Hulu/joost/vod Sites

[Tom`]

This is really interesting - I have a P4-based mythtv box, running at 3 GHz, and hulu decodes perfectly well in the regular browser mode, no matter what quality, but becomes unwatchably slow in fullscreen at anything above 800x600.

Would a graphics card upgrade actually help here (I have a Geforce FX 5200 in there now, I also have a 5500 that I could try, but of course 6000-series cards are not particularly expensive now) or would this be more of a CPU issue?

I assumed it was inefficiencies in Flash that caused the problems with fullscreen, but maybe not... it is always annoying to have to switch modes to watch Hulu videos.

(I should add that watching and recording standard 1080p MPEG-2 videos is no problem, whether in fullscreen or not.)

 

[sindbad]

Hulu uses flash and you can use the stream directly, that's what boxee does. You could make a greasemonkey script (and probably there already are some out there) that rewrites the flash object tags to native video player browser plugin tags. Don't know about Joost.
Anyway, I remember somene trying hulu with swfdec and it worked.

My level of expertise is about 0...So making scrips for things is currently NOT within the realm of possibility for me...maybe once I've used Pandora for a year and know Linux and all it's differences and learn enough HTML to make a page that doesn't look like scrambled eggs...I'll have a shot...
But then again..watching the forums and reading...you guys will probably have me up to speed in no time...I should really read my posts. What I really meant was that one (as in me or someone else with a bit of webdev experience) could write such a script and everybody could use it. You as a user would just have to click 'install script' or something like that.

 

[Chip]

Would a graphics card upgrade actually help here (I have a Geforce FX 5200 in there now, I also have a 5500 that I could try, but of course 6000-series cards are not particularly expensive now) or would this be more of a CPU issue?

I assumed it was inefficiencies in Flash that caused the problems with fullscreen, but maybe not... it is always annoying to have to switch modes to watch Hulu videos.

(I should add that watching and recording standard 1080p MPEG-2 videos is no problem, whether in fullscreen or not.)
Based on my experience, I would say yes. After the video card upgrade (everything else was the same), Hulu played fine at full screen. The 2.8GHz P4 in my HTPC is not particularly speedy by today's standards, but it obviously wasn't the bottleneck here.

I should point out that even with the old ATI card, Hulu was the only problem source. Netflix streaming video worked fine, as did Youtube and any other flash-based sites. I don't know what Hulu is doing, but it is something especially demanding.

 

[argor]

A similar site - BBC's iPlayer - only runs at 10fps in-browser on the OMAP3530 Archos 5. The only way to really do it is to seperate the stream and play it in a media player.

From what I can tell from the little information that says something besides "OMAP 3 series" everywhere, the Archos 5 does not use the 3530, it uses the 3430, which although it is a very similar chip, it is not the same.

-God Ginrai

actually it was never confirmed what OMAP3 chip the Archos 5 uses
thing it was http://archosfans.com/ that started to say it was the OMAP 3430 without anything to back it up
most sites did take it up from them
personally i thing it is the OMAP3410 chip the Archos 5 uses

 

[Mr.Gonzo]

most hulu videos can be found on youtube anyway. actually learned that because i can't listen to the videos on their site in canada.

 

[Kramy]

This is really interesting - I have a P4-based mythtv box, running at 3 GHz, and hulu decodes perfectly well in the regular browser mode, no matter what quality, but becomes unwatchably slow in fullscreen at anything above 800x600.

Would a graphics card upgrade actually help here (I have a Geforce FX 5200 in there now, I also have a 5500 that I could try, but of course 6000-series cards are not particularly expensive now) or would this be more of a CPU issue?

I assumed it was inefficiencies in Flash that caused the problems with fullscreen, but maybe not... it is always annoying to have to switch modes to watch Hulu videos.

(I should add that watching and recording standard 1080p MPEG-2 videos is no problem, whether in fullscreen or not.)

x86 win32 Flash does use your videocard for scaling rasterized graphics.

A videocard upgrade would probably fix the scaling, but it's not guaranteed. For one thing, you're on Linux - how well does Adobe support flash hardware acceleration on Linux?

Considering the price of building a brand new computer, vs picking up an AGP videocard, I'd probably just toss a new dual-core HTPC together for $200. The IGPs on mobos now are way faster than a meager 5 series or 6 series GeForce.

 

[PoisonedV]

Would a graphics card upgrade actually help here (I have a Geforce FX 5200 in there now, I also have a 5500 that I could try, but of course 6000-series cards are not particularly expensive now) or would this be more of a CPU issue?

I assumed it was inefficiencies in Flash that caused the problems with fullscreen, but maybe not... it is always annoying to have to switch modes to watch Hulu videos.

(I should add that watching and recording standard 1080p MPEG-2 videos is no problem, whether in fullscreen or not.)
Based on my experience, I would say yes. After the video card upgrade (everything else was the same), Hulu played fine at full screen. The 2.8GHz P4 in my HTPC is not particularly speedy by today's standards, but it obviously wasn't the bottleneck here.

I should point out that even with the old ATI card, Hulu was the only problem source. Netflix streaming video worked fine, as did Youtube and any other flash-based sites. I don't know what Hulu is doing, but it is something especially demanding.

opposite for me. almost every hd video source works no lag for me, but youtube lags like a bitch

 

[Chip]

QUOTE
The IGPs on mobos now are way faster than a meager 5 series or 6 series GeForce.
You have that exactly backwards. An aging 6600GT, even a 4x AGP card, is exponentially more powerful than even the best integrated graphics chips.
Intel's best integrated GPU, the X4500, is lucky to break 1000 in 3Dmark 06. A 6600GT averages around 2800. A 6600 AGP card can be had for $30-40 and will definitely solve your hulu playback problems.

Reference:
CODE
http://www.hwbot.org/quickSearch.do?hardwareId=GPU_1401

opposite for me. almost every hd video source works no lag for me, but youtube lags like a bitch
That's just youtube having sucky servers. Everybody gets that. It has nothing to do with your computer's ability to decode the video.

 

[Kramy]

QUOTE
The IGPs on mobos now are way faster than a meager 5 series or 6 series GeForce.
You have that exactly backwards. An aging 6600GT, even a 4x AGP card, is exponentially more powerful than even the best integrated graphics chips.
Intel's best integrated GPU, the X4500, is lucky to break 1000 in 3Dmark 06. A 6600GT averages around 2800. A 6600 AGP card can be had for $30-40 and will definitely solve your hulu playback problems.
No, you have it exactly backwards.

Intel IGPs are crap. We were talking about GeForces, so lets stick to GeForces.

CODE
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3432&p=4

Newer GPUs have better GPGPU support. Acceleration of a variety of types of processing is much better on newer GPU/IGP architectures. Regardless of a GF9400's gaming performance(Which, btw, is decent. It only has about 20x the shading power of a 6600GT), it will perform better for most other tasks, and likely has better driver support.

Your 6600GT 3Dmark06 scores seem off a bit... perhaps you were thinking of 3Dmark05?
CODE
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/3dmark06_16.html

CODE
http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-GeForce-9300-and-9400-Motherboard-GPUs/?page=7

A GF 9300 gets almost 3x the score - although the CPU obviously affects that significantly.

But my point stands. When I upgraded from a 7900GS to an 8800GS, although the cards perform similarly in games(because of the 7900GS's awesome texture handling and insane memory bandwidth), the 8800GS is faster, because of the much higher shader power(about 10x more), which is what's used for decoding videos, resizing textures, applying shader effects, etc.; that shader power is all from architecture improvements.

GeForce 7's could be thought of as having "in-order shading", while GeForce 8's have an advanced threading engine. I remember from an article I read long ago(interview with nVidia engineers) that an average GeForce 8 is juggling over 5000 threads at any moment, passing out jobs to the shaders.

 

[PoisonedV]

QUOTE
The IGPs on mobos now are way faster than a meager 5 series or 6 series GeForce.
You have that exactly backwards. An aging 6600GT, even a 4x AGP card, is exponentially more powerful than even the best integrated graphics chips.
Intel's best integrated GPU, the X4500, is lucky to break 1000 in 3Dmark 06. A 6600GT averages around 2800. A 6600 AGP card can be had for $30-40 and will definitely solve your hulu playback problems.

Reference:
CODE
http://www.hwbot.org/quickSearch.do?hardwareId=GPU_1401

opposite for me. almost every hd video source works no lag for me, but youtube lags like a bitch
That's just youtube having sucky servers. Everybody gets that. It has nothing to do with your computer's ability to decode the video.

no, I mean it loads fine, it's when I'm actually playing it.for reference i have a 8800 graphics card and a few 2.9 ghz cores so i dont see how its an issue

 

[Tom`]

well, I really have no money for a 9000-series card, nor a new motherboard, especially since I spend very little time watching Hulu videos right now...

opposite for me. almost every hd video source works no lag for me, but youtube lags like a bitch
That's just youtube having sucky servers. Everybody gets that. It has nothing to do with your computer's ability to decode the video.

no, I mean it loads fine, it's when I'm actually playing it.for reference i have a 8800 graphics card and a few 2.9 ghz cores so i dont see how its an issue

I have a 8800GTS in my desktop PC and 3GHz cores, and it works fine here - maybe make sure you have the latest (release-non-alpha/beta) drivers?

 

[javaJake]

Well, guys, unless we get Flash, and we get it accelerated, I don't think it's going to happen. Hulu has been snuffing out all the ways you could've normally accessed their content externally:CODE
http://www.paulyanez.com/labs/mymediaplayer2/
CODE
http://www.pcworld.com/article/160910/boxee_hulu_continue_battle.html