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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Billions of kg of CO2 could be saved by scrapping DVDs, research suggests:
A new study has shown that streaming can be much better for the environment, requiring less energy and emitting less carbon dioxide (CO2), than some traditional methods of DVD renting, buying and viewing.
The researchers, who have published their study today, 29 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, cite modern devices such as laptops and tablets as the reason for this improvement, as they are much more efficient than older, energy-sapping DVD players. Furthermore, the driving that is required to go and buy, or rent, DVDs makes this method much more energy- and carbon-intensive. A significant proportion of the energy consumption and carbon emissions for streaming comes from the transmission of data, which increases drastically when more complex, high-definition content is streamed.
In their study, the researchers, from Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and Northwestern University, estimated that if all DVD viewing in the US was shifted to streaming services in 2011, around 2 billion kg of CO2 emissions could have been avoided and around 30 petajoules (PJ) of energy saved — the equivalent of the amount of electricity needed to meet the demands of 200,000 US households. They estimated that in 2011, 192 PJ of energy was used, and 10.4 billion kg of CO2 emitted, for all methods of DVD consumption and streaming in the US. From this, they calculated that one hour of video streaming requires 7.9 megajoules (MJ) of energy, compared to as much as 12 MJ for traditional DVD viewing, and emits 0.4 kg of CO2, compared to as much as 0.71 kg of CO2 for DVD viewing.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/14052 8204303.htm [sciencedaily.com]

The energy and greenhouse-gas implications of internet video streaming in the United States
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/5/054007/art icle [iop.org]

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