Mac Placeshifter issues

[ptaylor]

I've been trying the Mac placeshifter client out on two machines. On my G4 mini, the image quality looks nice in a window, but when I full screen it is almost like watching a slide show. I watched the processor utilization and it was using the majority of the processor whether in a window or full screen. I turned off post-processing on the mac client and the proc util went down to about 15% in windowed mode, but was still very jumpy in full screen. I also have issues where it sometimes won't play a show back at all... It starts (as if it is going to play), then drops back to the menu immediately, or it comes up as if it is playing (with the info bar at the top of the screen and FF, REW, Pause, etc. controls at the bottom), then the screen goes black and it just sits there. This problem seems to stick with a particular file... I can go to other files or watch live TV without a problem, generally. The mini is connected via a wireless network.

On my Intel iMac, the image quality is about as good as I could expect. It's connected via a LAN (Gigabit switch, though I think the server is only 100 Meg) and usually plays back very well. After having the problem I mentioned above with the G4 mac on a particular file, I tried it on this machine and ran into the same problem. This same file plays back normally on my server machine. One possible issue is that this file is a HD file recorded with an ATI 650. An HD file recorded with an ATI HD Wonder works, though.

So, to summarize what I've learned while making this post - The G4 mini has performance issues in full screen, and the Mac placeshifter client seems to have issues with some HD files.

Anyone else seeing this?

[rasp]

I have the same issue on a g4 mini even with SD content from a pvr 150. Full screen it's a slide show. On my g4 powerbook, same show full screen, and it looks great. No HD content to test with.

[ptaylor]

It's interesting that you don't have an issue with the powerbook... I thought it was CPU bound, but perhaps it's limited because of the video card on the mini... It's an ATI 9200 w/ 32 Meg of ram.. What's in the powerbook? Nvidia 5200?

On my iMac, the HD video that does play looks great. On the G4, it will play that HD recording in a window but it is very jumpy and audio even messes up.. That may be more a function of the wireless connection, though.

[soulprops77]

I have the same problem on a G5 Dual 2.5. Windowed looks good. Full screen crummy.

[rasp]

Originally Posted by ptaylor

It's interesting that you don't have an issue with the powerbook... I thought it was CPU bound, but perhaps it's limited because of the video card on the mini... It's an ATI 9200 w/ 32 Meg of ram.. What's in the powerbook? Nvidia 5200?

On my iMac, the HD video that does play looks great. On the G4, it will play that HD recording in a window but it is very jumpy and audio even messes up.. That may be more a function of the wireless connection, though.

I thought so too since the only real difference is video card, the mini is the 9200, but the PB has an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64M.

both have notebook drives, both running similar resolution, 1.42 vs. 1.5 Ghz, and both have 1G ram.

EDIT: both machine are wireless to the same airport express.

[FidgetyRat]

As posted in my other thread (oddly of the same title) I have similar issues with my PBG4 just trying to navigate menus or even listen to music. This powerbook may be "older" but it can still keep up with pretty intense software. Not sure why a simple placeshifter would cause such system lag. My guess is a bug.

For reference, I ran a full speed client on an 800mhz system with onboard graphics. Not sure why placeshifter won't run on a fast Mac.

[sainswor99]

It may not be client-related; on your SageTv server, what version of Java are you running? Are you using the service or the GUI?

I ask, because I had issues with Placeshifter on different Windows clients until I

a) upgraded Java on the server to 6.0, and

b) stopped using the Sage service and left the GUI running on the server box. That really seemed to fix a lot of issues for me.

HTH,
Stu

[flavius]

Did you check the console log? Placeshifter issues a lot of messages..

[rasp]

ok, one more test on the g4 mini, I set the resolution to 1024x768 (it -was- 1280x720) and performance seems good. All other settings are exactly the same.