Why does streaming video suck?
 

Was just wondering why does the N900 struggle to stream videos smoothly? I enable the cache to automatic and it stills struggle to stream youtube videos smoothly. Was wondering who else have this issue? Is this a common issue, do you guys think that its a software issue?

edited - the streaming on youtube is better than facebook, more smoother. But sometimes some video sites, the N900 just struggles to stream it smoothly.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Youtube works very smoothly for me as do most flash videos. I find that putting the video into full screen mode on the N900 can help if things do get slow.
Do you have adblock or any other plugin installed, just out of interest?

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

yup, i got adblock installed, im trying to add a filter. I hope that will help smooth the video out.

Yeah i find that putting video into full screen mode helps a lot too.

But i thought the video streaming would be smooth, better than the iphone or ipod touch. I mean my ipod touch streams smoother video then the N900 using the same internet connections etc. Maybe its because the N900 loads the full browser instead of a mobile version using more resources?

I thought a product like the N900 with such superior hardware will be able to stream video smoother then my ipod that was 1/3rd the price of N900.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

You may be right about the playback being better on the iPhone, but keep these things in mind: The N900 is meant to display the full website, rather than the pared-down iPhone version of many websites. This is generally good, and it's quite capable of handling almost everything I've tried. Because of this choice of Nokia's, you will probably run across some websites that are too heavyweight for it.
The other thing is that Apple sells "the experience" to most of their users -- and in order to preserve the experience, they sometimes limit what you can do, so that it looks better. Take, for example, the limitation on the number of running apps for the iPhone (e.g. 1). It's just a difference in design philosophy and marketing, really. If you don't mind using "mobile" webpages, and Apple's sometimes-draconian policies, then by all means, go for it. If you want a good multipurpose device that allows a desktop-like experience, though, then you have to realize that it will not always work perfectly for everything.
There is, however, a standalone Youtube player called Zoutube which, while still in testing, may work better than in the browser. Oh, and one other note in case you didn't already figure this out - you need to use the cursor/select gesture in the browser to interact with Flash (say, to pause the video)

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

True, i hope this will get fixed by software update or something in the future. I prefer my Nokia N900 over the iphone :) Love this device to death, but sometimes i just dont understand why it lacks certain features/performance with such superior hardware.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Hopefully, although Flash on Linux can be annoying. I don't know how Adobe and/or Nokia ported it, but I've seen much worse problems on desktop distros. Since it's proprietary, the community can't do anything about it. Hopefully if Maemo takes off, Nokia can pressure them into fixing any bugs that may be present.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Or we could just wait for the hardware accelerated flash 10 promised in Q1 that was demoed on the N900 at the adobe conference.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Oooh... I did not know that! That would be awesome.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Had to google what that was, lol. Seems to be great, i hope it will help flash. Sounds good, but will it perform? I hope its not broken promises!

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Well, given the hardware acceleration, I'd imagine it would perform much better. As I said, though, Adobe doesn't seem to care too much about Linux software, although it usually works okay. With any luck, some of the work they're doing Maemo might get pushed into the desktop code (e.g. bugfixes).

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

I wonder why don't Adobe care about linux software?

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Market share.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Correction, the n900 will stream video (through the built in media player, mplayer or pretty much anything *but* Flash) just fine.

It is Adobe Flash that will not render video, because it's bloated and un-optimized. Adobe/Macromedia has put a lot of time polishing this turd for Windows/X86 machines, but it tends to suck even worse on other platforms (desktop mac and linux included).

The n900 is just the latest in a long line of machines that can stream video fine, but choke playing a video through the bloated Adobe Flash plugin.

As others have noted on this thread, the Adobe Flash Plugin, being proprietary, is not fixable by the community in anyway.

All you can do is hope that the powers that be at Adobe see fit to grace our platform with performance optimizations (like the promised hardware acceleration coming in 10). Consider yourself 'lucky' that the Flash plugin is available at all.

Now all that said, the flash plugin on the n900 is one of the best implementations of flash I've seen on a non-windows platform. But as you may be able to tell from the tone of this post, that doesn't say a whole lot.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

I find that if you set the cache to 40MB provides better results vs. automatic. At least in my experience it is. Give it a try.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

But don't forget that Nokia is Adobe's partner.. so in this case it would get a better support imo..

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Also don't forget Android is also a linux based platform so the incentive to get a linux version for mobile platforms is higher now than it has ever been.

And yes agree it is bloated.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Android runs a linux kernel, but not much else of a traditional linux stack unlike Maemo.

The library and software stack underneath are quite different though. You could use the same reasoning to describe the development effort to get flash running on a TiVo, Sony eReader, or Logitech Duet Remote. All of these devices run a linux kernel, but not much of the rest of the stack of libraries.

And I certainly hope that something as buggy as flash doesn't go anywhere near touching the kernel directly :P

The similarities between a android and maemo version of Flash would be much more due to shared processor architecture than anything else.

Re: Why does streaming video suck?
 

Another way of streaming would be directly via the mediaplayer or even MPlayer.

This would ensure 100% smooth playback.

Vote here for the solution: http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...er_application