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DRM Reduces Battery Life
gr8_phk writes "An interesting article
over at C|Net claims that playing DRMed music can reduce battery life up to 25 percent. Yet another reason to stick with plain old MP3 files." From the article: "Those who belong to subscription services such as Napster or Rhapsody have it worse. Music rented from these services arrive in the WMA DRM 10 format, and it takes extra processing power to ensure that the licenses making the tracks work are still valid and match up to the device itself. Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them."
More on these exciting discoveries at 11 (TM).
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The article compares MP3 @ 128kbps, with WMA9 @ 192kbps and WMA10 DRM. Spot the flaw in the methodology yet?
WTF? Do they do a license check after reading each bit?
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Why is this in the apple section? I'm no apple fanboy but the windows DRMs cut battery life by 25% and apple's cut it 7%, seems like this should be in some other category cuz it's actually a bigger issue with plays-for-sure files...
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
And DRM causes Shrinkage.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
They don't seem to have tested for that question. If it is the newer formats rather than the DRM, the question arises, "Would you accept a shorter battery life for higher fidelity and/or better compressed files?"
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The test compares DRMed WMA to MP3s. Different file formats will have different power consumption requirements to decode. I'm sure they'd find that DRM WMAs do consume more power than unDRM WMAs, but will the difference be 25%?
This is why I play NetHack rather than World of Warcraft.
oh, and because it's free as in beer, too
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Am I the only one to think that maybe WMA is just a more heavy format to decode in general? I bet you that a 128kbps mp3 isn't going to require exactly the same processing power as a 128kbps ogg file would. Maybe they should try comparing a DRM encoded WMA vs. a non DRM encoded WMA(if such a beast exists) before they start making claims that it is DRM alone causing the extra power consumption. MP3 != WMA.
kyjello is too damn smooth to make a signature.
Until that perception is corrected, DRM is a fact of life.
So how do we correct this perception? Maybe by being responsible consumers and not "sharing" all digital media with the planet without permission. If the artist, composer or whatever releases it with "redistribute freely", then by all means, post it, share it, copy it. But, if it is released with "no redistribution allowed" then nobody shares it, copies it, etc.
If that were to start happening market forces could then (perhaps) influence the licensing of music, video and other digital media. I do not see this happening anytime soon or even in my lifetime. Therefore, DRM is a live-or-die proposition to content owners. They can either protect it or sell one copy.
DRM has gone from Suck to Blow. Really, this isn't suprising. If DRM increases the amount of processing needed to play the file, of course it's going to drain the battery. Solution? Don't use DRM, or don't buy music from stores that do use it.
I have nothing clever to put here...
If it weren't for every site on the whole damn Internet parroting each other so badly perhaps this never would have made the news. Anyway their "study" is deeply flawed, and while it could be argued that DRM does actually cause your player to consume more battery life than it otherwise would, DRM is not making the power impact they claim and anyone giving the problem more than even five seconds of rational thought would realize this.
The codec is the problem. It takes more power to decode WMA (DRM or not) than it does to decode MP3. Ditto for AAC. The codecs are more computationally intensive and are decoded by general purpose CPU's in many players while MP3 is most often decoded with dedicated ASIC's. Even if all decodes are done in dedicated hardware, the MP3 codec is still likely going to be the most power efficient.
A proper study would have compared identical tracks with identical compression with and without DRM such as an iTunes track played on repeat vs the same track with DRM stripped out played the same way. I'd bet the overhead of the DRM is more on the order of 1-3% here.
It is; however, the DRM that is locking you into using WMA/AAC vs the power-saving MP3 format in the first place, but it's a bit of a stretch to say that it's the DRM's fault that a player running a more complex codec takes a power hit for doing so.
Mp3, as it turns out, is a lot easier to decode than wma and other later-generation formats. The fact that you have to use mpeg4 or wma with your DRMed purchase is just an unwanted side-effect.
That said, it is one reason I only play mp3s on my portable player. LAME has brought a level of quality to the mp3 format that none thought possible, and it keeps up suprisingly well with "more advanced" codecs. I see no reason to use anything else...it plays everywhere, and uses less battery life.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Finally, a true "iPod Killer."
Gee Zonk, what do you REALLY feel about DRM. Next there will be articles on how DRM prevents you from storing as many files on your media player (699 vs 700!!!!).
The difference here is >1. If the hit in your hypothetical scenario was 25% (525 tracks vs 700) it would indeed be news, yes?
Trolling is a art,
The recording industry finds that their copyrighted material is being pirated, so they implement ways to limit pirating. (No one mentions that most of the piracy is being done in 3rd world countries, costing record producers many times what it costs them in the US, but we'll let discuss that later.)
As far as I'm concerned, LET them. The problem is not the DRM. It's the fact that it's illegal to BREAK the DRM. Wouldn't that defeat the point of having DRM, you ask? For many people, yes. For many people, no. DRM would discourage many people from breaking it simply because it's inconvenient. But being allowed to break it when necessary allows many people to make "fair use" of the recordings in ways that the DRM would otherwise prevent.
It's all about balance. If the DRM people want to use technical means to screw us, we should be allowed to use technical means to unscrew outselves. This is no different from us using SPAM filters to fight spammers. We should be able to use anti-DRM programs to fight the recording industry.
I am reminded of the Chinese policy of charging the family of the executed for the price of the bullet used in the execution. In other words, something bad is done to you and you are asked to pay for the price of the administration of the badness as well as experiencing the badness itself.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
A good summary of the CNet study is at http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13193.
The Slashdot headline/summary is a little misleading. The test showed that Apple's FairPlay DRM caused about an 8% battery life penalty. It was the Zen Micro with the WMA DRM that caused a 25% drop in battery life. In this case, (if you HAVE to have DRM'd music), it seems Apple's scheme is the way to go.
Some people have raised the issue that they compared 192kbps WMA files with 128kbps AAC (i.e. iTMS) files. AAC, in general, sounds pretty good at 128kbps. (Geek Disclosure Time): I've run a few double-blind, multi-listener tests, and most people put 128 AAC about equal with 192 MP3 (constant bitrate). I have no idea whether 192 WMA is overkill - if that's what Napster provides, well, I'm assuming that's comparable sound quality.
I'm not an engineer, so I can't say whether or not the bitrate difference could reasonably account for that great a difference in battery drain. I will, however, note that if you choose to use a less-efficient codec, that's your fault.
I'd expect at any given bitrate WMA takes more power to play than MP3. Why? More complex format. Same is true for OGG or AAC. They do more advanced processing, and thus require more CPU power to decode. Same holds true for MP3 vs PCM. I remember back in the 486 days, I couldn't play MP3s in full quality mode, but I could play 44.1kHz 16-bit WAVs fine.
Now it might be interesting to see the difference in drain between equal bitrate MP3s and WMAs, however you then have to factor in quality. While WMA certianly doesn't offer the "CD quality at 64kbps" MS likes to say, it does offer better sound than MP3 at a given bitrate.
As the GPP said: A real comparison for DRM is to take an equal bit rate WMA file of the same version, and have one with DRM and one without, and then test them. That's the only way to test it's actual battery impact. If you let confounding factors creep in, then the test is worthless.
Why is this in the apple section?
Because Apple is the market leader with respect to digital audio content delivery, playback, and DRM. I realize it's new and confusing to not be the underdog, but this is the price for being the top dog.
Something worth mentioning here too is the effect playing .ogg files has on battery life. It completely kills it in comparison to similar mp3s. My non-ipod player does .ogg among other formats, and I bought it for the purpose of playing .oggs, and if the majority of the music I listen to is ogg I get under 2/3 the battery life, closer to half, compared to listening to the majority as mp3. It's a very cpu intensive compression scheme which compresses better and sounds better than mp3 or AAC IMHO, but pays for it with CPU use. Even iPod Linux with dual 80MHz ARM cores inside each iPod to play with has trouble coping with oggs because of the cpu use needed to decode them.
On the plus side, content creators' rights are protected from rampant piracy.
That is a plus side...right? Guys? Hello? *crickets chirping*
I forgot, nobody gives a shit about the artists, so we have to invent cute little experiments where files with non-equivalent bitrates are compared, so we can scream "DRM REDUCES BATTERY LIFE!" in some vain attempt to bash DRM yet again. My bad.
"Sufferin' succotash."
As everyone on Slashdot knows, playing Ogg Vorbis files actually charges your battery.
My MP3 player doesn't play WMA with DRM, so DRM increases my battery life almost infinitely.
All my foes are spelling or grammar Nazis.
And I think you lack the understanding of what it means to be a Nazi. They didn't just go around correcting people. It was a little worse than that.
All my foes are spelling, grammar, or Nazi Nazis.
Just use Ogg Vorbis and get better quality for less bitrate.
Oh, and forget about DRM or the need to pay evil patent royalties to Fraunhoffer/Thomson.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
When you first open up a DRM file to play it, yes a little bit of processing occurs right then doing public/private key decryption to unlock the RC4 encryption key used to decrease the rest of the file. This however is probably about the same amount of juice as is required to play 1/10 a second of audio. During actual audio playback the players are doing an RC4 block cipher decryption operation. That's a linear time operation on par with generating a modulus for 8 bits. Meaning it's basically nothing compared to the horsepower needed to convert from compressed audio to waveform pcm audio. The article review is a crock of crap.
Putting aside for a moment that the article itself is more about battery life of various players than about the affect of DRM on battery life, the few statements made about DRM and battery life came from a very flawed test. The authors never tested un-DRMed AAC or WMA, to account for the higher processing needed to decode the more complicated file formats.
But, in the interest of science, I would like to see DRM's real affect on battery life in portable music players. Here is the test I propose:
Purchase a 128kbps AAC/Fairplay track from iTunes.
Purchase the same track as a 192kbps WMA/DRM 10 from Napster.
Rip the same track from CD, and create five versions:
- 44.1kHz wav
- 128kbps mp3
- 192kbps mp3
- 128kbps AAC (clean - no FairPlay)
- 192kbps WMA (clean - no DRM 10)
Now we have seven tracks to test, two with DRM, two identical without DRM, one as a control, and two for bitrate studies. For each track:
- set the volume on max
- turn off the backlight
- plug in a set of standard earbud headphones
- load the track on the player while the player is plugged in
- make sure the track is the only thing on the hard drive
- place the track in its own playlist and set to infinite repeat
- press play at the moment you unplug the power cord
- time how long it takes for the battery to run out
- plug the player back in and charge to full
Ideally, this test should be run several times for each track on the exact same player, in the same order every time, to correct for possible changes in the amount of charge the battery can hold. It might be interesting to run the test on many different players, as well, and see how they fare.
Does anyone at Slashdot own a player that can handle all three formats, and would be willing to conduct the tests?
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You missed the point of the article completely. I don't care if the AAC or WMA DRM encryption takes up more processor power than non DRM AAC or WMA files. Or if they use the same, i couldn't care less. What Matters the most is that when you are listening to an MP3, and then you downlaod the same song on iTunes, and the battery life is 8% less.
Nobody in their right mind would use AAC or WMA for non-encrpyted files, so why would that be the only fair comparrison? WMA/AAC files do not work in most DVD players. WMA/AAC files do not work in most in-dash mp3 players in cars. WMA/AAC files do not work on most portable devices such as phones and PDA's. WMA/AAC files do not work on almost ANYTHING other than their respective x86 operating system/applications combinations and their respective portable players (Sandisk/Creative -> plays4sure and ipod -> Fairplay)
While it might be interesting to see the actual battery life on a nonDRM vs DRM WMA or AAC file, it has nothing to do with every day usage and it has nothing to do with practical real world use. It is simply a benchmark that would never be reflected in the real world. So the article stands correct, legitimate, and honest. I suppose they could have used VBR mp3's, or 192kbps mp3's, but we all know that the outcome would be the same (192 doesn't make much diff over 128).
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
"Yet another reason to stick with plain old MP3 files."
?!?! Was there ever a reason *not* to choose mp3 (or ogg, e.g.)?
More importantly, was there ever a reason to choose WMA+DRM (or WMA even w/o DRM...)?
> Funny. The "music industry" seems to have done fine for
> the last 90 or so years without any sort of DRM.
Yes, but human's ability to share and copy around music is just a few angstroms away from total virtual reality manipulation ability. They could swap and copy alboms in minutes, if not seconds.
The sheer ability absolutely dwarfs the '70's with cassette copying.
To look into the future a bit, imagine a teleportation/duplication type device. It's the difference between the current, "Well, you can go make or copy your own car" by getting out welding equipment, and pushing a button.
[b]We are at the button-push stage for music.[/b] That is the difference.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Argh! I got the idea after the first 142489.4 replies. Can people are least quickly flick through comments when they've made such an obvious observation, thinking they're so clever, and explaining it in that calm but nerdy +5 manner? How can something be "Insightful" if every bloody person sees the same thing!
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Make the oblivious end user think that DRM is evil and with enough idiots it could make a difference. Just imagine all the pod people: WHAT?!! YOU MEAN DRM STUFF DRAINS THE JUICE OUT OF MY IPOD FASTER??!!!! ITS EVIL AND HAS TO BE STOPPED!!!!!!111! Maybe then the people could steer the impending DRM overlords away from the subject by brute force.
The iPod doesn't use a CPU to decode anything it plays; it's all done by an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) which handles the mp3, AAC, WAV, Apple-lossless, etc decompression.
I suspect that the power used to decode equal-bitrate MP3 and AAC files is imperceptible...
Please help metamoderate.
Only if your careless or ignorant. Search for a popular song on any P2P network and you'll find umpteen files with the same song on them. The difference often being different bitrates. For example, I just did a search on a popular song and find bitrates ranging from 96 to 192 Kb/s.
I'd never accept anything under 160.
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
Ogg Vorbis, due to it being a superior compression format needs quite some CPU power to decode. That's the reason not all players support it - because not all have the electronics to do it. FLAC is easiest - for obvious resons. The others are all spread somewhere inbetween.
However I'd kinda expect Sonys ATRAC, the MiniDisk Compression format, to be the most power saving.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And you still haven't demonstrated why this is a problem.
Time and time again, it comes down to the fact that nobody has ever proven that the availalibility of illegal copies of something ever really truly makes a big impact in the sales of the legitimate product. In fact, the contrary seems to be true: that digital "illegal" copies of music, movies, TV shows, whatever seems to be able to drive sales of the product.
Increasingly, this is more about the Content Cartel's control of the pipeline. Digital media can make anybody a distributor, and that's what they fear. Not that Johnny Napster is going to post the Metallica CD that he bought at Target, but that their entire business model of screwing over both artists and patrons is in jeopardy.
"Piracy" creates competition for their cartel-like pricing schemes and artist-screwing contracts. Time and time again the record industry (as a prime example) has demonstrated that they operate like a monopoly cartel: price fixing, immoral contracts, etc. They're scared shitless that they might actually have to treat artists fairly and price their product at a competitive price point.