Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them. Tests made of various players have found a 25% discepancy when it comes to playing non-DRM protected music as against the same music in it's free state.
Take, for instance, the critically acclaimed Creative Zen Vision:M, with a rated battery life of up to 14 hours for audio and 4 hours for video. CNET tested it at nearly 16 hours, with MP3s -- impressive indeed. Upon playing back only WMA subscription tracks, the Vision:M scored at just more than 12 hours. That's a loss of almost 4 hours, and you haven't even turned the backlight on yet.
CNET found similar discrepancies with other PlaysForSure players. The Archos Gmini 402 Camcorder maxed out at 11 hours, but with DRM tracks, it played for less than 9 hours. The iRiver U10, with an astounding life of about 32 hours, came in at about 27 hours playing subscription tracks. Even the iPod, playing back only FairPlay AAC tracks, underperformed MP3s by about 8 percent.
While battery life may not be a critical issue today, as it was when one of the original hard drive players--the Creative Nomad Jukebox--lasted a pathetic 4 hours running on four AA nickel-metal-hydride rechargeables (and much worse on alkalines), the industry needs to include battery specs for DRM audio tracks or the tracks we're buying or subscribing.
Yet, here's another reason why we should still be ripping our music in MP3: better battery life, the most obvious reason being universal device compatibility.
Sony is one company that's been more up front about digital audio playback times. The company's players tend to have the best rated battery life, consistently more than 40 hours, but this is playing its own format, ATRAC3, at a lower-than-typical bit rate.
The box of the NW-HD5 states that the device can get up to 40 hours of continuous playback when playing 48Kbps ATRAC3plus tracks, which are not the most common tracks. But it also states that actual battery life "may vary based on usage patterns." Basically, rated battery life should be used as a guide and never be taken literally.
Story source:
mp3.com.
