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Netflix on 11 or 13 MBA?
- Thread starter ottos
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Funny you ask this, because I an watching Alice in Wonderland in bed now with my 13" Air. It looks high quality and doesn't stutter or anything. Brightness is turn mid way, as I always have it. It works great for me and I only have 2GB of ram. And I'm not sure about battery life, I always plug my charger in when I'm near an outlit when I watch movies.
i haven't tried it with the battery discharging but in terms of the netflix. It works beautifully. No errors on my 11.
Hey, I know I posted in your other thread but I decided to watch a movie last night on battery to test it out.
Watched a 2h10m movie from start to finish in Safari, HD quality (streaming at 400 KB/s), fullscreen, 3/4 brightness, 1/2 sound through external speakers. No stuttering, had a little charge left when said and done. Only other app running was running except for Adium (IM chat).
I have gotten over 3 hours before (watched five hour long TV episodes), but now that I think of it, I had the brightness setting at 2-4 bars (since I usually turn it down when I watch movies at night in a dark room). Sorry I didn't mean to mislead you in the other thread.
CPU usage from Silverlight usually ranges over 110%, so it does tax your computer quite a bit. The fan did come on towards the end of the movie, when RPM is over 5k you can definately hear it. Otherwise near silence.
Tested on a 1.6/4/128 11" MBA.
Watched a 2h10m movie from start to finish in Safari, HD quality (streaming at 400 KB/s), fullscreen, 3/4 brightness, 1/2 sound through external speakers. No stuttering, had a little charge left when said and done. Only other app running was running except for Adium (IM chat).
I have gotten over 3 hours before (watched five hour long TV episodes), but now that I think of it, I had the brightness setting at 2-4 bars (since I usually turn it down when I watch movies at night in a dark room). Sorry I didn't mean to mislead you in the other thread.
CPU usage from Silverlight usually ranges over 110%, so it does tax your computer quite a bit. The fan did come on towards the end of the movie, when RPM is over 5k you can definately hear it. Otherwise near silence.
Tested on a 1.6/4/128 11" MBA.
11.6" 1.4/4/128 here
Plays Netflix streaming flawlessly; no stutter. It will NOT play HD smoothly. I am on a university connection, so the Internet is not the issue. THe film will buffer a bit and then play slowly/choppily.
I can play 720p .mkv files just fine in VLC (which I assume is HW-accelerated?) as well as HD YouTube videos (720p and 1080i) in Flash 10.1 (also hardware accelerated).
I think Microsoft really needs to step up its game and update Silverlight to use the GPU.
Just my $0.02.
EDIT: I should add this is all on A/C power.
Plays Netflix streaming flawlessly; no stutter. It will NOT play HD smoothly. I am on a university connection, so the Internet is not the issue. THe film will buffer a bit and then play slowly/choppily.
I can play 720p .mkv files just fine in VLC (which I assume is HW-accelerated?) as well as HD YouTube videos (720p and 1080i) in Flash 10.1 (also hardware accelerated).
I think Microsoft really needs to step up its game and update Silverlight to use the GPU.
Just my $0.02.
EDIT: I should add this is all on A/C power.
I also have a maxed 11", 1.6/4/128 and it does NOT play Netflix with HD enabled. It stutters big time if there's much movement in the scene. I don't understand how it could possibly work for you. Are you really running HD or just HD enabled?
It's running HD (last night anyway). I watched "The Girl that Played with Fire" and it said it was playing in HD. Trying to play an HD TV episode right now but my streaming isn't up to snuff today.
EDIT: CPU usage is only at 50-60% when not playing HD. I wonder if HD is what bumped it up to 110% last night.
EDIT2: Netflix playing 30 Rock in HD. Says "Playing HD". No stuttering.
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Ok I tried it again and with the movie you mentioned.
It does seem to stutter less when played in Safari vs. Chrome. In Chrome, its stutters so much its not really watchable. But in Safari, making sure I've shut down everything else, it seems to be playing well enough to watch. Even at the beginning at 4:02, as the plane is taking off it stutters as an example, but not frequently.
+1 for base-model 11" macbook air will not play netflix hd. drops a ton of frames for me. wondering if i should return this one and get a 13" air, or if that would make any difference. 
My maxed out 11" runs Netflix, as well as Hulu, quite well. I don't get any stuttering and I often have other applications open.
I cannot comment on battery life though, because i normally watch while plugged in
I cannot comment on battery life though, because i normally watch while plugged in
Same for me! I have watched a Netflick movie on battery as well, although it did use up some life I have nothing to compare it too since i seldom watch them while on the battery.
Yeah, I definitely would not want to be chargerless.
Unless my only activity for the day was one or two netflix movies
+1 for base-model 11" macbook air will not play netflix hd. drops a ton of frames for me. wondering if i should return this one and get a 13" air, or if that would make any difference.
Wow! maybe the mba isn't for me. My 2006 macbook with a 1.83 core duo (not even core 2 duo) with 2gb ram and low end integrated graphics can play netflix at HD. What's wrong with this picture?
Weird! I have the same exact computer as you and have ZERO issues watching at home on my wifi system. My air card (over 3g), not as pristine, but plays none-the-less...are you absolutely SURE it's not an issue with your ISP or limited bandwidth?
Again...my 11" 1.6/4gig/128gig plays back HD video just fine (I'm a video editor by trade, it's how I pay my mortgage
)...regardless of whether I'm watching youtube, NetFlix, Vimeo, even several flavors I use for editing DVC-ProHD, .Mov, and XD, and MXF wrappings have been flawless with play back in FCP (I just did a BUNCH of testing this past weekend to feel out whether or not I could use the Air for fast "Street" edits on location). I'm not sure there's going to be a significant difference between models...as the Core 2 Duo machines have been pretty capable of playing HD since their inception. It was the older single core machines, less RAM, slower HDD and crappy bandwidth that was to blame a couple years ago.+1 for base-model 11" macbook air will not play netflix hd. drops a ton of frames for me. wondering if i should return this one and get a 13" air, or if that would make any difference.
Have you done/run a speed test on your ISP? What other computers are you using on the same network that DO play back HD video just fine? That's where I would start looking...Also, these are NOT 1080p displays, rather they're native 1366x768, so Make Sure you're only attempting to play 720p and not 1080p video...could be a question of downsampling your video for playback...not sure.
Have you guys that are having issues attempted the different resolution choices on youtube for instance?
J
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)
Ultimate 11" no issues in HD at all. Watching kids in the hall: death comes to shuckton. So good!
Ultimate 11" no issues in HD at all. Watching kids in the hall: death comes to shuckton. So good!
+1 for base-model 11" macbook air will not play netflix hd. drops a ton of frames for me. wondering if i should return this one and get a 13" air, or if that would make any difference.
Using my 11 inch with no problems on netflix, hulu, flash blah blah
Strange that some people say the video plays fine and others say it stutters. Maybe the difference is just SD vs HD...??
To to people with 11' that play Netflix fine - does this apply for HD titles as well?
Also, does anyone have Hulu Plus - how does 720p @ Hulu work??
Wow! maybe the mba isn't for me. My 2006 macbook with a 1.83 core duo (not even core 2 duo) with 2gb ram and low end integrated graphics can play netflix at HD. What's wrong with this picture?
I have a 2006 Macbook with 1.83 core duo w 2GB RAM as well and it cannot play netflix HD without stuttering. My Macbook can barely play Netflix HD at all. Are you sure you're playing HD?
I'm pretty sensitive to stuttering. Even my 2009 Macbook Pro would stutter a little in some scenes. Most folks wouldn't notice.
I played a HD episode of 30 Rock. For the few minutes I played it, there was no stuttering. So, maybe if I played it longer, there could have been stuttering. However, my point is that it is 4-5 yes old (it only works on ac) and seems to play video as well, or even better?, than a current MBA. With the air having an updated processor, more ram (on some models w/stuttering), ssd, and vastly superior graphics I would assume it would perform better.
Since the ssd opens programs fast, maybe that makes many claim that the air is capable of more intensive tasks? Just to be honest, I really like the airs, but I want to be sure it performs as many say.
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No--akdj specifically talks about playback being flawless with HD enabled. I really have to wonder if the problem lies more with the connection than the MBA.
After looking at it again, you are correct. Even with HD allowed, it wasn't really playing HD. My apologies...
