JackHandy said:
SvennoJ said:
Well cable / ota tv and renting physical media is definitely better for the environment. Most of data consumption and storage is video streaming.
For games it comes down to how many times a physical game gets used (re-installs, sharing, reselling) vs how many times that game would get downloaded. If one physical game disk prevents more than 128 GB worth of downloaded data, it is better for the environment in the long run.
I wonder what the carbon footprint of you tube is, ah about 10Mt CO2e (Million Metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent)
Netflix has announced that in 2020, one hour of streaming on its platform used about a hundred grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (100gCO2e) That is equivalent to driving an average car to about 1.2 kms. Or, in other words, it’s enough to power a 75W ceiling fan for about six hours in Europe
Scientists at the UK's Royal Society have previously suggested that streaming a video in standard definition (SD) can cut your carbon emissions to about eight times as compared to watching it in 4K resolution.
And of course 'watching' music videos, do you really need the video part. A first easy step would be browsers realizing when a video doesn't have the focus and then not streaming the video, just the audio. Reduce the time until Netflix asks if you're still awake, smarter sleep timers. Dunno why tvs don't have a simple motion sensor as a sleep timer option. Many people fall asleep with the tv on, which not only costs extra energy but also keeps on streaming whatever was on. |
In my house growing up, the TV stayed on damn-near twenty-four hours. It was basically background noise when it wasn't being used, and usually was left on even when we all left the house. I don't know how common that is, but I would wager a lot of people probably did similar things. |
Still do, guilty of leaving the tv on for the dog... It is mostly background noise during the day while busy on laptop or phone. And now my kids do the same except worse, letting you tube stream on their tv while playing on Switch, streaming Spotify while playing on ps4 plus broadcasting plus party chat.
At least tvs are more energy efficient nowadays and have you tube etc built in (no 200 watt console running to stream videos) but usage has gone up a lot. It makes more sense to have the radio on for background noise, it still exists! And we do have that on now and then instead of the tv for background noise. Problem with radio is that the commercials are louder than the music, annoying. (My cable tv provider takes the cake though with their video on demand, it's 'free' as in unskippable commercials that play at 3x the volume as the program. You can't doze off with that on, every 7 minutes you go deaf)
