fool cable box motion sensor

Hi everyone. The cable box furnished by my cable company will go into standby mode if it thinks no one is watching. I would like to be able to come up with a way to fool it so the picture is always displaying even if no one is in the room. I know this will prompt questions of "why would you want to do that" but I have a very good reason for that. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks

How's about a wave machine?

Jlumi said:

Hi everyone. The cable box furnished by my cable company will go into standby mode if it thinks no one is watching. I would like to be able to come up with a way to fool it so the picture is always displaying even if no one is in the room. I know this will prompt questions of "why would you want to do that" but I have a very good reason for that. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks

Click to expand...

Can't you just turn it off in the menu?, some TV's (stupidly) have such a 'feature', and installing the set includes disabling it in the menu.

Jlumi said:

I know this will prompt questions of "why would you want to do that" but I have a very good reason for that.

Click to expand...

I played this game with a few boxes and matters not to me what your reasons are.

Normally if the cable box remote and cable box has not seen any activity for a preset time interval a prompt pops up giving you 60 seconds to click any button. Some boxes, depending on carrier, give you the ability to disable the turn off feature and some don't. Sometimes you need to find it in the settings menu. Depends on the box and cable provider.

Just as an example my provider is Spectrum and I have been through a few set top boxes. Newer boxes called it "power save" or similar. Menu>Settings>Preferences> look for power save, something along those lines. Older boxes, as I recall had it under settings>timers or similar.

Finally if no option exist something I have seen done is find the actual code used for channel up and channel down. Rig an IR Led so once every few hours it sends a channel up followed by a channel down command. That worked out fine.

Since you make no mention of cable provider or cable box model and part number this is as good as it gets. I would start with a Google for example for me it would be "Spectrum disable auto shutoff". I would start with that inserting your provider.

Ron

In my cable boxes this is a setting adjustment. If you can't find it in the settings or setup menus, call your cable provider tech support to see if it is hidden somewhere.

ak

They must have a way to spy on you.

try something like this...

• Press [Settings] on your remote, and then press for more settings.
• Scroll down to Timers and verify Sleep Timer and Power-Off Timer are both set to Off.

Tony Stewart said:

They must have a way to spy on you.

try something like this...

• Press [Settings] on your remote, and then press for more settings.
• Scroll down to Timers and verify Sleep Timer and Power-Off Timer are both set to Off.

Click to expand...

I suspect no one here is actually reading his post? - he's asking about a 'motion sensor' not a 'timer'. I can't comment on cable boxes, but a number of TV's stupidly added motion sensors (which could ALWAYS be disabled) to turn the set off if it thought no one was in the room watching the TV.

Part of the installation including turning it OFF, along with any other stupid 'timers', and various other useless and unwanted 'features', such as auto-brightness.

All the useless features are normally turned ON by default, and result in countless service calls to new TV's (unless installed properly).

Nigel Goodwin said:

I suspect no one here is actually reading his post? - he's asking about a 'motion sensor' not a 'timer'. I can't comment on cable boxes, but a number of TV's stupidly added motion sensors (which could ALWAYS be disabled) to turn the set off if it thought no one was in the room watching the TV.

Part of the installation including turning it OFF, along with any other stupid 'timers', and various other useless and unwanted 'features', such as auto-brightness.

All the useless features are normally turned ON by default, and result in countless service calls to new TV's (unless installed properly).

Click to expand...

I did catch where the thread starter mentioned motion sensor and since I have been through this and never saw a set top cable box with a motion sensor I tried to address what I thought the problem might be. Has anyone ever seen a cable box that uses motion sensing?

Tony Stewart said:

They must have a way to spy on you.

try something like this...

• Press [Settings] on your remote, and then press for more settings.
• Scroll down to Timers and verify Sleep Timer and Power-Off Timer are both set to Off.

Click to expand...

Yep, that was my older box. Things were under Timers. Newer box is different and took a little time to find things. Not to worry as the way I see things changing I figure in a year or two cable will be gone replaced by streaming services. Well, here in the US anyway. More and more people I know are moving on to streaming services.

Ron

Reloadron said:

I did catch where the thread starter mentioned motion sensor and since I have been through this and never saw a set top cable box with a motion sensor I tried to address what I thought the problem might be. Has anyone ever seen a cable box that uses motion sensing?

Click to expand...

Cable boxes are reasonably uncommon in the UK, so I've rarely ever seen any - the few I have seen in the past were really, really old slow non-PVR boxes, although I have seen just one more modern PVR.

Interestingly, I've just taken up fibre broadband from the UK cable company Virgin Media, as it's just become available here, but as it's purely fibre-optic their TV service and PVR isn't available, nor is their telephone service

Not a problem, as I didn't want TV or phone, as I use satellite for TV, and Voip for phone. They do offer a Streaming Service, but they never mentioned it, or tried to get me to take it, and you actually have to ring up and talk to someone to try and order it?.

So I've no idea if cable boxes 'might' include motion sensors, but certainly some TV's have - but my advice would be to turn off all the stupid crap you can when you receive the box, TV, or whatever

Thanks for the answers. Yes, its a motion sensor, the cable company itself has confirmed that. It actually looks for movement of a person. They "CLAIM" you can shut it off by disabling the feature, which I have done, but it ignores the setting. This does not suprise me at all. BTW, the box doesn't really shut off. It goes into a mode where it displays a screen saver. I want it to continue to play whatever show is on. Thank you all for your responses.

Jlumi said:

Thanks for the answers. Yes, its a motion sensor, the cable company itself has confirmed that. It actually looks for movement of a person. They "CLAIM" you can shut it off by disabling the feature, which I have done, but it ignores the setting. This does not suprise me at all. BTW, the box doesn't really shut off. It goes into a mode where it displays a screen saver. I want it to continue to play whatever show is on. Thank you all for your responses.

Click to expand...

Check through ALL the menus, they often hide stupid features in stupid places.

Jlumi said:

Thanks for the answers. Yes, its a motion sensor, the cable company itself has confirmed that. It actually looks for movement of a person. They "CLAIM" you can shut it off by disabling the feature, which I have done, but it ignores the setting. This does not suprise me at all. BTW, the box doesn't really shut off. It goes into a mode where it displays a screen saver. I want it to continue to play whatever show is on. Thank you all for your responses.

Click to expand...

Well alrighty, another first in my life. Never saw one with a motion sensor. No clue as to your location but tricking a motion sensor I am not sure about. Something moving that emits heat warmer then the surrounding ambient air would be my guess.

Thinking back my wife and I owned a small brick and mortar shop during the early and mid 90s. Kathy, my wife, did Christmas decorating one year using foil tinsel. Got a 2:00 AM call from the police and my alarm company. Seems when the heat was on it was blowing the tinsel around and that triggered the IR motion sensor.

Ron

"he's asking about a 'motion sensor' not a 'timer'."
A motion sensor resets the count-down Timer, so it is related.

I eliminated cable TV over 20 yrs ago with online services.
First Kodi, now Stremio with RD+ then OTA less often now , who wants to see biased news or listen about Trump.