Airplay Mirroring and Battery Consumption

[tom.hs]

Hi,

I’ve been using for some time and app called “AirBeamTV (Mirror for Samsung TV)” to wirelessly mirror my rMBP 2015 to my Samsung Smart TV via wifi.

I noted that the battery drains pretty quickly. I use it to mirror the rMBP while streaming videos. The battery can easily drop around 20% in an hour usage. I don’t like being charging the macbook so frequently and I am scared that the heavy battery usage can affect the battery capacity and lifetime.

In just wonder if this is a common feature of wirless mirroring or it is something specific of the app I am using.
How is the battery consumption of mirroring using Apple TV compared with what I am getting with the mentioned app?

I’ve been thinking in getting an Apple TV 4th Gen, but just want to make sure I will get something better than what I have now...

Any comment is much appreciated.

Regards,
Tomas

 

[priitv8]

Screen mirroring is processing-heavy activity. Full GPU framebuffer needs to be encoded into H.264 in realtime.
AirPlay streaming of a H.264 encoded stream is not. It is in essence just a file copy.

 

[waw74]

are you using the TV like a monitor? ( to do web browsing, or text editing, os similar)
or are you using it to play media (going full screen on your laptop, and sending that to the tv)

if you're playing media, as priitv said, the computer has to decode the stream to play on your laptop screen, then re-encode the image on your screen to send it to your TV
airplay mirroring would use just as much power in this case.

for media playback, i would look at Plex, or beamer
for plex, there should be an app for your TV, and as long as the file is compatible, plex will just forward it to the TV, using little to no power. it does require a bit of setup to get files into your library.

beamer would require an apple TV or google chrome cast enabled device (your TV may have this bulit-in)
with beamer you just drag a file onto it, no library needed like Plex.

you could also "sneaker net" it and put the files on a USB stick and put that in your TV.

 

[tom.hs]

Hi guys, Thanks a lot for your replies.

I am using the TV as a monitor to mirror the full screen of my macbook while streaming TV series, movies, broadcasted sports, etc. from the web, i.e. streamed, not from files located in the SSD, not though Airplay, but through mirroring.

The only reason I would get the Apple TV is if it brings any improvement vs. the app I am using in terms of battery consumption. If you say that airplay mirroring would have a very similar battery usage, I don't see the expense is justified (from my point of view, for what I intend to use it...)

Any further comments are welcomed...

 

[priitv8]

You just need to give up the Screen Mirroring. Safari can AirPlay the stream from many sites, so use that. This way only the incoming stream will be deflected to new display, over the network.