Slashdot Mirror
The Energy Saved By Ditching DVDs Could Power 200,000 Homes
Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "The environmental benefits of streaming a movie (or downloading it) rather than purchasing a DVD are staggering, according to a new U.S. government study by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. If all DVDs purchased in 2011 were streamed instead, the energy savings would have been enough to meet the electricity demands of roughly 200,000 households. It would have cut roughly 2 billion kilograms of carbon emissions. According to the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, even when you take into account cloud storage, data servers, the streaming device, streaming uses much less energy than purchasing a DVD. If, like me, you're thinking, 'who buys DVDs anymore, anyways?', the answer is 'a lot of people.'" The linked paper is all there, too — not just an abstract and a paywall.
and i'm sure it's more 'energy efficient' to have apps and office loaded from the cloud too.
And if you're unable to read the study online, you can order a paper copy.
Just par for the course for the internet, with snail mail being it's first and biggest victim (and slowest to die).
A more interesting question to me, is what future libraries will look like bereft of physical media.
Who knew, when they were building thepiratebay, they were simply making the library of the future? Not just in an idealized sense, but in an actual sense of keeping the industry somewhat honest, like what the used car or textbook business does.
Did they also calculate how much energy would be saved if we would not waste processor power on DRM decoding?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
>> If all DVDs purchased in 2011 were streamed instead, the energy savings would have been enough to meet the electricity demands of roughly 200,000 households.
Or, if you're like my family, the energy "saved" from spinning up DVDs on two different TVs has now gone into a more powerful wireless router (to support better streaming), bigger TVs (bought with money saved from cancelling cable), a digital antenna booster (so we can watch HD network TV without cable), and personal tablets that none my three kids had in 2011.
Energy saved enables cataracts surgery
.
When I buy a DVD, I own that DVD. That is why I buy DVDs. I don't want some DRM server somewhere suddenly saying that I cannot stream a movie I purchased.
Now if streaming allowed me to purchase and keep a copy free of DRM, then I'd be interested.
But so long as there is DRM, I'll continue buying DVDs.
As those of us in the U.S. know all too well, our broadband service, let alone broadband service providers, is woefully lacking compared to the rest of the industrialized world.
With the advent of "net neutrality which isn't really neutral", that discrepancy will only increase, costing end users even more money for the same slow speeds.
This doesn't take into consideration the fact that if I want to own a movie/show so I can watch it whenever I want, the DVD is the way to go. I've bought it, I can watch it a billion times if I want (assuming the DVD lasts that long). As far as I know, you can't do that with streaming.
Once again, analog beats digital.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
...constructing the infrastructure to support all that streaming? Not saying we shouldn't build it, but let's not suggest that it's any more "green" to go that way.
Not including the power used by DRM enforcement
Not including the power used to burn a disc, let alone harvest the material to make it
Not including the power of the people involved in making such a thing happen
Not including the money used to lobby Congress
Not including the money used to lobby the EPA
Not including the money to lobby the FCC
If you're this fucking stupid, you deserve what you get.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I still buy physical DVDs - primarily because they are passively archival and don't depend on me a) having connectivity or b) having my server nearby. I view programming at some locations (like my cottage) where it's easier to bring a few DVDs than it is to copy a bunch of data onto a hard disk and then connect a computer to the television.
I also wonder if the energy consumption considers the issues of ramped-up Internet infrastructure and server capacity required to store, back up and stream the content. This isn't free and isn't emission-neutral. High-def (e.g. Blu-Ray) content is even moreso whereas the cost of a Blu-Ray disc versus DVD is actually almost trivial. Once you own the Blu-Ray player, you're done except for the marginal two or three dollar cost for the higher definition media.
That pirating movies has actually been helping the environment the whole time? I for one am glad keep up with my civic duty for a better tomorrow...
I can't wait for Bennett Haselton's comments on this study.
Interesting that mention of Blu-ray is only in passing in the original article. Once again raises the question of why did we even bother with the Blu-ray / HD DVD wars when video-on-disk is so close to being obsolete.
If you read the article in detail, the energy cost for a DVD rented or purchased by mail is pretty much identical to that of one streamed (figure 4.)
The purported energy cost difference between DVD and streaming is entirely due to the fact that they assume you drive to the store to buy or rent the DVD. (In fact, there is actually a tiny bit more carbon emitted if you stream instead of rent or buy by mail, if you look at the right image on figure 4).
I assume if you buy or rent from a store you're going to visit anyway, this differnce vanishes
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
i buy a DVD or blu ray all the delivery costs are paid for once
i stream Dune or some other movie more than once and the costs of the data center and delivery have to be paid each time in electricity
maybe geeks don't watch movies on TV, but all my movies are watched on a TV using the same game console or an apple TV. and every blu ray player does streaming as well
I like to have the media in my grubby little hands so that when the powers-that-be decide the lose my purchases in the cloud or decide that I need to purchase the same movie/music once per device, or...
I generally buy used CDs and DVDs from Amazon, rip them to FLAC (for music) and .mp4 for movies then put them on my in-home NAS for streaming. So the discs are touched once by me. I also convert the FLAC files to mp3 for portable devices like iPhone. I have a closet in my house that holds nothing much more than CDs and DVDs. A fire-proof safe holds a 2TB USB drive with a backup of the media just in case.
When I RIAA comes after me, I will be able to put my hands on media proving I didn't pirate anything.
I still pay for a netflix DVD delivery, too, because the PTB will not agree to let netflix stream all the movies that are available on DVD. The streaming selection sucks relative to the disc availability. Oh, and I don't rip the netflix discs 'cause that'd be stealing. I use netflix to watch a movie for the first time, if there's replay value, I'll go to amazon.
They'll hold Netflix up for even more ransom.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
If I pay with cash, it's mine and nobody has that data to sell to someone about me. Also, nobody ever knows if I ever watched it at all, or if I went back and watched a hot sex scene or some dude's head exploding over and over again.
Streaming services track this kind of info. Many just blow that off, but it matters to some.
And if cloud services didn't disappear from time to time either all together or on legacy platforms, risk me losing access to content due to an account block on some other part of the providers service, rely on me always having a fast connection handy, allowed me to download the content in high quality and transcode it for all my devices, maybe that would be okay.
But they don't. So it isn't.
What electronics manufacturers really need to focus on is boosting energy efficiency by using harmonics. Using 60hz for nearly everything is very inefficient. There are various YT videos showing efficiency gains (although some like to call it over-unity/free energy when it's not) by matching the input frequency to the harmonics of the devices (light bulbs for example).
I wonder how many people are reading that journal in printed in paper and mailed to subscribers form. And how many are streaming it? When would the journal Environmental Research Letters switch to pure electronic delivery to be friendly to the environment?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So all of the 'environmental benefits' boil down to the assumptions they make about those purchases.
Perhaps it's just me, but I would lean more towards people already being at a store/mall for another purpose and picking up the dvd as an impulse buy. Non-impulse buys of dvd would seem to more logically take place over the internet.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
When they pry them from my cold dead hands !
When your media is stored in the cloud, you don't have physical control and it can be taken from you via any number of means, and for any number of reasons.
When you have physical possession of the media, it is MUCH harder for it to be taken from you!
We have already seen this problem in the Amazon case where they revoke "ownership" of 1984 (believe it or don't) and other cases of music services dying and taking peoples collections with them. Also services aren't allowing your media collections to be passed to your heirs! This is easy when you possess the media !!
The cloud is just NOT a good idea...
I'm going to assume that they took into account that most DVDs are probably manufactured overseas so our power consumption there is probably about as close to zero as you can get. I would assume tho I could be wrong that a computer is going to use a bit more power than a DVD player.
I personally doubt that the whole of the DVD viewing population has access to highspeed internet? Or the hardware for streaming, not that it takes much but still. Or that ISPs that have traditionally tried to avoid upgrading their infrastructure whenever humanly possible (but never seem to have a problem jacking up their prices) could handle all that extra volume?
Also did they look into the financial effects that the loss of the logistics and retail jobs might cause?
1. no control over purchase as it can be revoked at any time for any reason.
2. even the best internet streams hitch, lag, and drop frames.
3. complexity: the majority of nontechnical people understand the concept of placing a disk in a tray and hitting play.
4. value proposition. I won't pay $20 for a movie I can't really own.
Are you even trying to make sense?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
The prices for physical media are dropping through the floor, a full season of a quality TV program might be under $30 these days. Rip them to your favorite open source media player and the physical copy becomes your backup copy. Sure, the complete Cheers box set might be more than a year's subscription to Netflix, but they are future-proof against changes in Terms of Service and the pending mutation of Netflix into something more insidious. Added benefit to no streaming: my viewing preferences don't get tracked by the gov't / unreliable corporations.
Movies I buy (and I still do buy DVDs as well as online content such as through iTunes), usually are bought because I plan to watch more than once.
I'm sure the manufacturing and distribution costs of my DVD purchases are a lot less of a strain on the environment than having streamed these movies over and over. I cant count how many times I have watches some movies in my collection.
The savings are infinite when you cannot play at all what you wanted to see, a dark screen uses no power at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now if only companies such as Concast would allow people to experience that "rich multimedia Internet" I keep reading about rather than terminate people's internet because "they used it too much" then we could go down this road without being hassled for using the service we purchased.
But then again, when you are a monopoly (or near monopoly) why would you care?
Pft. I buy DVD's and blu ray disks more than ever now. Streaming from Amazon Prime and Netflix over a provider who's up front with the terms of the contract rather than hiding it. I know how much I can use and I track all traffic through my firewall using vnstat.
If we were to stream all content we receive it would easily blow through the monthly limits these guys have imposed. Not hard to do especially these days.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
If the copyright industry could only go back in time! Their one mistake was permanent media you can own and archive. If only ... they had made their CDs and DVDs so they self-destructed as they aged. (We get that FUD every few months on slow news days.) If only ... they had foreseen streaming and never sold physical media at all. If only ... they had known in the 80s anyone could rip media on a cheap laptop. If only ... there had never been a hard disk and all computers had been diskless workstations. The mistakes of the past are haunting the copyright industry today. They could be making a lot of money, if only they had foreseen what was going to happen! Now they're stuck with people who already have all the music they want, and have ripped it, and don't need to buy it again ... and again ... and again.
Environmentalists say that less people leads to a better environment. Therefore, if the researchers dies it would be good for the environment (according to the environmentalists)!
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
Article says: "If, like me, you're thinking, 'who buys DVDs anymore, anyways?'.
Nope, I am not thinking like that. I buy DVDs so that I can watch them on my portable DVD player. Some foreign movies and TV shows are not available online. End of discussion. don't like that I buy physical DVDs from Amzon.com or Best Buy (brick and mortor store)? Don't criticize what I'm doing. I don't criticize online streaming. What is next, you gonna yell at me for using a Walkman instead of a smartphone to listen to my music? Leave me alone, ok??
signed, fed up
2 Billion kg of CO2? Wow. that is like practically 3 ten-billionths the weight of our atmosphere.
Yes, but if we get rid of other particular people, it'd benefit both the environment and society. Comcast, Verizon, and MPAA executives would be a good start.
The american notion that we should continuously purchase new things as quickly as possible so as to ensure our continued virility and happiness is whats really the problem. Imagine if instead of remaking a movie half a dozen times, we contented ourselves with the original and cultivated an appreciation for film as not just a disposable commodity but an art. Instead of butter-churning 10 sequels we stopped trying to milk storylines for box office parity. If instead of buying ever newer and larger televisions, we contented ourselves to only upgrade when and if the technological advancement were warranted and only if the purchase did not remove or restrict features already present. If instead of e-readers we maintained a small library of books we enjoyed, and when we were through donated them to a library. If Blu-ray and DVD werent packaged so extensively in a misguided attempt to thwart theft and instead came in a simple cardboard sleeve im certain a sizeable quantity of energy would be saved.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Do you mean "less people" as in "less massive/skinnier people", or did you actually mean "fewer people"? I suppose it makes sense either way.
There are advantages and drawbacks to cloud computing; how insightful of you to point out one of the benefits in such an amusing way.
It means, as the poster alluded to FREE ENERGY. Though, as he says - it's not - because then we would call him a quack. He's just implying that 100-102% efficiency is possible when you synchronize the frequency of your input power source to the harmonic frequency of your target power consumption or device.
If you need a car analogy, it's like filling your gasoline tank in your car and marking down the mileage, and then checking to see how many miles you have gone when you fill up the next time. This is where the quantum effect also plays a role, because by simply never filling the tank all the way up, you'll get an infinite number of miles per gallon. Example: Fill tank at 12,400miles, partial fill 4 times, then complete fill of 8.26 gallons at 13,175 miles = (13,175-12,400)/8.26 = 93.8 miles per gallon. Once you fill up the tank and mark the mileage down, though, you've cut off your "harmonics" and you'll get a finite value. That's why it's not really "free energy" because to get free energy or over unity you would never be able fill up the car all the way. The longer you can go without completely filling the tank and triggering the measurement, the closer you are to matching the engine/gasoline fill harmonics. I've achieved well over 300mpg in my truck this way, but I've also got special magnets on my fuel line and installed an "open flow" regulator on the air intake, so there are other advantages which helped me achieve this which are unrelated to the harmonics.
The same thing applies to power - whether it be lightbulbs or networking equipment or freely spinning bicycle wheels, though in an entirely different way.
If my ideas are intriguing to you, I would be happy to subscribe you to my newsletter.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Up here, there really only is one broadband provider, and they gouge us by forcing us to bundle their cable service to their cable modem, and the total cost runs us over $150 for a basic 60 GB.
I've burned plenty of DVD's with absolutely no video in sight (and I fully expect to burn in Hell for a truly horrible double entendre).
Well said. I buy my music on CDs for the same reason. (Granted, I rip it and file the originals away almost instantly; I still actually use my DVD and Blu-Ray media but that might change soon too if I can ramp up the server space).
https://www.verizon.com/investor/bo_meettheboard.htm
http://corporate.comcast.com/news-information/leadership-overview
Is the assumption here that the cloud severs and network connectivity, which need to be running 24/7, doesn't require any power?
I buy Blu-Rays because I have a home theater 7.2 home stereo with a large hd screen and would like to take advantage of the sound quality of the blu-ray. Also, I happen to like the extras that are on some of them... not all, mind you.. but some are very interesting, especially directorial commentary.
Digitally signed receipts do not exist yet-- somehow everybody is happy to move to the fluffy clouds while being reasonably fearful of the internet (they are not the same thing in the mind of the consumer.) If people resisted more we could get digital receipts!
If they revoke your account you would have proof of purchase for an item and with some laws in place you could get access to your content even if you were banned from the service. Sure, they'd fight like hell and some customers would screw them with requests for DVDs of all their stuff... plus they'd have to device DRM schemes to give out copies for customers demanding them. Naturally, we'd have troubles passing laws making it work just like real items so errors like that 1984 one still don't loophole trash your book... like anybody would mail back the physical book because amazon made a mistake. the digital one should be the same but without strong regulations and a government that isn't totally corrupt... forget it.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If DeCSS counts as not being DRM-infested, then BluRays aren't either, thanks to AnyDVD HD (www.slysoft.com).
"Embrace cloud content and DRM, its the 'green' thing to do."
No thanks. I will continue to drive down in my gas sucking Escalade to the store and buy actual products i can take home, not just a 'promise'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't they let you downgrade the television service to just the local channels to save money? Where I live, the cable company throws in "limited basic" television (locals and C-SPAN and HSN in standard definition) for no additional charge with home Internet service, but expanded basic television (TNT, ESPN, etc.) costs extra.
It would be even better if the environmentalists died to further their own cause.
I decided to move completely to streaming (via iTunes), rather than buying discs. Two advantages:
1) When the next format comes out, I don't have to re-purchase the same movie yet again (VHS --> DVD --> Blu-ray --> 4K --> ???)
2) Less stuff in my house. I am trying to downsize, and I want my next house to be less than 1000 ft^2. The less stuff I have to store, the better.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
Something they might not have taken into account is the "view it again" factor. Sure, the manufacture of DVDs has a significant environmental impact. But when not simply thrown away after being purchased, it means that saving a movie for a few years, and then seeing it again, does not have the same environmental impact it did the first time. It might be interesting to see how many "views" are needed to make owning a DVD a better environmental bargain that streaming its content.
This is just an attempt to take away our right to private property.
Accidentally the whole solar?
It's reasonable to assume that energy usage per viewing of a media stream will drop significantly over time - which greatly negates the benefits of the DVD.
Give the customer a worse and worse product at an ever increasing price.
You to can become one of the proletariat when you can no longer own things.
Make everything a licenseable service, no more ownership!
The charts also didn't cover what the impact of them turning off a DRM server and you losing your 4,000+ movie collection and then burning down their headquarters when they are only willing to give you a 20% off coupon for your first purchase from their new DRM server..
Also "Your average DVD ends up in a land fill after just 5 years".. I suspect that one fails the sanity check.
Seems like paid drivel designed to get people to pay more for less/nothing.
How does this compare from carbon capping and moving to solar/nuclear? How about moving people to bikes and electric vehicles?
There's no question that content providers like streaming because it means we're really just renting the content. There's also no question that it's super convenient (I have Netflix like a lot of people do) but I don't view it as a replacement to physical media, but rather as an augmentation.
...is informing my loving big brother about my interests and location. As long as he knows I'm at home streaming X-Men, he doesn't have to worry about me organizing with others to effect social change using untracked communications methods. Privacy is bad for the environment. Go future go!
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
And streaming is stupid... Downloading movies would make a lot more sense than DVDs, but streaming is ridiculous...
Most people would want to watch movies around the same time, so think of the crippling bandwidth requirements all at once. And what about those who can't get fast connections at home for whatever reason - streaming would be impractical, but downloading would usually still be quicker than a mail order dvd.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I have little interest in seeing most movies more than once. But some get watched over and over. If I'm flipping channels and see Jaws on TV, I'll stop and watch it. I have it on DVD too. 5th Element, The Waterboy, Tin Cup, Aliens, A Christmas Story, maybe a dozen more DVD/BluRay are watched over and over in my family. And that's not counting kids crap that gets watch 5000 times.
Actually a lot of people do drive to the store (in this case a convenience store, or a walgreens/cvs/etc) to rent a dvd for the night and then pick up other things as an incidental.
Not that that really justifies the statements above, however it does show that many people still cannot plan properly to pick up something on the way home from work or while doing other shopping or driving excursions. If nothing else it really highlights how inefficiently most people live their daily lives.
I do feel this is some kind of BS report by the content industry to somehow drive people more to streaming and away from physical media and the first-sale doctrine.
Looks like some special interests are trying to strike another blow against people actually owning the movies that they buy. Lets list some other benefits: You don't get to watch the disc again, or lend it to a friend. And if you do watch it again on-line, you can completely ignore any costs involved (because that's what the research did). You're not distracted by the extra content included on DVDs. The lower quality streaming video is perfectly fine for you. You're completely freed from the "right of first sale' and will never have to concern yourself with selling or trading old DVDs that you have. And those nice people at your ISP who have started capping your service and who will charge outrageous overages if you happen to exceed your monthly quota will gladly forgive your overage if you explain how you were downloading or streaming for the sake of the planet (wouldn't you, AT&T?)
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The standard CSS DRM is cracked and even the additional standard-violating errors they put on there in an attempt to maintain some kind of DRM are easily circumventable. Thus, I can rip the thing off there and put it on whatever device I wish in whatever format I wish. Movie studios are so paranoid about copying that they have all sorts of invasive, registration-requiring schemes to get a "digital copy" through their systems, and the copy you get is almost always limited in some way (e.g., some devices not supported, requires specific software setup, etc.), with no guarantee of being able to continue watching it in the future.
When I buy a DVD, I've added it to an archive that I can permanently keep and format-convert as necessary as technology changes. Offer me the same with digital downloads and I'd gladly switch. But the chances of that ever happening are slim. They don't want to make it easy. They want to be able to rent and re-rent these things over and over again, deliver them at whatever crappy quality they decide is appropriate, they want me to sort out the bandwidth bill with my ISP if I go over my cap when watching a whole season, and they want to up the price and/or revoke any and all rights whenever they want. No thanks.
Also, never underestimate the bandwidth and reliability of a household shelf full of DVDs or archive server on movie night.
The concept of delivering everything via the 'cloud' is wonderful until a company goes belly-up (nothing, no company, lasts forever) or the broadband isp starts charging you out the wazoo for every megabyte you stream (bend over and smile, consumers....)
A well designed DVD player would only draw significant power when in active use. With streaming, server and internet infrastructure need to be built for peak usage and consume significant idle power the rest of the time. Client boxes also tend to be more complex and maintain WiFi connection for things like software updates.
Even if power usage when actually watching the disk is much higher, it's hard to complete with a system that can be turned off.
I admittedly don't buy many DVDs or BluRays, and currently am not a Netflix subscriber (because most of their DVDs don't have what I explain next).
I'm fine with streaming (though hopefully there would be an optional download-locally-to-deal-with-a-bad-net-connection option) for some things, like catching up on TV shows or even some movies (I do have Amazon Prime, partially for the Prime Video)...
But I don't want it to ENTIRELY replace DVDs/BluRays until/unless:
* All of the EXTRA content is available, e.g. commentaries, deleted scenes, etc. Most of the Netflix DVDs became 'rental' DVDs (licensed from the copyright holder at a lower price rather than renting purchased normal DVDs via First Sale Doctrine).
* This one probably will never happen, but I listen to the commentaries/documentaries faster than realtime (just like one can do with podcasts). I realize it's probably a very small use case, but I wished the streaming providers would allow this too. Even just a few options, like 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x maybe, and keep CCs/subtitles available in the FF mode. (I also now use VLC on iPad to do the same thing with news/documentary type shows downloaded from my Tivo -- if only the Tivo app had this faster-than-realtime built in, it would be less of a hassle and more reliable).
... and find out what broadband is like in the private sector. It sucks like a tornado outside the major metropolitan areas. Between crummy bandwidth and data caps -- neither of which, I suspect, the researchers ever have to deal with -- physical DVDs are the easiest way to watch movies in many locations.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
This was my thought. I can say that I rarely re-watch a DVD.....but also buy fewer these days. I rent from Redbox for new releases. That one DVD is probably viewed on the order of 10 times in the first two weeks of release. Probably 25 times over the shelf-life of the movie. Is that enough to justify it?
1. 17 km to drive and purchase DVD? 50% of the trip is apportioned to the DVD transport to account for multiple purchases and errands per trip in the base-case? I doubt people are driving 10 miles just to purchase a DVD, or as only 50% of the reason to take the trip in the first place.
2. Average disc lifetime 5 years? I still have 'The Matrix' that I got for free with my first DVD player back in 1999. None of my DVDs seem to really have a 'lifetime' that I can tell.
I don't see that in the Sears catalogue anymore...
Numbers in the article do not make sense. Authors use a base-case estimate of electricity consumption at 0.29 kWh/GB transmitted across the core and access network, or 30 g CO2. According to EPA a CO2 production rate for a clean natural gas plant is 1.135 lbs/kWh, or 153 g CO2 per GB transmission.
...and by the time the kids have watched "Finding Nemo" for the hundredth time, the purchased DVD is a huge winner in energy usage.
So the real question is, who buys a DVD to watch it only once?
AOL must have single-handedly doubled the CO2 output of the earth during the 1980's and '90's.
That is all.
I live in a deaf household. Actually very few of the streaming offerings have captions/subtitles available. Even DVD/DB rips on torrents have all the subtitles stripped out (as if a bit of text takes up much room).
It's going to take a lawsuit to change it so that every single fucking one of those legally available video titles have captions.
Even if the dialog isn't available from the producers, what's the cost of hiring one guy, once, ever for each video title to type in the dialog? Even do it automatically and have a Human review it? Just make it a law, which overrides any stupid rights/copyright lawyering nonsense.
In the meantime, we're stuck with DVD/BD.
The only way I'd even consider dumping DVD's to purchase electronic copies is if I actually own the content. The whole premise of streaming services are that you're leasing your content, you no longer own anything, and they can take it away anytime they choose for any reason they choose.
Blame big media. Every time you *watch*, you *pay*. With a DVD, you pay once. That's what throws the cost/benefit analysis around. If you could pay once and stream 1,000,000 times to any device you wanted, then everyone would go for it. But that's not how big media plays this game; they want you to pay again and again. So instead we buy the plastic. And watch and watch wherever we want, whenever we want, however we want without big media doing to us what big government is doing to us. Its bad enough we pay them both as much as we do. 5 minutes after you solve the problem with big media, call me. Until then, keep working on it.
DRM and other content whoring practices limiting the effect of the computer age on us all LOVE streaming. You never own the bits. There is no danger you will rip that DVD. You may be able to rip the box if your are clever enough with whatever encryption protocols are on the stream. And if they don't want you to have anything you have bought they just remove it from the cloud or remove your permission to see it. I love streaming in some ways, don't get me wrong. But I think it has a dark side.
Just like I still buy books (and some hardcovers). There is more value to having a DVD title on a dvd rack instead of a file on the computer. More so for books in my opinion, I have never wanted to go with a e-book because I want to see the book on the shelf. Only the environmental wackos would care about some energy being saved by some company.
If not, can I legally record the stream?
And is the streaming version the same video quality as a DVD?
(Obviously I know the answers to these questions, but IMHO the paper's authors either don't know, or are being dishonest. Not sure which is worse.)
And then we do nothing, and the Republicans win. They are trying to break as much stuff as they can until their generation is dead and doesn't have to worry about the problems anymore.
200,000 homes here, 1 million there, and 2 million there, and pretty soon it adds up. I have 1 house that is off the grid. It is insignificant, but if millions of others reduce their power usage or switch to solar and wind power, we add up to big enough numbers that it has the utilities worried.
Did they include the pollution in China to make the DVDs, the cases, and print the labels? Then ship them over here on a few container ships?
DVDs? How about Disney's Frozen on VHS? http://bitcast-a-sm.bitgravity...
(and, yes, http://www.slashfilm.com/froze...)
How many DVD were physically bought that supposedly could be streamed? What numbers are we talking here?
Whats the cost moneywise/polutionwise/energywise/timewise) of installing/maintaining all the extra datacenter facilities (which BTW need to maintain excess capacity for 'busy' times to ber practical ) ?? and for the additional communication lines/computers/routers which many people dont have to make this method work ? (add those costs please)
If the service quality of supplying the media content falls sufficiently, it is not really an equivalent.
If the people who propose this had to go to work at 10mph to save energy (vast amounts save also --- at the cost of THEIR time...) Im sure THEY would sacrifice their daily living time for the same benefits as quoted in the article --- wouldnt they???
hard numbers and what caculated factors ned to be supplied.
Maybe it will save energy, but it would keep me subservient to the content producers and that is a cost I'm just not willing to incur. When I "own" the contents of a DVD I expect to be able to watch it whenever I want on whichever device I choose.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
So who controls what's available for streaming ? Corporations (again)
Ooh look, all those wonderful independent releases just dissapeared from the face of the earth because some uncultutred turd decided it was no longer commerically viable to store them.
Just look at the BBC and how most tapes of the early episodes of Derek and Clive got put into landfill so they could make space for tapes of Pan-o-bloody-rama (crapulent propoganda at it's finest) How many episodes of Dr Who have also been lost ? How many other culturally interesting things have been lost ?
If something's going to be streamed it'd better be in a format that I can make a local copy or I'm totally uninterested. I'm not paying per view and I'm not having what's available at any point controlled by some tasteless old white man in a suit whose only interest is rent seeking from other people's contributions to human culture.
So no thanks I like my local copies. I control them. Once I do get a spinning disc the first thing I do is remove the adverts and convert it to digital format so it only spins the one time I transcode it anyway.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Well, it's nice to know that DVDs are still selling better than downloads. I mean, how else do you explain such ridiculous propaganda?
I stick with a DVD only subscription because Suddenlink's useless, scumsucking usage cap prevents me from streaming.
Are you trying to tell me that having all the devices running to download/stream and play a movie uses less electricity than picking up a dvd at the store turning on a player and a tv and watching the movie?
According to the article, that's negligible. The real problem is the energy people use to go get the DVD at the store. Buying online or renting online and getting the item in the mail is as efficient as streaming.
A very salacious headline, but not very factual. Look for a similar study for groceries, coming soon from Amazon.
Cheap storage VM.
I will start streaming video just as soon as someone runs a fiber to my front door. At this point in time there are huge chunks of this country that do not have a hard broadband connection, they rely instead on broadband connections that have specific limitations on bandwidth. I will wait for the fiber connection, but I refuse to hold my breath.
"According to the article, that's negligible. The real problem is the energy people use to go get the DVD at the store. "
Well that's just stupid. I have never gone to the store 'just' to get a DVD. It was always combined with grocery shopping or other trips. (gas, going to a relatives and picking it up en route, etc) All of those trips would of been made regardless of the DVD purchase.
I would wager (I know of no specific studies on this, but did not try to find one either) that most DVD's are purchased in this manner.
I have ordered some special ones online. Gravity 3D wasn't available locally. If it were, I MIGHT of made a special trip for that one however.
"A very salacious headline, but not very factual."
You're absolutely correct. I can only look at studies like this and think, "False equivalencies."
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
It's almost enough juice to power my massive dildo.
Content providers want to get viewers away from owning media.
1. Leads to subscription model.
2. Streaming increases their margin
zz- Profit!
We need more information before we can actually draw conclusions from this study.
First, what energy consumption are the tallying up for the DVD? Manufacturing the physical disc, making the packaging, shipping the DVD package various places until it finds its way to a customer, all of those matter. If the disc is rented, we also have energy consumption of the rental store or Redbox, shipping if it's ordered from Netflix, and energy consumed traveling to the rental location if you make a special trip to get there.
What is the use case? Will the disc be bought and watched once? Will it be bought and watched a hundred times like that copy of Frozen that you got for the kids? Will it be rented, and from where? A Redbox in a location that the renter already visits regularly is the best case, a video store that the renter makes a special driving trip to reach is the worst, and discs by mail from Netflix lie somewhere in between as they make only a small incremental contribution to postal trips that are already being made.
The playing over and over case is one where the edge probably lies with the DVD. In most cases the disc will be played in a standalone DVD player. On average those consume less power than a computer does, but it's also possible that the streamed video will be viewed using a DVD or Blu-Ray player or with a set-top box such as a Roku, which might shift the advantage toward streaming. For the streamed video, we also have to add the power used by the server at Netflix or Amazon or wherever, or at their caching company such as Akamai, and the power used by all the internet infrastructure between the cloud and the viewer.
I get them from my library, no purchase price, no monthly subscription fee.