Is choppy playback the nature of the hulu beast? Does anyone have enough cpu horsepower for smooth fluid playback? If so, what are you using?

I have:
3.2 Ghz P4
AGP FX5200 playing 1080p without xvmc
and it plays hulu choppy with Low or High quality settings. But over the air HD is just fine.

More data points welcome. Thanks.

Playback is smooth for me with only the very occasional hicup. hardware is in my sig. Net connection is a 20/5 FIOS line

Flash on Linux takes some pretty substantial hardware for smooth playback.

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ABIT NF-M2 nView | Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2GB DDR2 800 | HDHomerun | GeForce 6150 (onboard) | WD 640 GB SATA HD | DVD-RW (sata) | StreamZap IR receiver with Logitech Harmony remote

Vizio 37" LCD HDTV (1080p)

Yeah flash video is the culprit. Adobe is said to be releasing a "hardware accelerated flash" even for Linux in the next few months. People assume it will support VDPAU but personally I'll believe when I see it.

I can play hulu flash pretty well on my machines. AMD 2.8 dual core. I find I have to make sure the buffer is full to get nice smooth playback.

The HuluDesktop is kind of clunky to work with in my humble opinion. So it's not something we run hardly ever. Perhaps when things go into reruns something on hulu will be worthwhile to watch.

Beta for Flash 10.1 is out with hardware accelerated playback. Plays much better on my system with it's tiny Atom cpu, but that was only watching a few minutes of video. I'll need to spend some time watching some longer video to know for sure.

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The Atomic Ant.

How did you install it?
Thanks.

Download from;
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Backup old plugin;
mv /usr/lib/mozillia/plugins/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozillia/plugins/libflashplayer.so.BAK

Then untar the file and copy the plugin;
tar xzvf flashplayer10_1_p1_linux_111709.tar.gz
cp install_flash_player_10_linux/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozillia/plugins/

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The Atomic Ant.

I thought I read, and the release notes seem to confirm the hardware acceleration is only in the windows version of the beta:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.pdf

That's how I read it too, but I wanted to give it a try. After following uteck's directions, when I start hulu, it just kicks right back out to the menu system. I don't think my video card is supported. nvidia FX5200.

Even if it is not offloading it to the video card, the playback is still smoother. Hulu at full screen was very choppy, but still watchable with 10.0 and 10.1 is much smoother.

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The Atomic Ant.

Weird. For me Hulu crashes instantly using the new Flash. Reverting back and it runs (or rather stutters) normally.

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KnoppMyth R6.03 | AMD Athlon64 X2 2.0GHz | 2048 MB RAM | MSI nVidia 6200 TC | Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 | HDHomeRun | HDA = 40 GB PATA | HDB = Lite-On DVD +/-RW/DL | HDC = 500GB SATA

+1

Any fix?

Beta 2 is out. Still no accelerated playback for Linux yet until there is a standard API to use.
I am posting from work, so I have not tried it yet on my frontend.

##Edit##
Just watched Full Metal Alchemist with 10.1 beta2 and the playback was worse. The show flickered during movement, but ironically commercials played much smoother. I switched back to 10.1 beta1 and started to watch it again just to verify, and beta1 is much smoother then 2, except for the commercials.

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The Atomic Ant.

Beta3 is out and much better then 2 was. Playback is acceptable and consistent during the video and commercials, and the remote seems to respond a bit better now, but that might just be subjective on my part.

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The Atomic Ant.

I have a menu item I added to the main myth menu that lowers my resolution from 1080p to 720p (and back again.) The lower resolution helps.

My script:

The consistent message I am seeing is that Flash will not support hardware acceleration under Linux. Some other notes:

1. FX5200 is not one of the hardware acceleration platforms supported, even under windows. The minimum is either an 8000 or 9000 series Nvidia card -- would need to double check the release notes. ION is supported.

2. I get reasonable playback using a single core Atom, ION LE, windows XP with beta 3. There is still some tearing.

3. I am guessing that the "atom ant" works because it is the dual core Atom, but can't be certain.

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Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.