After three, wait, four phone calls, two emails and a general public shaming I finally got a voicemail from Cox this evening.

The gentleman left his phone number and I will call and thank him. Why? Because he told me the secret code to turn off auto power down.

It goes like this: Hit power, then menu, then menu again. And lo and behold the settings pop up, for things like what resolution to feed the tv, and way at the bottom above factory default is a little thing called Auto Power Down. Click select to disable then hit power twice.

No more APD-1-Alert.

What I’m more peeved about is the fact that NONE of their first line people had the knowledge of this menu. But more to the point what peeved me was that they tried to pin it on me, saying it was my television doing it which I refuted when I told them the TV was fed via component and that the behavior didn’t manifest until I hooked the cable box to it.

So thank you Cox for fixing this, but you still get dinged for trying to pin it on me you bastards.