Powerbook Battery while watching DVD?

If you have 100% battery life when starting the DVD, then I don't think you'll have any trouble seeing a full 2:30 hour DVD movie. You may want to go into the Energy Saver System Preference and have it so that it reduces the processor speed when running off the battery. That shouldn't create any problems while watching the DVD, but you should easily be able to watch a DVD movie off your battery. One other thing to do is to turn off AirPort, and Bluetooth if you're not using it as that eats away at your battery. Also if its at night, I'd lower the brightness of the screen which will save battery life too, although if you have the backlit keyboard then it will do that for you as it lights up the keys on the keyboard.

I reccomend Handbrake for watching DVDs on the go. What you would do for example, if you are going on a plane trip, before hand you could rip the DVD to your hard drive, and while on the plane you could watch off of the hard drive, instead of the computer having to constantly spin up the disk.

It should save some battery life.

A PB should handle a 2 hour movie and it should have at least an hour of life left, it all depends on how you tweak the power settings.

musicpyrite said:

I reccomend Handbrake for watching DVDs on the go. What you would do for example, if you are going on a plane trip, before hand you could rip the DVD to your hard drive, and while on the plane you could watch off of the hard drive, instead of the computer having to constantly spin up the disk.

It should save some battery life.

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DVD2OneX could also help in the same situation.

Macmaniac said:

A PB should handle a 2 hour movie and it should have at least an hour of life left, it all depends on how you tweak the power settings.

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And with the "DVD" setting under the power management there should be no issues.

If the purpose of the original question was to determine if the PB could make it through a flight, then I have a vaguely on-topic post: get a 12V CD->120V AV power inverter. Plug it into the power outlet on most planes. Problem solved. Also, you can charge a cell phone, etc. - and you don't need to "pre-burn" the DVDs.

Variable Battery Life

I have an AlBook 15" 1.25 GHz set to battery save, no trouble with a 100 min. movie from DVD, but not much battery life was left after that. I doubt a 2.5-hr movie would work, since w/o using the optical drive I got about 2:30 from my setup. Of course, from other users' reports, battery life seems to vary quite a bit. I'm going to get a Newer Tech 4800 mAh (53.3 Wh) battery to see if I see much better results (I wanted an extra battery anyway, but if I never have to swap on most flights, I'd be ecstatic).

I tried ripping to MP4, but haven't done any testing (my wife keeps falling asleep during the movie, and I hate watching alone).

David