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A trip down to the local video, and more recently DVD, store has become a thing of the past thanks to the rise of video streaming services.

Companies including Netflix and LoveFilm let viewers indulge in back-to-back episodes of hit TV series at the click of a button.

Now, a new study has shown that streaming can be much better for the environment, requiring less energy and emitting less carbon dioxide (CO2) than some traditional methods of DVD renting, buying and viewing.

New research published in the journal Environmental Research Letters suggests that it would be more 'green' to scrap DVDs in favour of using streaming services. This is for two reasons, one that DVD players use more energy than comparable streaming services and also that people sometimes have to drive to buy or rent DVDs

The researchers, who published their study today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, cite modern devices such as laptops and tablets as the reason for this improvement.

This is because they are much more efficient than older, energy-sapping DVD players.

Furthermore, the driving that is required to go and buy, or rent, DVDs makes this method much more energy- and carbon-intensive.

A significant proportion of the energy consumption and carbon emissions for streaming comes from the transmission of data, which increases drastically when more complex, high-definition content is streamed.

The study was carried out by researchers from Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California and Northwestern University in Chicago.

They estimated that if all DVD viewing in the US was shifted to streaming services in 2011, around 2 billion kg of CO2 emissions could have been avoided and around 30 petajoules (PJ) of energy saved.

That's the equivalent of the amount of electricity needed to meet the demands of 200,000 US households.

They estimated that in 2011, 192 PJ of energy was used, and 10.4 billion kg of CO2 emitted, for all methods of DVD consumption and streaming in the US.

From this, they calculated that one hour of video streaming requires 7.9 megajoules (MJ) of energy, compared to as much as 12 MJ for traditional DVD viewing, and emits 0.4 kilograms (0.9 pounds) of CO2, compared to as much as 0.71 kg (1.6 pounds) of CO2 for DVD viewing.

Video streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo and Hulu have risen hugely in popularity in the last few years and have successfully dented the sales of DVDs - but the researchers say it might be time to scrap the format completely

To arrive at their results, the researchers compared video streaming with four different types of DVD consumerism: DVDs that are rented from online mailers; DVDs that are rented from a store; DVDs that are purchased online; and DVDs that are bought from a store.

Video streaming was limited to TV and movies and did not include shorter videos that are streamed online through YouTube, Vimeo and so on.

They found that video streaming and the online rental of DVDs required similar amounts of energy; however, the renting and purchasing of DVDs from a store were much more energy intensive, due to the impact of driving.

'It's a modern-day equivalent of the debate about which is more environmentally sound - the disposable or the cloth diaper,' says Lead author of the research Arman Shehabi from Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory.

'Our study suggests that equipment designers and policy makers should focus on improving the efficiency of end-user devices and network transmission energy to curb the energy use from future increases in video streaming.

'Such efficiency improvements will be particularly important in the near future, when society is expected to consume far greater quantities of streaming video content compared to today.'