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HTML5 vs Flash Video: Battery performance analysis

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Re: HTML5 vs Flash Video: Battery performance analysis

#13

Post by DigitalSea »

This hardly seems like a conclusive test to me, it's the beginning. Testing performance across various devices and different versions of Android (although based on these current tests probably extremely difficult) ia the only true way to reach a definitive conclusion on HTML5 vs Flash battery drain.

Having said that, based on experience with various Flash-capable devices over the years I've noticed in Chrome especially Flash performance is horrible. I think Flash is severely broken in Chrome as even on my Core i7 laptop which is no slouch, it seems to manage sometimes 50% + CPU usage in Chrome and cause the CPU fan to really start spinning up to cool it down. It's no secret that Flash compared to HTML5 looks like an aging hatchback, but HTML5 video is nowhere near the scale of Flash just yet (in terms of market penetration or feature-set), at least not yet.

Re: HTML5 vs Flash Video: Battery performance analysis

#14

Post by ars »

I like flash because I don't actually watch it on the webpage - I let flash queue up the video, them play it with mplayer.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3094948 see my reply for the script. And I use http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13333 with settings to switch to high resolution, then start queuing and pause.

HTML5 video queues very very badly. It doesn't delete the video till the browser is closed, and had some other issues (I don't remember them all - it's been a year since I tried it).

Re: HTML5 vs Flash Video: Battery performance analysis

#15

Post by yossioren »

Hello! I'm Yossi, the guy who put up the web page. Thanks for the attention!

About your questions. These power analysis tests are destructive to the device under test, since I have to splice into the power supply line. I used a google tablet and a chromebook because the guys at google were kind enough (and their corporate culture functional enough) to give them to me. Obviously I would love to do this to additional hardware (coughmacbookprocough) but somebody would have to donate one.

Re: HTML5 vs Flash Video: Battery performance analysis

#17

Post by asperous »

DigitalSea wrote: post #13

This hardly seems like a conclusive test to me, it's the beginning. Testing performance across various devices and different versions of Android (although based on these current tests probably extremely difficult) ia the only true way to reach a definitive conclusion on HTML5 vs Flash battery drain. Having said that, based on experience with various Flash-capable devices over the years I've noticed in Chrome especial…

Make sure you have only one flash enabled in your plugin settings, if you have two different flash plugins running they will fight to be the chosen one and most likely lag and crash your browser.

Re: HTML5 vs Flash Video: Battery performance analysis

#18

Post by ryanpetrich »

kenjackson wrote: post #12

I'd be curious to see this data on Windows. On the Surface RT Flash seems to perform really well. How much of the issue is Flash vs how much of the issue is Android?

And how much of the issue is platform specific optimizations that have only been performed on the Win32 version of Flash and not elsewhere?

Re: HTML5 vs Flash Video: Battery performance analysis

#19

Post by quackerhacker »

Nice testing! I've done a TON of video compression and I agree that flash is cpu intensive, but I believe depending on the compression algorithm for mp4 (i.e. baseline, high, ultra, etc.) it can draw more power on the end user's device, but I think it's negligible when compared to flash.

Side Note: HTML5 videos may not use alot of power for playback (gpu), but try video compression (cpu) on a mobile device...HA!

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