Re: streaming video

On 18/04/10 19:49, kkm wrote:
> I have the Virgin up to 10 mb/sec cable service, which occasionally
> drops down to 6 mb/sec as measured by speedtest.net, but usually is
> between 8 and 10 when I test. The upload speed can be quite bad as low
> as 0.03 mb/sec, but don't know if that is critical for things other than
> ftp and voip.
>
> I missed the 2 hour final episode of Frost on bank holiday Monday, so
> started trying to watch it at 4pm this afternoon on ITV catch up. Gave
> up at 7.30 this evening, with another 20 mins to go - well not given up
> I'll try and get the final 20 mins between 11pm and 1am. The program is
> 1 hr and 29 mins.
>
> It keeps buffering/loading whatever and when it restarts it plays 5 ads
> then correctly restarts the prog from where I left off only to play
> maybe two minutes then it requires the page to be refreshed and the
> cycle repeats.
>
> Is this a common experience that people have or is it just me. I would
> describe myself as a moderate internet user as I work from home, but I
> don't use peer to peer download sites for films or music, just 3 or 4
> hours per week maybe downloaded from iPlayer which I set off in the
> mornings when its generally better, as I've found streaming with the BBC
> is often just as bad, as it is with CH4 too.

No it isn't. That sounds really poor, I doubt I would have stuck with
it. Sounds like you're being throttled. VM are pretty draconian in this
respect IMO.

I don't use the itv player much, but I do use iplayer and 4OD a
regularly. I rarely get more than one or two brief bufferings per
program. I'm on ADSL and get between 5-6Mbps as per speedtest.net.

chris wrote:
> On 18/04/10 19:49, kkm wrote:
>> I have the Virgin up to 10 mb/sec cable service, which occasionally
>> drops down to 6 mb/sec as measured by speedtest.net, but usually is
>> between 8 and 10 when I test. The upload speed can be quite bad as low
>> as 0.03 mb/sec, but don't know if that is critical for things other than
>> ftp and voip.
>>
>> I missed the 2 hour final episode of Frost on bank holiday Monday, so
>> started trying to watch it at 4pm this afternoon on ITV catch up. Gave
>> up at 7.30 this evening, with another 20 mins to go - well not given up
>> I'll try and get the final 20 mins between 11pm and 1am. The program is
>> 1 hr and 29 mins.
>>
>> It keeps buffering/loading whatever and when it restarts it plays 5 ads
>> then correctly restarts the prog from where I left off only to play
>> maybe two minutes then it requires the page to be refreshed and the
>> cycle repeats.
>>
>> Is this a common experience that people have or is it just me. I would
>> describe myself as a moderate internet user as I work from home, but I
>> don't use peer to peer download sites for films or music, just 3 or 4
>> hours per week maybe downloaded from iPlayer which I set off in the
>> mornings when its generally better, as I've found streaming with the BBC
>> is often just as bad, as it is with CH4 too.
>
> No it isn't. That sounds really poor, I doubt I would have stuck with
> it. Sounds like you're being throttled. VM are pretty draconian in this
> respect IMO.
>
> I don't use the itv player much, but I do use iplayer and 4OD a
> regularly. I rarely get more than one or two brief bufferings per
> program. I'm on ADSL and get between 5-6Mbps as per speedtest.net.
>

Either throttled, or simply cant keep up with the display rate.

I've got no problems on BBC streams..don't bother with ITV as last time
I bothered to get Moonlight working the videos were of terrible quality.

Martin Jay wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:00:41 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> I've got no problems on BBC streams..don't bother with ITV as last time
>> I bothered to get Moonlight working the videos were of terrible quality.
>
> ITV Player dropped Microsoft's Silverlight sometime ago and now uses
> Flash.

Actually.. I tried it after writing that, and discovered it was indeed
flash.


>
> IMHO the picture quality is pretty poor, though. Not unlike its
> programming.

Yep.

BBC for all you may hate them, have a pretty damned good website and
streaming.

I rather like to have radio 2 on the old computer while doing work...

Andy Burns wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> BBC for all you may hate them, have a pretty damned good website and
>> streaming.
>
> Just sit back and watch them choke it with proprietary DRM and kill off
> using "unauthorised" clients to view/listen to it.
>

Yea I am going to be really pissed of when get_iplayer stops working,
flash player on Linux being so crap and the ability to get things off peak.

Oh well more users/cappers for thebox.bz and similar, until they get
blocked - then more users for vpn/tor etc.

Andy Furniss wrote:
> Andy Burns wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> BBC for all you may hate them, have a pretty damned good website and
>>> streaming.
>>
>> Just sit back and watch them choke it with proprietary DRM and kill off
>> using "unauthorised" clients to view/listen to it.
>>
>
> Yea I am going to be really pissed of when get_iplayer stops working,
> flash player on Linux being so crap

Huh?

On my setup its brilliant. Faster than on the wife's Mac...


Maybe time to upgrade something..

Key for me was a 2.6.300 kernel which actually can drive my intel video
system.

Before it was a bit CPU bound.


> and the ability to get things off peak.
>
> Oh well more users/cappers for thebox.bz and similar, until they get
> blocked - then more users for vpn/tor etc.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

>> Yea I am going to be really pissed of when get_iplayer stops working,
>> flash player on Linux being so crap
>
> Huh?
>
> On my setup its brilliant. Faster than on the wife's Mac...
>
>
> Maybe time to upgrade something..
>
> Key for me was a 2.6.300 kernel which actually can drive my intel video
> system.
>
> Before it was a bit CPU bound.

I don't know what it's like on Intel, but for radeons using OSS drivers
it insists on doing everything in software (and not very efficiently
compared to mplayer).

I think that if you use fglrx, flash 10 will use opengl - but it won't
if you use the OSS driver.

My kernel xorg, ddx, mesa and drm are all the latest gits as I have been
following/testing the kms / R600 work.

Just tried a low res iplayer and playing full screen 1280x1024 only left
me with 10% CPU spare - the content didn't look like it was playing at
full FPS, but then it could have just been me being oversensitive to
motion judder from the 50-25 conversion.

If I actually owned a high res monitor and wanted to play some 720p full
screen I would run out of CPU, where downloading and playing with xv I
would have plenty spare.

Andy Furniss wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>>> Yea I am going to be really pissed of when get_iplayer stops working,
>>> flash player on Linux being so crap
>>
>> Huh?
>>
>> On my setup its brilliant. Faster than on the wife's Mac...
>>
>>
>> Maybe time to upgrade something..
>>
>> Key for me was a 2.6.300 kernel which actually can drive my intel video
>> system.
>>
>> Before it was a bit CPU bound.
>
> I don't know what it's like on Intel, but for radeons using OSS drivers
> it insists on doing everything in software (and not very efficiently
> compared to mplayer).
>
> I think that if you use fglrx, flash 10 will use opengl - but it won't
> if you use the OSS driver.
>
> My kernel xorg, ddx, mesa and drm are all the latest gits as I have been
> following/testing the kms / R600 work.
>
> Just tried a low res iplayer and playing full screen 1280x1024 only left
> me with 10% CPU spare - the content didn't look like it was playing at
> full FPS, but then it could have just been me being oversensitive to
> motion judder from the 50-25 conversion.
>
> If I actually owned a high res monitor and wanted to play some 720p full
> screen I would run out of CPU, where downloading and playing with xv I
> would have plenty spare.

For sure flash is worse than a native movie player would be..no argument
there.

But you seem to have a pretty piss poor video subsystem there. The
latest kernel bit is allegedly only relevant to Intel graphics: Radeon
etc SHOULD work with earlier ones. I guess the drivers are just lagging
behind as usual.

On 22/04/2010 15:19, Andy Furniss wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>>> Yea I am going to be really pissed of when get_iplayer stops working,
>>> flash player on Linux being so crap
>>
>> Huh?
>>
>> On my setup its brilliant. Faster than on the wife's Mac...
>>
>>
>> Maybe time to upgrade something..
>>
>> Key for me was a 2.6.300 kernel which actually can drive my intel video
>> system.
>>
>> Before it was a bit CPU bound.
>
> I don't know what it's like on Intel, but for radeons using OSS drivers
> it insists on doing everything in software (and not very efficiently
> compared to mplayer).
>
> I think that if you use fglrx, flash 10 will use opengl - but it won't
> if you use the OSS driver.
>
> My kernel xorg, ddx, mesa and drm are all the latest gits as I have been
> following/testing the kms / R600 work.
>
> Just tried a low res iplayer and playing full screen 1280x1024 only left
> me with 10% CPU spare - the content didn't look like it was playing at
> full FPS, but then it could have just been me being oversensitive to
> motion judder from the 50-25 conversion.
>
> If I actually owned a high res monitor and wanted to play some 720p full
> screen I would run out of CPU, where downloading and playing with xv I
> would have plenty spare.

Time I gave all this up and took up knitting, I think.
I can honestly say that I did not understand anything at all in the
above post.
The worrying thing is - should I?
;-)

George

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> For sure flash is worse than a native movie player would be..no argument
> there.
>
> But you seem to have a pretty piss poor video subsystem there. The
> latest kernel bit is allegedly only relevant to Intel graphics: Radeon
> etc SHOULD work with earlier ones. I guess the drivers are just lagging
> behind as usual.

My video subsystem is fine, I can scale to/from HD easily, it's just
that flash won't use it - there are reasons they don't but it's nothing
to do with my drivers. Following links from here till you get to the the
flash blogs will explain why.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=ODEyOQ

George Weston wrote:

> Time I gave all this up and took up knitting, I think.
> I can honestly say that I did not understand anything at all in the
> above post.
> The worrying thing is - should I?
> ;-)

LOL - no I guess not, I am just a Linux geek that forgets not to be when
posting on non linux groups.