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.

Comments

Energy cost of DRM?

[maxwell demon]

Did they also calculate how much energy would be saved if we would not waste processor power on DRM decoding?

False comparison

[QuietLagoon]

Apples and oranges comparison.

.
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.

Re:Nice try cloud guys

[Zeromous]

As someone who has spent the last decade virtualizing anything with a power supply that wasn't critical, you would be astounded as to the savings from yes, *gasp* running apps in the 'cloud'.

It just doesn't mean what YOU think it means.

The cloud isn't just a hosted application that moves seamlessly around a cluster. It can be a head on a cluster, that hosts an application and save thousands of KW a year and you the end user wouldn't know the difference. It's a direct analog to the idea of ditching DVDs. Move the application where the backing resources can be shared, and managed remotely and you will save carbon.

Still buying DVDs here

[cpghost]

I'm still buying DVDs, because

• they are a good archival media
• they are multilingual
• they play everywhere, thanks region-free DVD players
• they are not DRM-infested like BluRay (thanks DeCSS!)
• they are faster to get than to download, esp. box sets of series
• they are always available, and can't be revoked or disabled by some anonymous entity

BS meter pegged

[frovingslosh]

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?)