A Comparative Analysis of Media Players Power Consumption on Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.04.1

This study investigates the energy consumption of various media players across two operating systems, Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.04.1, focusing on the impact of hardware acceleration, codec support, and resource management on overall power usage. Media players such as VLC, MPV, Kodi, and MPC-HC on Windows, and VLC, MPV, Totem, and Parole on Ubuntu, were evaluated using tools like intel_gpu_top on Ubuntu and HWiNFO on Windows to capture detailed measurements of CPU, GPU, and memory power consumption during 4K video playback. The results demonstrate that Windows 11 media players consistently consume less power due to effective GPU utilization. In contrast, Ubuntu 24.04.1 media players exhibited higher CPU power consumption, primarily due to the lack of driver optimization for hardware acceleration.