Th DRM is the real issue, especially when viewing habits are taken into account. The most watched shows on Netflix for years have been repeat viewings of old sitcoms. The re-watching of shows like Friends, The Office, Seinfeld, etc is especially energy intensive because of DRM. Viewers download the same episode again and again and again, only for the DRM to automatically delete the downloaded file every time. If Netflix was just a folder on a server of DRM-free .mp4 files it would be very efficient.
But it isn’t. Instead, capitalism demands an inefficient over-engineered mess of a system, with a confusing algorithmically reshuffled interface of self-destructing video files so that people can be charged money every month forever and ever.
Good point. All these streaming sites are inefficient by design. Even without the DRM the Server will have to encode the video and audio (or possibly even transcode them if the client only supports certain formats) before sending them to the client. And this happens on the fly every time anyone watches anything. If those streaming sites were all just a fancy looking file server that make you download the source video files directly (kind of like GOG does with video games) then that would greatly reduce energy consumption long-term.
