HD wars redux

[Sides]

The problem with Laptops or notebooks it the backlight used by the LCD technology. Hopefully LED backlight will improve the battery problem as an intermediate solution, until LCD gets phased out for good.

[Ledgem]

Intel's Montevina chipset is expected to put H.264 support into its graphics cores. Marketing people claim that now you can watch Blu-ray for three hours thanks to that, but I'm not so sure. H.264 support has been in graphics chips from nVidia and ATI (not sure if they were in the mobile editions, though) and yet I don't hear anything about battery savings in systems that have those. The graphics chip either has H.264 support or it doesn't; even if Intel has somehow optimized theirs I can't imagine that the energy savings would essentially triple the playtime over other solutions.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

Well regardless of which format won - bear in mind that any additional power requirements will be offset by the reduced power requirements of the much improved HDD power requirements (watch for the SSD & hybrid HDDs to make the most difference), LCD tech and CPU power/cooling tech.

It is going to be power optimization, not a true reduction or offset. As the article says, it's about moving who does the work when the playing so that it reduces the amount of CPU/GPU, less reads from the drive, etc. Optimization on the GPU and CPU will make a huge difference since that is where a most of the work is actually done. The HDD should not make a difference at all when watching a movie anymore. In a few years, they will probably also figure out a lower power laser too.

As it stands very few lapops can play more than 1x2.5hr DVD on battery power. The best I've seen tops out at just over 3hrs. So as i stand IMO you get a break even at even marginal reduction (<10min) in overall battery life over your mean performance across all specs. As the article says battery capacity tech is just not keeping up.

Well, laptops were never really designed as mobile DVD players while on battery until the past few years. The amount of optimization for things like websurfing and doing work has resulted in a large time jump with just a small increase in battery life. Putting a powerful laser in the system is just going to eat straight through the battery at any tech.

Originally Posted by Sides

The problem with Laptops or notebooks it the backlight used by the LCD technology. Hopefully LED backlight will improve the battery problem as an intermediate solution, until LCD gets phased out for good.

Even with the backlight turned all the way down, the processor and GPU can still eat up a massive amount of battery (even when clocked down) while watching from a CD/DVD.

[hobbes_fan]

SSD/Hybrids won't make a massive difference in DVD playing yes that's true, but nearly every projection I've seen speculates 25% improved battery life for the sheer fact there are no motorized parts, even playing DVD's the HDD is accessed so there will be significant time gains. For the sheer fact it is motorised it instantly is a battery sucker. Plug in a 40gb USB powered hdd watch your battery life plummet, plug in a 32gb (biggest I have) USB thumbdrive and your lappie runs 10mins longer. Now that's with minimal activity. When there's constant access it's more like 20. Now granted that's a poor test, by using USB, but its fairly clear motorized vs non motorized is a non contest.

If you're saying to me the reduced power/higher performance cpu's aren't making a difference well I have a P4, a centrino and dual core laptop on hand that beg to say otherwise. CoreAVC is optimised software for h264 decoding vs ffdshow. Is that going to improve my battery life? Yeah it will by the sheer fact of the reduced cpu load, but really what will have have a longer battery life a p4 laptop running Coreavc vs a c2d laptop running FFDshow? I almost guarantee the C2d by a mile.

Optimization helps but the hardware is becoming more energy efficient in light of he poor growth of battery tech. Nimh/LIon battery tech has barely seen any improvement in the last decade. It's a massive problem - it's one of the major issues with the development electric car. New engine designs is what keeps the forward momentum going.

[grey_moon]

I guess the only way to really keep the advantage of mobile tech is to use something like pimpstreamer and get the reading/decoding/resizing off the mobile device. But then again the mobile device will suck power via its connection to the streaming server. Can't win really.