Netflix can now serve 100Gbit/s of video (so something like 12,500 individual 4K streams) with an appliance using 100 watts of power. That’s 8 milliwatts for each 4K stream.
Remember that number the next time someone tells you that watching a Netflix show is as bad as driving an SUV or some shit.
@karppinen You and they are not counting all the infrastructure in the middle to deliver it. It also doesn’t include all the power needed to encode the umpteen codecs to support all streamable devices. They still look like an AI startup training LLMs. This is like saying that an EV is 100% green and hooking it up to mains back to a coal fired power plant.
@eric these Open Connect appliances are deployed very close to the eyeballs, that’s the whole point. I don’t know how many views an average Netflix encode gets but it’s sure as shit more than mine, so can’t be a significant number of watt-hours per view
@karppinen I have run access networks, cable heads, wireless MTSOs through my entire career and know down to the milliwatt what it costs to deliver a bit sicne I paid the bill. This article is focused on what is already the least expensive device to operate and ignores the end-to-end delivery of a stream. The Verge just published an article with the Netflix person in charge of encoding and she said it was incredibly power intensive.
@eric I don’t doubt it’s intensive but I don’t also expect it to count on a per-view basis. They claim to have achieved a halving of bitrates with their encoding magic so that places an upper bound of how much it makes sense to spend on it.
Anyway, all of this is a rounding error compared to the energy intensity of your 55-inch TV. The beef I have with all the stories about the environmental impact of streaming is that the impact is almost exactly the same as with linear TV.
@karppinen streaming is exponentially more expensive than legacy broadcast TV. I implemented switched digital and vod in the cable industry back in 2003 and the increase in power required us to blow out our headends for HVAC and power to support it. Simulcast is inherently more expensive than legacy broadcast. And I agree, the edge infrastructure, ie TVs, AppleTVs, are a major impact that people forget to include in power consumption. Cable set top boxes with DVR were the worst.
@eric very on point. On the flip side, the cost of delivery in Unicast starts to become more evident to the book keepers at media corporations. Still haven't found out how to make it really profitable. And surprise... Transcoding on "legacy" broadcast HW is now much cheaper than using server based and cloud based solutions @karppinen
@karppinen I’m just tired of the tech industry using every little excuse to gaslight us that they re moving green when they keep sinking further down of more and more power consumption. Watch out if a data center is installed in your town. Expect your power bill to go up to help pay to feed it.
@karppinen @eric > The beef I have with all the stories about the environmental impact of streaming is
And if you change "beef" for "vegetables", you message is even more environmental friendly 
.