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).