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Need some help & Testers for ESPN3 freezing up my new Air 13"

tigres

tigres

macrumors 601
Original poster
Aug 31, 2007
4,217
1,326
Land of the Free-Waiting for Term Limits
Hi all.

I could use some assistance from you.

I have the new 13" maxed out. It is working fine (so I thought) but today while having my Direct TV being re-done in my house, I had to revert to ESPN to check out some games.

At any rate, upon watching the streams my MBA froze up completely (although I can still move the mouse). The computer does not recognize anything at all- and a force shutdown is required.

If anyone has a solution or ideas I would be greatly appreciative. To start, could some of you test ENPN3

Please post your results after streaming for a bit, and let me know what I should do.

I have so far done the following:
Fixed permissions
Uninstalled/re-installed flash
installed/ and re-installed click to flash then removed again
repaired permissions again
Rebooted after each of the above

same results, my MBA freezes on this site after about 5 min or less.

I am stumped.:confused::(

Edit/ADD- oh this is also great, verify disk does not error out, but does not complete, just stops doing it's thing w/out any errors... yet does not complete the process???
 
Last edited:
I also have a maxed out 13" MBA and have been watching ESPN3.com for the past hour or so with no problems. I'm using google chrome....which browser are you using?
 
miles17 said:
I also have a maxed out 13" MBA and have been watching ESPN3.com for the past hour or so with no problems. I'm using google chrome....which browser are you using?
Click to expand...

Safari.

Set up a genius apptointment for tomorrow, but I am trying to figure out if this is hardware, or a reinstall is in order.

I'm lost on this one.

BTW. When you run repair permissions do you get a boatload of java repairs?

Thanks!
 
Yes, lots of Java repairs along with equally as many Library/Frameworks repairs.

The only difference I can think of is that I haven't installed Flash on my system, as Chrome comes with flash built in. If I were in your situation, I'd try uninstalling Flash and then installing Chrome to see if you run into the same problems with ESPN3. Do any other sites give you problems?

I'd be interested to hear the outcome of your Genius appointment tomorrow.
Good luck!
 
As usual, blame Flash :)

FYI - a lot of people don't realize it, but it's a good idea to write customer care of whatever site you subscribe to and tell them you want HTML 5... many just assume everyone want flash, so no harm in reminding content providers they should switch to HTML 5 to better your battery life :)
 
This happened to me as well. I was watching ESPN3 and after about 5 min it froze up. Safari browser.
 
Arse those streams 1080p by any chance? I tested out the macbook air in the apple store the other day, and brought up its activity monitor while watching various resolutions of flash video. Its cpu could handle 720p youtube content well (took up about 80% cpu usage, though), but struggled on 1080p content, and played it in frames (cpu usage was overmaxed)

It's also to my knowledge that live streaming uses way more cpu resources than downloading and streaming an already uploaded video. I notice when watching my day9 dailies for starcraft off ustream-- which are not hd at all, the usage of my lynnfield is near quadruple of what watching a standard definition vod would be.

In short, I'd have a check of your cpu usage under activity monitor for stuff like that.
 
Been watching the Illinois/Michigan game for 15 minutes now via Firefox. So far, no issues. Interesting to note my fans haven't kicked on yet either....usually they will with a lot of Flash streaming.

How long before you saw a lockup?
 
TMRaven said:
Arse those streams 1080p by any chance? I tested out the macbook air in the apple store the other day, and brought up its activity monitor while watching various resolutions of flash video. Its cpu could handle 720p youtube content well (took up about 80% cpu usage, though), but struggled on 1080p content, and played it in frames (cpu usage was overmaxed)

It's also to my knowledge that live streaming uses way more cpu resources than downloading and streaming an already uploaded video. I notice when watching my day9 dailies for starcraft off ustream-- which are not hd at all, the usage of my lynnfield is near quadruple of what watching a standard definition vod would be.

In short, I'd have a check of your cpu usage under activity monitor for stuff like that.
Click to expand...

I don't know if ESPN streams in 1080p, I would doubt it. I will look at activity monitor (in fact right now I am streaming Soccer, but it is not showing signs of issues like yesterday.) Activity monitor shows flash at 16% with no fans at all.

How can I tell what Video quality is streaming on ESPN3's site? Does not say, just gives a video quality status bar.


ReallyBigFeet said:
Been watching the Illinois/Michigan game for 15 minutes now via Firefox. So far, no issues. Interesting to note my fans haven't kicked on yet either....usually they will with a lot of Flash streaming.

How long before you saw a lockup?
Click to expand...

Funny thing is I just tested that MI game myself but had no lockups this am. This did happen yesterday w/live streaming on this very game, along with the Oregon/Wash game. Lockups occurred after about 5 min or so, on Safari. I have not tested FF or Chrome.

Yesterday, while streaming (before lock up) the fans never kicked on at all.
I plan on testing today again with NFL games to get more into this.
 
I do have the same deal with the quality slider when I watch sunday ticket. It is streamed in 720p, but the bitrate differs greatly depending on quality. I'm assuming espn3 is the same-- as it seems to be quite the norm now for live streaming sports to be in 720p.

The fans didn't kick on at all yesterday huh. Well assides from monitoring your cpu usage, it might be a good idea to monitor component temperature as well, via iStat pro/menu, or SMC Fan Control.
 
OK, weirdness.

In FF, I played it for another 10 minutes after that earlier post and no issues.

So I launched Safari (I seldom use it) and then ESPN3.

Less than 10 minutes into the same video, my whole MBA was locked up tighter than a drum. No force quit capabilities. I could still hear sound as if the video was streaming, but the screen was locked on a fixed image. Keyboard unresponsive. No spinning beach ball but my mouse pointer would still move around the screen.

Had to do a hard restart.

Sounds like a Safari issue to me. And the tinfoil hat part of me isn't that surprised given Jobs' rants against Flash.
 
ReallyBigFeet said:
OK, weirdness.

In FF, I played it for another 10 minutes after that earlier post and no issues.

So I launched Safari (I seldom use it) and then ESPN3.

Less than 10 minutes into the same video, my whole MBA was locked up tighter than a drum. No force quit capabilities. I could still hear sound as if the video was streaming, but the screen was locked on a fixed image. Keyboard unresponsive. No spinning beach ball but my mouse pointer would still move around the screen.

Had to do a hard restart.

Sounds like a Safari issue to me. And the tinfoil hat part of me isn't that surprised given Jobs' rants against Flash.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the exact same symptom I have.

Should we be thinking a safari issue/software related only? Maybe I will cancel my genius appointment, as it may be a wasted trip.
 
I am running Safari on a MBA 11, and cannot seem to replicate the problem. I have been watching the Illinois/Michigan Football Game for the past 10-15 minutes without issue. I have now even added PIP (Soccer), and can swap programs, swap audio channel, view full screen etc.

I do notice quite a bit of blocking in the PIP program, as it is taking a back seat to the main program, but other than that, very solid here.

I am using WiFi via Cable Modem, with approx 20 meg download bandwidth. I did encounter one period where I got a standby message from ESPN3 on the primary program channel, but I am assuming this is ESPN3 imposed, and has nothing to do with my system.

I thought I should mention that I am using ClickToFlash PLugin with Safari.
 
I rebooted and am now using Safari to play a 1080p Flash video over on Youtube. Its hard to find anything over 10 minutes in length...I guess YouTube has a limit on video duration.

But I've now played one 9:57 length 1080p video, and am now about 2/3 way through the Avatar trailer. So far, no lockups.

It really could be ESPN that's the culprit and not Safari.
 
Will find out today if ESPN is the problem. Going to stream some NFL, see if that freezes up on Safair. Bigfeet may be on to something here...

I uninstalled Click to flash yesterday as I thought that had something to do with it, so I am leaving it off temporarily.

More to come I suppose. Going to check some 1080p vids myself now, will report back.
 
Macbook Pro Lockup

I experienced exactly the same issue last night, attempting to watch the Kentucky game on ESPN3. It locks up the entire system after 10 minutes.

I tried Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Updated all of them. Did a system update. Updated Flash just in case.

Still got lockups. They seemed to occur on commercials more often than not. I worked around this for a while by minimizing from full screen, and pausing on commercials.

This is not a fix in my opinion, as I use ESPN3 to view games that my not be available in my area. I sure hate to use my old Windows XP box to do this!!
 
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