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jwolf6589

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
4,919
1,644
Colorado
Was just watching a movie on battery power via the ATV app and boy my Mac got hot. It also does not help its 90+ here in Denver today. The first film in this trilogy I have on DVD/Blueray and watched that one via my USB DVD Player and MacBook was not as hot. Does streaming via WIFI consume more power than watching via an external DVD player or something?
 

skyhawkmatthew

macrumors regular
Oct 1, 2007
243
276
Australia
I’d think the power consumed by spinning a disc for 2 hours would have to be much greater than what the wi-fi card could possibly draw. The heat is obviously being dissipated outside the laptop itself, though.
 

jwolf6589

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
4,919
1,644
Colorado
I’d think the power consumed by spinning a disc for 2 hours would have to be much greater than what the wi-fi card could possibly draw. The heat is obviously being dissipated outside the laptop itself, though.
Yeah streaming the battery only went down 10%. Perhaps watching a DVD will use more battery power. MacBook was plugged in.
 

DHagan4755

macrumors 68020
Jul 18, 2002
2,271
6,158
Massachusetts
Was just watching a movie on battery power via the ATV app and boy my Mac got hot. It also does not help its 90+ here in Denver today. The first film in this trilogy I have on DVD/Blueray and watched that one via my USB DVD Player and MacBook was not as hot. Does streaming via WIFI consume more power than watching via an external DVD player or something?
The Apple TV app is probably playing the movie in HEVC (H265) vs. the BluRay which is usually in the MPEG-2 video codec. While HEVC files are smaller, they're more compressed. I'm not sure Apple's Intel MacBooks ever had the built-in hardware to deal with H265 files, thus the CPU would work harder & your Mac would get warmer. I don't know if this answer helps, but that may be what it is.
 
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jwolf6589

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
4,919
1,644
Colorado
The Apple TV app is probably playing the movie in HEVC (H265) vs. the BluRay which is usually in the MPEG-2 video codec. While HEVC files are smaller, they're more compressed. I'm not sure Apple's Intel MacBooks ever had the built-in hardware to deal with H265 files, thus the CPU would work harder & your Mac would get warmer. I don't know if this answer helps, but that may be what it is.
Thanks
 
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