Another one for home theater gurus: Power Conditioners

[Russ Filtz]

The hard-drives themselves are remarkably robust in power loss situations. They utilize the inertia of their spindle to internally generate enough power to shut themselves down in a safe and controlled manner.

Yea, not really talking about hardware failure. It's more about hosing your Windows install by repeated hard power offs. I've had that happen several times due to recalcitrant software (usually games!) hard locking Windows and having to manually power off or pull the plug.

[Art Mulder]

AV receiver and 46" LCD TV are pretty big loads I assume.

Hey Matt, why assume?
Shouldn't the wattage be listed on the nameplate on the back of the unit? Or you could buy/borrow a "Kill-a-watt" type of gizmo (My local borg now carries these in their lightbulb section, and it's cheaper than on that web link) and just plug it in and measure the usage.

Once you've got the actual usage, it's just a bit of math to tell you how long it'll stay powered up by the UPS in the event of an outage. Then it's up to you how much run-time you want.

[Frank Hagan]

In terms of what you want to protect, the DVR is really a computer, so put it on a protected outlet. For the rest of the equipment, choose by the value you assign to it ... either monetary or how much you will miss it if a surge does take it out. For example, you may spend more on your receiver than your flat panel TV, but if you had to choose one over the other to be out of commission, which would it be (I suspect you would want the AV receiver to be down ... you can always use the TV's speakers as back up).

[Brent Ring]

DVR, Receiver, DVD Recorder, and the LCD are good to put on the UPS. That pretty much consumes it.

[Michael Poller]

I have a APC BE750G UPS/Surge protector. It has 10 outlets and 4 are controlled by a master. It also gives me about 20 minutes of power to shut things down if I lose power. Something a conditioner won't do for you.

I have the 50" plasma hooked up to the master outlet and when I turn it off, it also turns off my Onkyo receiver, subwoofer, and PS3. Then when I turn the TV on, those items power on, TV, then receiver then subwoofer and PS3. It senses the power drop from turning the TV off and cuts power to the other items. I've had this for over a year now and it has worked flawlessly.

My DVR/cable box remains on all the time for recording purposes.

It sits quietly and neatly behind the entertainment center and has worked great in the few moments of power loss we've had around here so far this winter.

What I like most is both no need to get another component that sits in view, and that it turns off those pieces that continuously draw power even when turned off.