increase it to 5 hours. That's still not long enough, so I might try holding down an insignificant button with duct tape, and then aim the remote at the tv box (if necessary), while I was lying in bed getting sleepy. If the Ignite remote wouldn't keep sending out a signal, perhaps a depressed and taped button on a harmony remote would. I hope the fresh batteries would last longer than 5 hors.

It would be great if I could just set a timer Reminder every 4 hours or so, and then the Reminder prompts would restart the 5-hour inactivity timer, even though I didn't press any button on the remote. Unfortunately, I doubt that the developers would be stupid enough to let a Reminder prompt (that is ignored because I'm sleeping, or not in the TV room), reset the Power-saver inactivity mode back to 4 or 5 hours.

Are you still reading?

 

Related thread:

https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Blog/How-to-use-the-Power-Saver-feature-on-Ignite-TV/ba-p/4668...

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

Jeremy12
I've been here awhile

Thank you all for your replies, although non have suggested a solution. To top it off, I have tried to contact the CRTC concerning this issues and the impact on disabled people and their telephone lines response is "no one is available to take your calls, try again later". I also left numerous messages with the Rogers representative for Long Term Care Homes in Ottawa and she does not respond to voice messages.

However, I did some research in the LTC home, as there must be and there are other residents who are incapacitated and cannot work the remote. and I  discovered that they also use Rogers, but do not have Ignite TV and they do not have the issue that I am encountering. Thereby, I will contact Rogers and request that they remove the Ignite system and replace it with whatever kind of box  the other residents are using. I hope that this will resolve my problem. 

 

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

mebe
I'm an advisor

Unfortunately, those other boxes you speak of (that stay on, except when there's an early-morning update at 2am or later, about once a week or longer), are no longer supplied by Rogers. They are part of the Legacy service that is being phased out for most people (time of death estimated in December 2023 or January 2024). However, depending on the contracts, it's possible that your LTC building will allow Legacy TV to continue beyond the Jan death date.

Although current Rogers subscribers are still calling Retentions dept. to keep their Legacy services (TV, home phone and Internet), for about a $10 price increase on their current expiring bundle deals, it can be very difficult to convince an agent to keep the legacy bundle prices reasonable (when compared to Ignite TV/Internet/phone bundles.

The Starter pack for both Legacy and Ignite TV is only $25 a month plus you need to get a free Legacy tv box from somebody, or buy one.

You can ask your LTC Rogers Rep. if he/she has the authority to switch you to Legacy tv service, but I would be surprised if anybody let you switch .. unless your LTC situation gets you special consideration.

Rogers will no longer send a tech for a Legacy service call, so good luck trying to get one to switch you to Legacy tv. I am not saying it's impossible, but I'm pretty sure Rogers will say it's not allowed.

Ask your LTC building manager and Rogers Rep. if they know if the Legacy TV contract goes beyond Jan. 2024 ... If not, it's probably not worth the effort.

I love my Rogers Legacy TV PVR box, but I'm not sure how many more months Rogers will keep it alive.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

-G-
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

@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.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

Jeremy12
I've been here awhile

Again, thanks for all of the responses. I am out of the country at the moment, but can bring you up to date. The Rogers representative for the LTC home sent me the directions, which I already knew doesn’t work, so she is elevating the issue within Rogers. I informed the Rogers representative, as well as the LTC home administrator that this is really an issue dealing with the rights of disabled persons and should be addressed at a level of government including the CRTC. Hopefully this will get the attention of the right people who can make the necessary changes. In the meantime I am paying out of pocket a significant amount to have caregivers go into the home regularly to ensure that the TV is not frozen or just displaying Rogers ads as well as comforting my  while I am away.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

57
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

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.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

Jeremy12
I've been here awhile

Thanks for your response. However, in response to your post, no person is ever alone in a room 24/7 in a Long Term Care Facility. One would have to be knowledgeable about these facilities and how they are staffed including an acute shortage of PSW's, and other staff.

I am only responding to help you understand what goes on in a LTC home. As far as pills, my wife  gets a pill at bedtime, which can only be administered by a Nurse who  has the whole floor to look after. Their knowledge of TV remotes happens to be minimal even if they had time, due to their nationality. The staff who change, dress her, during the day say that they do not understand these remotes and are too busy to be continuously looking in on her to see if the TV has gone into either a freeze mode, or to a rogers advertising mode, which also baffles me as Rogers can show their advertisements which are only taking the place of the programming in place. In addition you want to take away the only pleasure she enjoys, (watching the cooking channel) and make her listen to the radio.

I know that your intent is to be helpful, but really there is only one solution, and that is to have the option to leave the TV on for however long a person wants, and the Telecom industry has to address the needs of handicapped persons whose disability prevents them from using a remote, and the only way this will happen is if Government at some level decides that the rights of the handicap are being denied by the actions  of these large telecom companies.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

57
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

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

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

alicjafrancis
I've been around

My mom is in long-term care and cannot reset the timer. We cannot always go in to do it ourselves and cannot always get a hold of PSW or other staff member to come reset it for her. TV is her world and so we find ourselves, pretty much, on a five hour schedule around the clock to ensure that it on.
Is there a new way to sign a waiver of any kind to remove this feature, even if it is a government rule?

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature


@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.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

james039
I plan to stick around

This is precisely why IPTV will always fundamentally be an inferior technology to conventional broadcasting. Because network bandwidth is a *finite* resource. If a video signal is broadcast over a wire, over the air, or via satellite. Unlimited numbers of people can watch that program for a unlimited length of time without impacting the cost to the broadcaster in the slightest. It's unfortunate that we're losing this.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

Afrancis1
I've been here awhile
My mom is in long-term care and, while most of the staff try their best, my life is segmented into 4 hour portions, chasing staff down to go unpause the tv or go multiple times a day to fix up the tv. I get it’s a government-mandated, power-saving feature, but there should be exceptions. It is not sensible in a long-term care home.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

Afrancis1
I've been here awhile
Were you able to switch boxes? Was it the solution you hoped for?

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

wayner92
I'm a senior contributor

@-G- wrote:

@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.


I have somewhat managed to get around this as I have a scheduled event send a Cancel//Back command to my boxes every four hours.  Interestingly the first warning seems to come up about 3:55 after that command was reached.

This command does not have an affect on what you watching live tv other than an OnScreenDisplay will pop up for a few seconds, but if you are watching recorded content it will kick you out.

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

Kinner
I've been here awhile

So how does 1 do this?

Re: Disabling Rogers Pop Up Adds and Power Saving feature

DS256
I plan to stick around

I have relative in a similar situation. She is bed/wheel chair ridden and cannot work a remote. I would like to disable the 'screen saver'/Rogers Advertisement so she doesn't have to wait for someone to come.

 

As to @Jeremy12 comment "This behaviour is common to pretty much every IPTV set-top box out there, whether its from Rogers, Bell, or some other smaller provider. " that is besides the point. Screen Savers are no longer needed. This is advertising. Rogers could choose a 'disable' option on the Screen Saver.

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