Starting Monday, I'm going to be using a G3 as my video player - even for YouTube. I think that that will settle these arguments. If a G3 can do it, so can a G4.
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Mac Mini g4 - Use as videplayer or is it too old?
- Thread starter WoodenShoez
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As you wish, I have more productive ways to spend my free time. I'll stick to an Apple TV and Intel Macs for YouTube. They just work.
It's not going to work... I have tried it, even in MacTubes when it was a thing, still stutters at 360p... Internet is going to be a pain, pages won't load correctly (considering you're using camino). I had to use my PBG3 for a month while the HDD in my MBP was dead, that was back in 2013, and even then it was rough. And I literally only used it to check my email, my grades, and type up a few projects. The internet is a lot more JavaScript based, which kills PPCs so good luck cause things have only gotten worse.Good point. But a G3 is more fun.
Ha. Good luck with that dude. Stutter city. D.ddd.ddd.ddd
I can do 360p Youtube without much trouble on my dual 1ghz QS, but that's about it. Doing so maxes out both processors and it I do get an occasional stutter. Anything beyond that is pushing it. A Quad can play 720p with out trouble and with power to spare-I suspect it could do 1080. There's a pretty drastic difference between a Quad and an iBook G3.
It wouldn't surprise me if I have one the slowest computers that at least sometimes connects to MR. My 9600 stays online all the time(ethernet sharing from the dual 1ghz QS) and although it's mostly used to download stuff from Macintosh Garden it has made it to MR. The old forum software(vBulletin) was a lot easier on it than Xenforo, although maxing the RAM helped. It's a 200mhz MP system, although Photoshop is basically the only program that uses the second processor. It's asymetric multiprocessing, and OS X doesn't see the second processor. 1.5gb of RAM does help.
In any case, I'm going to try Youtube on my 9600. If it works, I wouldn't question its ability to work.
At the same time, I also have the fastest production G3 Mac-the 900mhz iBook. If I don't have any luck there, I can pretty safely say that that a G3 is out.
If I can ever get down to buy out @Surrat 's collection, I will be getting a B&W with a 1.1ghz G3. That definitely would be the best we could do. I also have a beige with a 1ghz G4, although the G4 sort of defeats the purpose.
It wouldn't surprise me if I have one the slowest computers that at least sometimes connects to MR. My 9600 stays online all the time(ethernet sharing from the dual 1ghz QS) and although it's mostly used to download stuff from Macintosh Garden it has made it to MR. The old forum software(vBulletin) was a lot easier on it than Xenforo, although maxing the RAM helped. It's a 200mhz MP system, although Photoshop is basically the only program that uses the second processor. It's asymetric multiprocessing, and OS X doesn't see the second processor. 1.5gb of RAM does help.
In any case, I'm going to try Youtube on my 9600. If it works, I wouldn't question its ability to work.
At the same time, I also have the fastest production G3 Mac-the 900mhz iBook. If I don't have any luck there, I can pretty safely say that that a G3 is out.
If I can ever get down to buy out @Surrat 's collection, I will be getting a B&W with a 1.1ghz G3. That definitely would be the best we could do. I also have a beige with a 1ghz G4, although the G4 sort of defeats the purpose.
I agree - if you're looking to buy a dedicated player you go for an Android box or similar - I have two Amazon Firesticks and they go up to 4K.
But addressing the OP, he already has his Mini + VLC and is asking about it's abilities - in that sphere, Coreplayer is a direct replacement, hence my test using unconverted h264 so no infinite time required
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It was possible up til June when Youtube changed their format delivery:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/realplayer-vs-quicktime.1980864/
Is anyone still using fax machines these days?
Perhaps I should resurrect my telex machine, and the companies 1990's photophone.........
Oh, I use fax only if all pigeons are out ...
Going to have to agree with gavinstubbs09 on this one. Even putting performance aside, expansion options and upgrade paths for your PMG4/G5 far outweigh what one would typically pay for an equivalent Mac mini.
For a cheap(ish) media player, could I suggest the first generation Apple TV perhaps? I just picked up one for AU$30 with 160GB HDD, jailbroken now and I can dump a tonne of films & TV shows from my G5 via Cyberduck SSH. Something to keep in mind -
For a cheap(ish) media player, could I suggest the first generation Apple TV perhaps? I just picked up one for AU$30 with 160GB HDD, jailbroken now and I can dump a tonne of films & TV shows from my G5 via Cyberduck SSH. Something to keep in mind -
It's mainyly for your entertainment.Using that G3 is going to be the most miserable week of your life
Also, what about PPC Media Center for the G3? Maybe I could download the YT videos in low-def? Even if that doesn't work, there are many ways to download YT videos. That's probably how I'm going to watch them on my G3.
It's mainyly for your entertainment.
Also, what about PPC Media Center for the G3? Maybe I could download the YT videos in low-def? Even if that doesn't work, there are many ways to download YT videos. That's probably how I'm going to watch them on my G3.
On my 500Mhz G3 iMac the route to Youtube is TFF/Greasemonkey/Viewtube/3GP.
The actual 3GP playback is perfect, the real slow down is the browser - painful.
The faster browsers (Tiger Webkit, Omniweb etc) could use mobile device user agents to play 3GP until Youtube made that impossible last summer.
It's mainyly for your entertainment.
Also, what about PPC Media Center for the G3? Maybe I could download the YT videos in low-def? Even if that doesn't work, there are many ways to download YT videos. That's probably how I'm going to watch them on my G3.
Aah, forget about YT video on your Clamshell and use your smartphone instead. You can't teach new tricks to an old dog and (except of proof of concept) it will certainly spoil your overall experience with the G3-Book if you try to use it as your only machine...
For me it's all about making the old stuff it fit into the rest of my environment and not to use it as the only device. A living museum.
- Clamshell G3: run OS9 stuff. With Tiger run Office, PDF-tools, email, light browsing, play music, watch DVD (I'd prefer an exernal FireWire DVD-drive to keep the internal drive alive), use it as client for remote sessions/screen-sharing, fax-machine, gaming of "contemporary" software, webDAV etc.
- iBook/PowerBookG4: additionally as a beamer-companion, for YT-video download and view with CorePlayer
- PowerBookG4 DLSD: additionally record/edit DV-videos from my old DV-Camcorder
- CubeG4/iMacG4/iMacG5: previously as RemoteDesktop-Clients with Win08Server - now only VNC. Otherwise basically same use as the ClamshellG3 or iBookG4
- white intel-iMacs/Lion: as RemoteDesktop-Clients with and to control the Win08Server (my office-software requires Windows...), backup of the server with CCC; use the Macs as a "separate" Apple-network for internet connection, browsing, email and *DEVONthink* as my main database for paperless office and data-collection, scanned journals, research etc (plus the database can be viewed via browser from all the other computers). With any of the iMacs I'm able control the iBookG4 via ScreenSharing, which servers as our collaborate fax-machine. This fax-iBook itself has access to shared folders on iMac and Win08Server mainly to get access to documents that have to be sent - so it's a marvelous combined Mac&Win-network. After work I often stream music from my iPhone/iTunes-music to the iMac via Airfoil.
FileSharing/FTP/webDAV/(Dropbox)/VPN/TeamViewer/RemoteDesktop/ScreenSharing is the secret to make all machines
PPC-Macs are really good fun, if you look for the place where they fit best into your work, network, life and leisure (music-streaming (all) and video-streaming (some)).
Thanks all - looking forward now for a new member of my network inspired by this discussion: a mini G4 1,33GHz with nice KB and mouse for 50 bucks
On my iPhonr 2G, I can use Safari to watch YouTube videos, and it seems to use the QuickTime Plugin (it displays the QuickTime logo whenever I load a video). Maybe be setting the User Agent to iPhone 3.0, I could watch YT using the QT Plugin?
That was an option until last Summer - there were many user agents that could deliver low def files but Youtube changed so they can't be streamed. However they can be downloaded (and played back from the browser as my example shows).
On my G3 iMac, 360P H264 playback is out of the question whereas 3GP is fine - Flash and HTML5 deliver 360P in the browser but at about 0.5 FPS
The Mini G4 would be nicer at having to play 720p or 480i vids than the Core solo or duo Mini with the GMA950 in it.. That GMA950 is the biggest piece of cods wollup I've ever come across. Sure it will play, but all the colours look dreary and dead. the picture just looks terrible.
Ill take the 64mb g4 mini for picture quality any day.
On top of that you can install MorphOS on it..
Ill take the 64mb g4 mini for picture quality any day.
On top of that you can install MorphOS on it..
Umm, couldn't you just reencode the video to a format that would be easier for the Mac Mini to play...
Of course it's going to struggle with h.264, there is no acceleration for h.264 in hardware and h.264 incredibly hard on CPUs. Core Duo systems without h.264 acceleration would probably struggle with it as well.
I remember trying to play 720p on 950GMA netbooks and it wouldn't work for crap. Core Duos might be able to make it sort of watchable due to the extra CPU power, but it shows that hardware acceleration is the key to smooth h.264 video.
However, lighter codecs will work at about the same quality if you put in a bit of work. When playing HD video on my original Xbox I reencoded to MPEG2 at 720p and it ran fine and that is a 733 MHz Celeron with 64 MB of RAM.
1080p MPEG2 would probably work fine if you took the time to tune the video bitrate to what your hardware was capable of. A decent Mini can play standard h.264 720p just fine with coreplayer. My assumption is with a lighter codec you should be able to do a lot better.
So to say it is completely unusable as a video playing machine is silly, but it would definitely take some work.
Would a Raspberry Pi with hardware decoding be better? Yes, definitely. However, the question was is it possible and I think it definitely is.
Maybe I'll do a proof of concept if I don't get lazy, I have a 1.5 GHz Mini G4 which I use for playing around in MorphOS.
EDIT: For an example of how hard it is to run h.264 video on a system without acceleration try running 4K video on a system without support for 4K video decoding support. Even some pretty powerful machines end up displaying a slideshow.
Of course it's going to struggle with h.264, there is no acceleration for h.264 in hardware and h.264 incredibly hard on CPUs. Core Duo systems without h.264 acceleration would probably struggle with it as well.
I remember trying to play 720p on 950GMA netbooks and it wouldn't work for crap. Core Duos might be able to make it sort of watchable due to the extra CPU power, but it shows that hardware acceleration is the key to smooth h.264 video.
However, lighter codecs will work at about the same quality if you put in a bit of work. When playing HD video on my original Xbox I reencoded to MPEG2 at 720p and it ran fine and that is a 733 MHz Celeron with 64 MB of RAM.
1080p MPEG2 would probably work fine if you took the time to tune the video bitrate to what your hardware was capable of. A decent Mini can play standard h.264 720p just fine with coreplayer. My assumption is with a lighter codec you should be able to do a lot better.
So to say it is completely unusable as a video playing machine is silly, but it would definitely take some work.
Would a Raspberry Pi with hardware decoding be better? Yes, definitely. However, the question was is it possible and I think it definitely is.
Maybe I'll do a proof of concept if I don't get lazy, I have a 1.5 GHz Mini G4 which I use for playing around in MorphOS.
EDIT: For an example of how hard it is to run h.264 video on a system without acceleration try running 4K video on a system without support for 4K video decoding support. Even some pretty powerful machines end up displaying a slideshow.
Amazingly some Dual G5s and the Quad can play 4K:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/g5-and-4k-video.1908271/
Well, I've sold the Mac Mini...
..and bought a Raspberry Pi 3b. I love it! It's extremely compact , doesn't make any noise (no fan) and plays all videofiles perfectly. Much better performance as the g4.
..and bought a Raspberry Pi 3b. I love it! It's extremely compact , doesn't make any noise (no fan) and plays all videofiles perfectly. Much better performance as the g4.
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YMMD.
Absolutly right - got my 50-Buck-mini 1.33GHz this week. Except from DVD-player and 360p with CorePlayer forget about video.
It will make a nice fax-machine sitting beside my white intel-imac.