As part of its digital music player reviews, MP3.com/CNET performed an analysis that shows that DRM contributes significantly to battery loss. It specifically
calls out Microsoft's WMA DRM, which accompanies music from Napster and Rhapsody:
"It takes extra processing
power to ensure that the licenses making the tracks work are still valid and match up to the device itself. Heavy DRM
not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them."
Here's CNET's breakdown of the
battery lives of various MP3 players playing DRM and non-DRM (I'm guessing 128 kbps MP3s, but that's not explicit in
the review):
Creative Zen Vistion:M: 16 hours with MP3s, 12 hours with only WMA subscription tracks
Archos
Gmini 402 Camcorder: 11 hours with MP3s, 9 hours with DRM tracks
iRiver U10: 32(!!) hours with MP3s, 27 hours
playing subscription tracks
The iPod, playing back only FairPlay AAC tracks, "underperformed MP3s by about 8
percent."
DRM is Evil (Reason #5,276)
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Sage has some interesting comments; I'm glad he brought this up. I hadn't thought about the limitations of this comparison, and I think he's right, DRM'd *should be compared to non-DRM'd audio -- *not* MP3.
Posted at 12:03AM on Mar 21st 2006 by Harold J. Johnson
3. It probably was obvious to anyone with some experience working with a lot of codecs, but, unfortunately, I'm not one of those people. So I'm grateful to Sage for raising the point. Even from a layman's perspective, it seems clear in hindsight that mp3s are an inappropriate control set or placebo for CNET's comparison. I am curious about the claim that it takes extra processing power to read the licenses. Seems plausible, but perhaps it was CNET simply speculating on what caused the deltas.
Posted at 12:31AM on Mar 21st 2006 by Tommy Perkins
1. I call bullshit on this one. Of *COURSE* advanced codecs like WMA and AAC require more processing power than MP3. They're higher-quality compression formulas. DRM has absolutely *NOTHING* to do with this. If it did, C|Net would be comparing the DRM'd tracks to non-DRM'd WMA and AAC files, not MP3. Come on, Tommy, you should know better than to fall for this obvious shell game.
Posted at 1:28PM on Mar 20th 2006 by Sage