What is Digg?125 Comments
- JesseJ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+67I'va also heard that on some applications copyprotections drains 40% of CPU power because 'code needs to be decrypted' on the fly.
This is quite awful, considering that those who have the pirate stuff get the better stuff without the drm and copyprotection, and we who pay get the weaker product.
And it also seems that no copyprotection actually works, so why even bother harassing the real customers with it? - cjhowe, on 10/12/2007, -5/+51But if you're only listening to DRM CDs...you'll probably be listening to 75% less music, so you're battery will be just fine ;)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+40i dont want to pay $1 for a song i already own just to hear it on a music player i own but cant put my own music on it.
I dont want to play 3$ for a 3 month subscription to use a ringtone of a song i already own.
DRM is jut a way to resell you the same product in different packaging. - NJerseyGuy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25It's worth noting that these tests seem to have compared WMA with DRM to regular MP3. It is very possible the that battery use is due to the crappiness of WMA in general, and not the DRM. After all, WMA is generally considered to be slightly better compressed, for a given audio quality, than MP3. The discrepancy might be due to computationally intensize unpacking of WMA. A better study would compare WMA with and without DRM to eliminate this problem.
Case in point, Apple seems to implement DRM without as drastic a cut in battery performace. My guess is that they simply have a decompression algorithm that is less computationally intensive. - jeromeerome, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25Did you read the article? It said "Even the iPod, playing back only FairPlay AAC tracks, underperformed MP3s by about 8 percent." So yes it does affect more than just WMA files/players.
- gorkish, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22This isn't a particularly fair comparison. I'd suggest that it is far more likely that it takes more power to decode WMA than MP3 in the first place. The comparisons should have been made between the same songs at the same bitrate using protected and non protected WMA on the same player and protected and non-protected AAC on the iPod.
Most portable players implement decoding on dedicated ASIC's or DSP's designed to do the decoding while the main CPU would handle the DRM stuff; it is logical to assume that there will be some extra power used by the device when handling the DRM. But it's not fair to quantify it unless you do a valid study.
This kind of alarmism is as bad as the restrictions in the first place. When people make ridiculous claims like this it weakens the integrity of their entire argument. This is not the way to fight DRM. - fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21And some people protest against DRM and don't pirate.
- pfunked, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19> yeah, um, how many minutes exactly did it take before someone hacked CSS?
How many minutes in three years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-scrambling_system - aurifex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Not true at all. I especially hate games like Half-Life 2 which require a cd-key, activation, decryption, and constant always-on authorization to play the single player game. When I can download a hacked version of the game that doesn't give me ANY of those problems, and it's free, why should I pay $60 to be aggrivated more than entertained?
- Spastastic, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21Lets not fool ourselves people. People aren't pirating because they hate iTMS or DRM. It's like Godric said but to put it in much simpler terms...people like free *****. Give me an option to get the same product either for free or pay I'll pick the free option. That's just common sense and no need to intellectualize the reasons anymore than it's free *****.
- craigtheguru, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12These tests seem to compare DRMed files to MP3s which is a different codec.
These tests should be performed using the same source files and the same codec at the same bitrate. This would provide more useful results and indicate the extra battery use for DRM as well as the different codecs themselves. - s1ipstream, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I used to work for Creative Labs. It is well known that the WMA format requires more power than the MP3 format. The author did not test non-DRM WMA and thus arrives at an incorrect conclusion. WHY WHY WHY does CNET publish stuff like this? Do they hire "CNET Staff" from the local elementary school? Conducting experiments (variables, controls, etc.) like this are something you learn at least by high school.
- Godric, on 10/12/2007, -19/+28The people who protest against DRM don't pirate because they hate DRM. They're pirating because they don't want to or can't pay the 1 dollar per song.
These people will never be customers. So DRM is only encumbering good, paying customers. - gamabunta, on 10/12/2007, -10/+18b.s. People pirate because they hate the iTMS and how you are limited to what Apple deems fair use, and the fact that Apple can change what they think is fair use at any time to any previous file you have purchased.
- drakethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9It comes down to the fact that pirating music is still low risk. Despite what the RIAA wants people to believe its a known fact by now (or at least I hope it is) that you have a statistically higher chance of being struck by lighting then being sued. It is possible for ISPs to target you but even they just warn you and 2nd time just cancel your internet (you can always switch from Cable to DSL or vice versa).
Yet I think this targetting and blaming of iTMS is retarded. The Apple FairUse DRM is no where near as bad as the crap they put on CDs. Not to mention iTMS isn't the only place to get DRM music. Honestly nobody should be questioning if DRM is the reason people pirate (since pirating became huge before DRM...). The reality is that DRM has made piracy worse because those who legally bought music (like my parents) no longer do and instead pirate because they don't like the idea that they can't choose what to do with it. - chosenone-, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14Don't .wma files drain more battery even without DRM?
- dusingaz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+94 in 5 mp3 players sold are ipods.... so yeah playforsure is quite limited when all those hordes of mp3 players only add up to 1 in 5 mp3 players purchased.
- MrCobaltBlue, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I heard DRM causes cancer.
- LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8This is an extremely flawed comparison. While I'm sure that the DRM does contribute to lower battery life compared to if it was not there, this test compares across codecs as well.
AAC and WMA are more compute intensive than MP3 at the same bitrate because they use more modern more advanced decode algorithms. A significant part of the battery life hit is due to the codec difference.
MP3 is lightweight, but the quality pales compared to AAC and WMA. To get the same quality out of MP3 that you would out of AAC or WMA at 128kbps, you'd need to increase the bitrate... this means bigger files, and bigger files mean the music player's buffers fill up quicker, and your battery life will go down in that case as well.
Comparing it to plain old MP3 ruins an otherwise interesting analysis. They should be comparing the same songs encoded in unprotected WMA compared to protected WMA, and unprotected AAC versus protected AAC.
Keep the codec the same, but make the DRM the only variable. No digg. - jonnyeh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Ya, but the DRM'd iTMS songs are in AAC format, which could take more processing to decode than an mp3.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8as much as i hate drm, this sounds more like sensationalism (sp?).
- chesterton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I was just noticing that - the article should have compaired a WMA with DRM versus WMA without, and compared AAC with FairPlay and AAC without.
The article is more bad logic from someone with an axe to grind. - lasermike026, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Ok....
DRM = crypto = high cpu load = more power = making batteries dead faster.
and
WMA = higher bit rate = high cpu load = more power = making batteries dead faster.
and
WMA + DRM = even higher cpu load = even more power = make batteries dead even faster.
happy? - adkinsjm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5MP3 is not licence free. The codec is owned by Fraunhofer I believe.
- ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Well then they might not get the result they were going for.
- nigeltufnel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8"So yes it does affect more than just WMA files/players."
8% is negligible compared to 24% (that could even be a selling point for the iTMS), but yes. - Reddog_x2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6So why would they do .mp3 vs Drm'd .WMA's? Why didn't they compare non-drm .WMA's vs DRM-WMA's? That would seem to be a better comparison.
- JohntB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Coudn't it be the case that raw WMA's require more power to play back than raw MP3's? Considering that WMA is a better algorithm, that better generally means more CPU time, which means more time that the CPU is at full speed, that's a distinct possibility.
- Stevor1984, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6After dealing with Star Force or whatever it is, I feel like I may have several tumors. Star Force is a perfect example of how DRM can get out of hand.
- fredinator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6If I get some money I might put an ad on TV about the dangers/problems of DRM
- Solstice, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Exactly. This test is completely unfair. WMA10 is a much more compute-intensive codec than MP3.
- sirplus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6DRM. yawn. never use that crap. so much great mp3 material out there, much of it legal and free, why would you even mess with RIAA product anymore? man, just go through http://sxsw.com and you have enough great new music for a freakin year! or dive into http://mp34u.com and you'll never get to the end of it. so ya really need your encrypted yanni or britney record or whatever? well fine, that's between you and your therapist :)
- ditoa, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6jonnyeh is right, AAC (and WMA for that matter) require more power to decode the same song as they use more complex algorithms.
From what I can see they did test WMA with DRM and WMA without DRM on the exact same song encoded with the exact same settings. This test is hardly rock solid evidence. - superdave913, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Perhaps the DRM folks should be fined an environmental tax, since they are wasting energy and resources.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Portuguese / Brazilian : http://www.htk.com.br/noticia.php?noticia=267
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http://www.htk.com.br/ - Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4As much as I don't want to admit it, I have to agree with you. It's a weak argument given the offbalance comparison, but the overhead of dealing with DRM isn't free, at the very least.
- LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4lasermike, no i'm not happy. This article pretends to present a controlled experiment with empirical results...
25% degrade in battery life... that gives a horrible impression, but it is NOT a controlled experiment because they used a completely different codec...
It would not surprise me if when they ran this experiment, they didn't even play the same tracks.
This is not a controlled experiment that seeks to see what the consequence of DRM is. Period. - hardkoretom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4who really cares. i havent bought any drm protected files so whatever
- bristolz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That's my take, the decode is CPU hungry on almost any sophisticated compression scheme.
- jothan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Good, now you know why vista requires a 11 Ghz CPU.
- r3zonance, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Wouldn't it have been better to test two identical formats, one with DRM and one without?
I.e. WMA with and without DRM or AAC with and without DRM.
MP3 files are worse quality matching the bitrate of WMA, so a big factor will actually be the processing involved to decode the file itself (regardless of DRM).
Bit of a biased test in my opinion. - beelz, on 10/12/2007, -8/+11fight the powers that be.
- rimco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm sure someone already mentioned this, but I'm too lazy to read all the comments... did it ever occur to them that it takes more CPU power to process a WMA file, regardless of DRM, than it does with an MP3? I know for a fact that it does, so I don't think this is a particularly fair test. Maybe if they compared DRM WMA to non-DRM WMA, then they could show something. All codecs are not created equal (h.264 proves that in the video department).
- cntp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This proves nothing - the people that did these "tests" are stupid.
You test the same songs in WMA, one set encrypted, one set unencrypted - ToadX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I agree this is not a fair comparison. They should've compared WMA's with DRM and WMA's without DRM, as well as AAC with and without DRM. MP3 takes less power to decode than WMA or AAC. You can't blame it on the DRM based on this study.
- ZMerlin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3What is Star Force? What's the story there?
- lasermike026, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4DRM = crypto = high cpu load = more power = making batteries dead faster.
- GrinningFool, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Irrelevant. If there are 50 million players sold, that still means means 10 million are NOT ipods. I hardly think that 10 million players qualifies as "limited" in any sense.
(Yes, these numbers were pulled out of somewhere dark and smelly. But if anyone finds that I'm /overestimating/ please feel free to correct) - LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You are absolutely right doyama.
I hate the idea of DRM too, but I will not sign off on sensationalized and rigged studies that aren't even testing DRM in isolation because they varied the codec.
Take AAC for example. Although it is being championed by Apple, it is still a well supported and widely accepted MPEG and ISO format just like MP3 was back in its day. It doesn't REQUIRE drm, and indeed you can rip unprotected AAC files from your music CDs from iTunes. Those same files will play fine on the Sony PSP for example. -
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