Blu-ray In Laptops Could Be Hard On Batteries

damienhunter notes a Wired story on the power-hungry ways of the first generation of Blu-ray players coming soon to a laptop near you. "With the Sony-backed HD format emerging victorious from a two-year showdown with Toshiba's HD DVD, many laptop manufacturers are now scrambling to add Blu-ray drives in their desktop and notebook lineups. Next month, Dell will even introduce a sub-$1,000 Blu-ray notebook... But the promise of viewing an increasing variety of HD movies on your laptop may be overshadowed by ongoing concerns over the technology's vampiric effect on battery life. Indeed, if the first generation of Blu-ray equipped laptops are any indication, you might not get more than halfway through that movie before running out of juice completely, analysts say."

Is it the CPU power needed for the DRM?

[Joce640k (829181)]

I wonder....

Re:Is it the CPU power needed for the DRM?

[jonnythan (79727)]

No, the DRM has little to nothing to do with it.

Decoding 20+ Mbps of MPEG-2 or VC-1 video along with lossless, compressed audio on the fly is extremely taxing and uses a lot of power.

Re:Is it the CPU power needed for the DRM?

[Xest (935314)]

I'd be surprised if BD+ comes completely free in terms of additional processing load. But even the AACS layer has to be costly.

I'm not sure how the interactivity features compare in terms of additional processor loads, but this could cause differences between the formats also.

Whilst I understand the power required to render HD content I think we must also bear in mind we're looking at 20gb - 30gb of data that needs to be decrypted, that can't be easy on the hardware either surely?

I don't know if there's anything fancy they can do to lower the load, but even if there is dedicated hardware in the drive to offload this from the processor the dedicated hardware is still going to need some power.

It'd be nice to see what proportion of resources are required for AACS, BD+, Java for Bluray discs and the data decoding and rendering itself. Anyone any ideas on this?

Re:Is it the CPU power needed for the DRM?

[ChoppedBroccoli (988942)]

Well certainly having hardware assisted decode with the new Intel chipsets will be a great improvement.

From a recent anandtech review (http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3246&p=2):
"The Mobile GM45/47 chipsets are an integral part of Montevina and will feature the new GMA X4500HD graphics core. The X4500HD will add full hardware H.264 decode acceleration, so Apple could begin shipping MacBook Pros with Blu-ray drives after the Montevina upgrade without them being a futile addition. With full hardware H.264 decode acceleration your CPU would be somewhere in the 0 - 10% range of utilization while watching a high definition movie, allowing you to watch a 1080p movie while on battery power . The new graphics core will also add integrated HDMI and DisplayPort support."

However, there is going to have to be some sacrifice on the user experience. I mean you can't really expect to watch 30-40gb of data in 2 hours and expect battery life not to take a hit. What would be ideal is if a single blu-ray discs had both an H.264 and a lower quality MPEG-2/mpeg-4 version of the video. If I am watching on a laptop screen (hooking the laptop to a HDTV would be another story), I don't really need to see 1080p resolution.

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[gravis777 (123605)]

Yeah, but even in stand alone players, they seem to be power hungry and a lot of stuff is done in software, isn't it? I mean, BluRay discs use Java, for instance, for things such as menus. That in itself is hitting a processor of some kind, and if you update Java - you just cannot do that in hardware unless you update firmware, then aren't we back to the fact we are once again handling it in software, kindof?

Okay, I am sure that did not make a lot of sense. Sorry.

Now, we probably could put in hardware the a

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[thedletterman (926787)]

It makes it easier on the CPU, but you're still consuming the power to decode. I'm sure it helps to a degree, but "quite a bit easier" on power consumption is still an over statement.

Captain Obvious

[imsabbel (611519)]

Because _nobody_ would have known in advance that decoding 25mbit+ of 1920x1080 h264 (a task that redlines even dual core desktop cpus) could be a battery consuming activity.

o rly?

[rarel (697734)]

I don't know, my new computer here looks fi

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[rudeboy1 (516023)]

Just one question... Why the hell do you need to watch a movie in HD on a 15 inch screen?

Re:o rly?

[pipatron (966506)]

Why the hell do you need to watch a movie in HD on your 42" screen? Your laptop probably has a higher resolution, and you can still see the pixels.

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[rudeboy1 (516023)]

It might be a higher resolution, but most laptops I use (I don't really consider the "desktop replacement", 15 lb monster as a "LAPtop" here) have integrated graphics and a processor that is designed for low power consumption. So, it's not just the resolution that is a factor here. There is also the software/video translation in realtime, not to mention HD sound coming through 2 tinny speakers or a pair of earbuds. I'm sure you might be able to tell the difference, but for all the negative factors, I thi

Re:o rly?

[MightyYar (622222)]

Isn't a laptop with 1080 lines of resolution pretty rare? Will a 1050-line laptop scale the image or just crop it? I'd hope that there is a crop option, since the scaling would probably use even more CPU and degrade the image.

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[MightyYar (622222)]

I realize cropping sometimes sucks, but if you had a 1680x1050 screen (as I do on my Desktop), I contend that the 15 pixels missing on the top and bottom will not be missed - nor will the 120 pixels on each side. You're talking about 13% of the width going away and less than 3% of the height. I'd much rather get the crisp "raw" pixels and lose a teeny bit of the edge than have the "smeared" look of scaling along with black bars on the top and bottom of an already tiny laptop screen.

The HDTV spec calls for a

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[teh kurisu (701097)]

My laptop screen resolution is 1280x800. 720p resolution is 1280x720.

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[Calinous (985536)]

"Why the hell do you need to watch a movie in HD on a 15 inch screen?"
      Because you bought the BluRay edition of the movie to be able to watch it at home on your 42" plasma TV?

Re:o rly?

[pipatron (966506)]

Woh the hlel use the pereviwe button/?

There's a solution to this

[squiggleslash (241428)]

Blu-ray discs have optional support for "Managed copy". For those discs that enable it, there's nothing stopping the manufacturers from shipping a tool allowing the user to copy the disc to the laptop's hard drive in a form that's easier to play. The user can build a library of stored content while the laptop is plugged in, and then watch it when it's not. Supporting this feature would also beat carrying around discs everywhere. I can honestly say I've used my laptops to watch full DVDs four or five times in the entire time I've had the capability, it's just not as practical as it appears, and I hate taking discs on vacation with me that I might lose.

HD DVD made "managed copy" mandatory for discs with DRM, but, alas, it's Blu-ray that's the remaining widely supported HD disc format. (I'm not calling it the victor, it still has to beat downloads, and SD.)

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[squiggleslash (241428)]

Managed copy is whatever resolution you want it to be. Typical implementations right now are aimed at making copies for small devices like the PSP, so a resolution down-convert happens during that process. But Managed Copy itself can be a bit-for-bit copy.

Part of the aim of Managed Copy is to make things like Movie Jukeboxes a possibility. The entire concept would be flawed if you couldn't copy the movie as-is.

Not really a "Blu-Ray" issue

[TripMaster Monkey (862126)]

Before we start bitching about Blu-Ray, it's worthwhile to note that HD-DVD has (had, anyway) similar power requirements. From an Engadget article [engadget.com] (emphasis mine):

For all the back and forth "we're better than you" rhetoric exchanged between the parties, the two really aren't that different. Both offer the same array of codecs and are driven by very similar power requirements. Essentially (and without intending any slight towards the HD DVD camp), anything an HD DVD player can do, a Blu-ray can do also.

Better batteries?

[Adam Zweimiller (710977)]

Perhaps this is finally the sort of problem that will stur average joe consumer to be dissatisfied with the state of current battery technology, stirring innovation? Personally, I can't wait for Mr. Fusion in my laptop. My kids would all be the next WWE superstars with those kinds of irradiated swimmers in my loins.

Re:

[TripMaster Monkey (862126)]

You mean innovations like this [gizmag.com]?

And DVD doesn't????

[gillbates (106458)]

Even when my battery was new, I still wouldn't get more than 3/4 of the way through a DVD before having to plug in.

Low end laptops never could play through a complete movie, regardless of whether it was on DVD or Blu Ray.

It doesn't matter how much power Blu Ray consumes - there will always be a laptop manufacturer who skimps on the battery to cut costs. If you want to watch movies on a portable device, you have to buy a personal media player. Sad, but true.

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[QuantumG (50515)]

That certainly was the case... back when Linus starting working for Transmeta. Things have progressed a bit since then, you might wanna buy a new laptop sometime.

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[DragonTHC (208439)]

you must have bought the cheapo laptop with the cheapo battery.

I bought a mid-level laptop with the big battery because I'm not stupid.

I didn't buy the blu-ray drive because it was $360.

I can run my lappy on full brightness and wifi for over 3 hours.

As far as I can see not a "Blue Ray" problem.

[Chrisq (894406)]

Since HD DVD used the same lasers and the same compression codecs I believe this would have applied to HD DVD also. This is not a case of "if only HD-DVD had won" but a basic technology problem.

And melted discs, no doubt...

[evilviper (135110)]

From TFA:

"The laser that runs the show [in Blu-ray players] is a very high-power laser," notes Mercury Research analyst Dean McCarron. That laser is one of the main things that conspire to raise power consumption.

If the laser in a Blu-ray drive uses remotely as much as your CPU or LCD backlight, you're going to be burning a hole through your laptop in just a few minutes... Where does the media go to always find these moronic analysts?

Does anyone know?

[Chrisq (894406)]

Is there any reason a high power laser is needed for reading? Writing may have a power requirement but I would have thought that to read a disk you could make up for a lowered power laser with a higher sensitivity detector.

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[cube135 (1231528)]

I'm not sure, but it's probably the blue laser that the high-def formats use. It's a shorter wavelength laser than normal DVD or CD lasers, so it would take more power to create the beam. I can't see that taking more power than the 100% CPU needed to actually display the movie, or the LCD's power drain, though...

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[pnewhook (788591)]

Reading does require less power than writing, but the power requirements are also related to read speed. So the laser on a 12x DVD reader needs to be higher power than one on a 1x DVD reader. Similar for Blu-ray.

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[pnewhook (788591)]

If the laser in a Blu-ray drive uses remotely as much as your CPU or LCD backlight, you're going to be burning a hole through your laptop in just a few minutes... Where does the media go to always find these moronic analysts?

I agree - that's a misleading and idiotic quote from the analyst.

Older 1GHz laptop CPUs use about 10W, while newer CPUs that you would probably want for higher end graphics capability are 30W or more (that's only the CPU not counting the GPU). A laser diode is about 5mW for reading a

Say it isn't so...

[binaryspiral (784263)]

New higher capacity optical storage medium takes more power to use?

CD-ROM then CD-RW then DVD then DVD-RW/RAM and now BR... each step started with high power requirements and weren't suited for mobile use. And almost every one of them was met with this kind of fud. After evolution of the technology we seem to be surviving just fine with our current optical medium.

It's just going to take a few revs. of hardware improvements.

As for HD Video playback... well, that's another problem - just the shear size of data needed to be decrypted and decoded... ouch.

Was HD-DVD substantially different?

[dpbsmith (263124)]

Interesting... I wonder how HD-DVD and Blu-Ray compare in this regard? Anybody know?

Already answered above.

[dpbsmith (263124)]

While I had the edit screen open and was talking to a colleague, someone else answered the question: no.

Re:

[TripMaster Monkey (862126)]

See my earlier post [slashdot.org] on this subject.

720-1080P MKVs don't have this problem

[dalmiroy2k (768278)]

Last night I played Transformers 1080P Blu-ray rip (10GB MKV file) in my Vaio VGN-FZ340E.
I used "Media Player Classic" with latest K-lite codecs, using the just the stock battery and a medium power saving mode and everthing went fine for the entire movie.
Yes, playing this files may not be legal but I just don't see a better or legal way to do HD with my current hardware.
Same thing happens if you try to play a Blu-ray movie (Assuming you have a drive) with Linux.

Usual story

[ledow (319597)]

It's the same old story, to a point. The performance required to do a relatively simple job (play fullscreen video) in a new way (using HD content and a new storage medium) means that it becomes impractical without upgrades. I can remember having to tweak computers to be powerful enough to play MP3's without skipping, but there at least you had the advantage that the storage space saved compared to even the best-compressed formats of the time was phenomenal.

I freely admit that I absolutely do not "get" the HD fuss. It's the same thing we've had for years, with more pixels, that you can't reasonably see on a fair test past a certain distance (although I would say that on a high-res laptop you are more likely to spot the difference because of the unusually close eye-screen distance), with new storage formats, new compression, new software, new DRM and new performance characteristics... which are killing battery life. And, yes, eventually they'll start making "blu-ray acceleration cards" just like MPEG-acceleration, 3D-acceleration, etc., although in this day and age they're called "software on the GPU". But at the end of the day, you've gained little (a higher res that you might not be able to distinguish) for enormous performance increases.

Where's the advantage in it when a "Blu-ray" PC can still play the DVD's of previous years but at much, much less expense... if you can play a blu-ray for two hours or you can play MPEG-2 for six (while compiling stuff in the background without jerkiness) on the same machine, what are you going to end up using if you watch a lot of video on your laptop?

When I go away and know that I might want to view movies on my laptop (e.g. long trip staying in cheap hotels, stay over at a friends house etc), I take either DVD's, or I have a bunch of MPG's/AVI's/VOB's etc. on the laptop itself or on DVD-R's ahead of time. Quality isn't really the factor there and the advantage to having everything in a simple format that everyone can read easily and which doesn't tax the laptop is key.

It's another case of "laptop = general purpose computer, so let's turn it into a media centre and make it do everything". It's nice that it's CAPABLE of everything but you can't expect a portable device to do it all AND give you good performance at everything. Laptops are not even desktop-substitutes for most work (the times I have to explain this to people... it costs pounds to repair a broken desktop, hundreds to repair a broken laptop).

Let the early adopters waste their money. Even if Blu-Ray becomes the de-facto standard, I'd much rather just decrypt-to-disk and convert to a format that's easily readable, with extremely cheap media, that plays the video "good enough" for most things if I'm intending to carry it around with me. Much better 1 x DVD-R with a couple of full movies on it that I can watch one-after-the-other and make a backup copy for pennies than 1 x Blu-Ray that I can't give my friends with only a single movie on it that kills my batteries just watching it.

There was a time when I did exactly the same with DVD vs VCD - it's actually trivial to just copy several DVD's worth of movie/tv show to a DVD-R or even a CD-R and not worry about the quality. You're travelling - who cares whether it's HD or VCD-quality so long as you can tell what's going on without eyestrain?

Re:

[qoncept (599709)]

Have you ever WATCHED anything in HD? I ask, but I'm already assuming you haven't. The difference is night and day. I won't argue that it makes watching a movie any more enjoyable, especially while travelling, but the difference in the picture is huge. That was a pretty long winded comment to have such a glaring hole.

Only enough battery for half a movie, huh...

[abaddononion (1004472)]

This might be a good time for me to try to sit through Star Trek IV or Highlander 2 again.

Blu-Ray: making crappy old movies only half as crappy.

Huh?

[sm62704 (957197)]

Blu-ray In Laptops Could Be Hard On Batteries/i?

Blue-ray is like Viagra?

Blu-Ray uses shorter wavelength...more power?

[dtjohnson (102237)]

Blu-ray uses a 405nm laser while HD uses a 650nm laser. Photons emitted by the Blu-ray laser therefore will contain 60 percent more energy than the HD photons. Bottom line is that one would expect a shorter-wavelength laser would use more power, all other things being equal. Maybe blu-ray is the wrong format for laptops, though I don't know why anyone would want to watch a high-res movie on a little laptop screen anyway.

Re:Problem solved..

[evilviper (135110)]

Just plug the power in, rip the movies to your hard disk, and take the disc out.

Except the main consumer of power is maxing out the CPU to do the highdef H.264 decoding in real time.

Last time I checked, you could get a pretty good HD quality movie down to about 8GB with Divx, without any real quality drop.

Words cannot adequately describe how idiotic that statement is... Divx is MPEG-4 ASP, much older and less advanced than H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, which is the primary codec used to encode highdef discs.

How in the world you're expecting to use an OLD codec to reencode a video stored in a NEW codec, to reduce the file-size of a video by a factor of 5, while NOT losing HUGE amounts of picture quality, is vastly beyond my comprehension.

Re:Problem solved..

[Dannkape (1195229)]

While I have seen HD-rips in Divx or Xvid, most of them, by far, has been done in H264. And two hours of video nicely fits a single 4.7gb DVD-R with acceptable quality.

The big space-saver (and CPU as well) is resizing that 1920x1080 stream down to a more reasonable (and closer to your average laptop resolutions) of 1280x720.

Re:Problem solved..

[evilviper (135110)]

Some codecs are invented for the sole purpose of adding meta-info to a media file, adding DRM, or changing the way it can be streamed (or not) over a network.

I happen to be a professional, and I know of NO such codecs. Not one.

DRM, metadata, and streaming are completely and totally independent of the underlying video and audio codecs.

many people are very happy with the quality that can be achieved with XviD using a few gigs of data and can barely tell the difference between that and a H.264 uber NEW 25+MBps HD+++ codec.

Some people are very happy with vinyl records. Some people are legally blind. That does not change the facts.

I will ignore the rest of your purely trolling comment.

Re:Problem solved..

[evilviper (135110)]

Matroska is a container format; it is not a codec, in any sense, and is never referred to as such by anyone with any knowledge of the subject.

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. And one vastly over-simplified summary explanation does not change the definition.

Re:Problem solved..

[pthor1231 (885423)]

It's even worse that that, he can't even read the pages he links. From the matroska project front page (Emphasis mine):

First, it is essential to clarify exactly "What an Audio/Video container is", to avoid any misunderstandings:
* It is NOT a video or audio compression format (video codec)

Re:

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

What effect does decoding a hidef movie have on the power consumption for your laptop cpu and memory?
This problem is not limited to illuminating the laser.

Re:Problem solved..

[FSWKU (551325)]

Last time I checked, you could get a pretty good HD quality movie down to about 8GB with Divx, without any real quality drop.

Sorry, but you're wrong. There WILL be quality loss. The h.264 codec used by both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD allow for much higher compression ratios with less loss of quality. This means that you can keep the same size and get more quality, or you can keep the same quality and drop the filesize.

Case in point, I have a couple of projects I've done with DVD footage. The DivX/XviD version comes to about 95mb. The exact same thing encoded in h.264 at the exact same quality (720x480) clocks in at about 45mb. If I kept the same filesize, I could scale it up to 1280x720 easily (would look like ass since the source isn't that high to begin with, but you see the point). There is no way you could take a high-def movie and compress it to 8gb in DivX without sacrificing quality.

The only win you're going to get with this route is saving power due to decreased CPU usage. Rendering h.264 video in realtime is notoriously taxing on CPU's, ESPECIALLY at HD resolutions. But if you drop the quality, you lose the entire point of having a high-def copy in the first place.

And to the people talking about the lasers eating up power, yes they do. To an extent. Along with maxing out the CPU, the biggest drain on the battery is the drive itself. It's a moving part. It spins. ANY optical drive when in constant use is going to drain the battery a lot faster than just sitting idle or reading a few files every couple of minutes.

Re:Problem solved..

[tlhIngan (30335)]

Yeah, you could do that, but then why do you even need BluRay? We could just put Divx movies on plain old DVDs and have HighDef movies without even having a new disc. If you're going to rip the disk, you might as well rip it to a DVD resolution file, and make it only take up about 1 GB. You probably wouldn't even see the difference given the size of the screen and the quality of the sound card.

Because so-called "high-def" is really "high-res" video?

Everyone is claiming that downloading will kill Blu-Ray. It won't for at least the near future. IF we take even the most common Blu-Ray format around (single layer 25GB), you cannot compress it into DivX without losing a lot. Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) these days use more advanced codecs than DivX (h.264 or VC-1). H.264 is known formally as MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), while DivX is known as MPEG-4 ASP (Advanced Simple Profile). DivX is much better than MPEG2, but isn't a contender at all when compared to AVC.

Until one can download 25GB easily, most "high def" is around 720p. Sure that's "good enough" for most people, except it's also horribly overcompressed. Even comparisons of various downloaded "HD" videos show slight improvements against the standard-def version, but were clearly inferior to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD and even Cable. One review even said "save your money and just download the standard def version".

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[FuzzyDaddy (584528)]

I think the issue is the Blu-Ray disk you bought to watch in the living room on the big screen, that you then want to take with you.

Re:Why?

[Sandbags (964742)]

My 17" laptop screen has full HD resolution. Sitting on my lap, it has the effective screen size of a quite large TV at a normal sitting distance. HD goggles have screens as small as 2.5", but have effective viewing sizes in excess of 100".

I did a battery test. Not quite the same as watching realtime video, but I assume that pegging both my cores to 100% with the screen at 75% brightness while WRITING a DVD (at 1X just to make sure it took at least 2 hours) uses quite similar power to watching a BD or DVDVD movie, if not far more.

My battery died at 1 hour 50 minutes. Feature length for "most" movies nowadays. Playing a 1080P rip of a movie from the HDD I've gotten over 2.5 hours before, but I typically use lower brightness and don't use DVD at the same time. My wife's poor machine however, playing just simple DVDs, she gets about 1 hour 20 minutes. playing games online she gets less than an hour if she forgets to plug in.

Then again, the only places I watch a DVD is 1) in my car, where i have a power agapter, at home at my desk, or at work on breaks. I'm never out in a park wathcing DVD. At a coffee shop, there's an outlet handy if I need it.

This Vista POS I have from work supposedly has a centrino duo, which uses less watts than any of my other systems by a large margin, but since Vista thrashes the HDD so much, it only gets about 90 minutes on a charge. When XP was on it, I got nearly 3 hours per charge. Since BD and HD can only play under Vista anyway (unless you convert and rip to HDD) I'd say Vista itself was a bigger battery hog than the DVD player...