[yaur]

When we switched from x264 to hardware based encoders it saved something like 90% on our customers' power and cooling bills.

So while this essay might be "technically correct" in some very narrow sense the author is speaking with far more authority than they have the experience to justify, which is what makes it obnoxious in the first place.

[mrguyorama]

The author is directing this at complete noobs who are subbing their first anime and you are complaining that it is not applicable to running a datacenter?

[knowitnone3]

the author never talked about power savings or cooling bills, they talked about quality so they are still correct.

[encom]

This is already mentioned in the article. Software vs. hardware is a tradeoff. x264 produces higher quality (perceptual or compression efficiency) video, at the expense of latency.