DRM shortens battery life by 25%
Tests were done on portable music players using standard MP3 files and DRM encrypted WMA files. The results. Up to 25% less battery life thanks to DRM sucking the juices as it constantly verifies licenses.
It makes sense with the decryption overhead pounding on the CPU. It’s a good enough reason to rip directly from CDs or use Hymn to decrypt your iTunes collection.
March 16th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
I hate to be a pedant, but the results of tests decrypting WMA DRM can’t really be applied to iTunes. Because Fair Play is essentially binary with respect to playback (can this file be played on this machine or not), I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it doesn’t hurt battery life anywhere near as much (if at all).
March 16th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
FairPlay content is absolutely decrypted on the iPod.
March 16th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
Right. But it doesn’t have anything to do with number of plays, dates, or anything like that. All it checks is is it authorized to play on that iPod. No math.
March 16th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
It has to decrypt the packaged AAC stream. That’s the entire overhead. All the additional DRM rights management have little to do with processing power. The CPU load goes into decrypting the stream.
March 16th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Still, I don’t think you can just transfer the results from one platform to the other. It’s possible that Microsoft or the hardware maker(s) just got it wrong, and Apple didn’t. I suppose it’s also possible that Apple’s actually worse. Did CNet not have access to iPods for testing? Or were the WMA results just more compelling?
March 16th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
I don’t think you can transfer results either, but logic dictates decryption = CPU overhead = battery drain. So snip “by 25%” from the title if it makes you happy.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Sure. But doesn’t this study sound a little strange to you? Why evaluate the impact on the platform that constitutes, at most, 10% of the market? If it only shortens battery life by 5% on an iPod, then I don’t really care. A cold day can do more than that.