Scary loud fan noise when watching Netflix

[rustyosaurus]

I got my new MBA today and wanted to run a battery cycle so I started a movie on Netflix and headed to the gym.

First, a few things I noticed. With the battery fully charged, keyboard light off and screen brightness at 25% and no applications open, it said I had just over 10 hours of battery.

With screen brightness at 75%, keyboard light off and no apps open it said I had 7 hours of battery.

Under the same conditions I started Safari with a movie from netflix and the battery immediately said less than 2 hours. Then the scary fan noise started.

Here it is about 2 hours from when I began and the computer has powered itself off, the fan noise happened the entire 2 hours (gee, I hope that isn't bad).

a) what's up with the fan running with Netflix?
b) what's up with 2 hours battery with Netflix?

PS: I have a MBA 13, 256 SSD, i5

 

[Eidorian]

Silverlight eats your CPU for breakfast. Do we have a word on hardware accelerated playback for Silverlight yet under Lion?

 

[ishopukisfake]

One of the main reasons I went for the macbook air in 2010 was the silence.

One of the first things I did was import an SD card and it sounded like it was about to take of lol -

However the fans were more sophisticated and deeper like a jet engine compared to older model.

Also this only happens in very intensive things or if you watch a movie for a long time, the heat starts to build up.

But with the late 2010 model it is excellent most of the time silent, I can even watch a 1080p video on youtube and it remains silent.

One of the dangers with introducing higher processors in this new model is it could cause overheating more, thus fan noise, which I personally really dislike. Makes me glad I have the previous model with the Nvidia graphics too.