Energy consumption of a FireDTV (1 Viewer)

[josch.hh]

Can someone of the owners of the DigitalEverywhere FireDTV tell me how much energy this device consumes during playback/recording and inactivity?
Thanks

And by the way, does someone know why it has to be connected via Firewire?
Why did they choose Firewire not USB?

 

[Spragleknas]

Not sure about power con., but I remember that FW actually is faster than USB, and more stable.

This article seems to back up first part: FireWire vs. USB 2.0 - Speed Comparison

 

[josch.hh]

Thanks for your reply. I would really like to know something about the power consumption. Can someone test this maybe?
I am sure other people would like to know too.

As everyone knows - IT is getting "green".

Not sure about power con., but I remember that FW actually is faster than USB, and more stable.

This article seems to back up first part: FireWire vs. USB 2.0 - Speed Comparison

I just read the link and it is the perfect answer.
I would say that this small piece of text is so interesting, that i would like to put it here in the thread (Just in case the remote side will not be available some day).

Here it is:


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FireWire vs. USB 2.0
FireWire - Still the Performance King!

Need to connect a FireWire device or a USB device and you don't have the appropriate interface on your computer? With a combo card, you can add both port types at once: See: FireWire & USB 2.0 PCI Card, USB Firewire CardBus Card, FireWire USB 2.0 ExpressCard 34


Question: USB 2.0 is faster than FireWire...right?
Answer: No, actually FireWire is faster than USB 2.0.

Question: Hold on...USB 2.0 is a 480 Mbps interface and FireWire is a 400 Mbps interface, how can FireWire be faster?
Answer: Raw throughput rating numbers alone don't tell the whole story, as explained below.

The throughput numbers would lead you to believe that USB 2.0 provides better performance. But, differences in the architecture of the two interfaces have a huge impact on the actual sustained "real world" throughput. And for those seeking high-performance, sustained throughput is what it's all about (reading and writing files to an external hard drive for example).

Architecture - FireWire vs. USB 2.0

FireWire, built from the ground up for speed, uses a "Peer-to-Peer" architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent and can negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer

USB 2.0 uses a "Master-Slave" architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from and between the attached peripherals (adding additional system overhead and resulting in slower, less-efficient data flow control)

Performance Comparison - FireWire vs. USB 2.0
Read and write tests to the same IDE hard drive connected using FireWire and then USB 2.0 show:

Read Test:
5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0

Write Test:
5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0


FireWire - Still the Performance King!
As the performance comparison shown above confirms, FireWire remains the performance leader. And is the best choice for DV camcorders, digital audio and video devices, external hard drives, high-performance DVD burners and any other device that demands continuous high performance throughput.