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MBA for HD movie (720p or 1080p)

A

ajack

macrumors member
Original poster
May 31, 2010
43
0
Hi everyone,

My MBA is gen 2 (1.86GHz core2duo). Moreover, I got a PS3, but it's rather hard for PS3 to read file >4GBs, and, most of HD movie files are larger than 4GBs.

I sometimes play HD movie in MBA (when travelling or away from home), but, I found out that it's lagging (I'm using VLC). Why is that? And are there anyways for me to watch movie smoothly. Actually, based on MBA's specs, there's NO way that it couldn't play movie (cause my previous laptop's specs are lower but it still can play without problems).

When at home, I used PS3MediaServer to stream video to PS3 to play on TV. But it sometimes lag as well. Maybe it's due to wireless streaming?

Thanks for any help!

Best regards
 
Actually, Movist is just another apps like Perian, which I didn't prefer...

But, thanks for your help anyway!

So, what about you guys, will you choose MBA for your HD media station? Cause I just have MBA for reading (or transcoding) HD files...
 
I play 1080p MKV almost every day with VLC on my 13" 2011 AIR (base 4GB. one) and never experienced lagging. :confused:
 
Last edited:
ajack said:
Hi everyone,

My MBA is gen 2 (1.86GHz core2duo). Moreover, I got a PS3, but it's rather hard for PS3 to read file >4GBs, and, most of HD movie files are larger than 4GBs.

I sometimes play HD movie in MBA (when travelling or away from home), but, I found out that it's lagging (I'm using VLC). Why is that? And are there anyways for me to watch movie smoothly. Actually, based on MBA's specs, there's NO way that it couldn't play movie (cause my previous laptop's specs are lower but it still can play without problems).

When at home, I used PS3MediaServer to stream video to PS3 to play on TV. But it sometimes lag as well. Maybe it's due to wireless streaming?

Thanks for any help!

Best regards
Click to expand...

Download Plex.
 
I tried almost every movie player apps (VLC, Quicktime + Perian or Movist, Plex,...), and I found that VLC is the best movie player for MAC right now.

Actually, I tried using MBA gen4 already, that's notebook is awesome! It's fast (due to state of the art CPU ) and 4GBs RAM (this would be a huge difference if you compare with 2GBs RAM...).

Nevertheless, I don't think my MBA's spec is the issue cause I use lower spec laptop before and it still play HD (720p) movie smoothly.
 
ajack said:
I tried almost every movie player apps (VLC, Quicktime + Perian or Movist, Plex,...), and I found that VLC is the best movie player for MAC right now.

Actually, I tried using MBA gen4 already, that's notebook is awesome! It's fast (due to state of the art CPU ) and 4GBs RAM (this would be a huge difference if you compare with 2GBs RAM...).

Nevertheless, I don't think my MBA's spec is the issue cause I use lower spec laptop before and it still play HD (720p) movie smoothly.
Click to expand...

which movist are you referring to? I have huge library of HD movies. I switched from mplayerx to vlc 64 bit to finally movist (paid version from app store). I played lots of movies in different formats and movist is definitely the best: heat, play quality etc. Oh, I have current gen base air 13"
 
dtbadsjw said:
which movist are you referring to? I have huge library of HD movies. I switched from mplayerx to vlc 64 bit to finally movist (paid version from app store). I played lots of movies in different formats and movist is definitely the best: heat, play quality etc. Oh, I have current gen base air 13"
Click to expand...

Opps... you just got the state of the art MBA... comparing to MBA ultimate, MBA gen2 is so slow...
 
I would give plex a try to be honest. I use ot on my MBA, although I have the ultimate and newest version.
 
Trying to stream 1080 with Wifi to your PS3 is going to cause it to lag. If you can wire it directly to your network it won't lag. I have a USB drive that I plug into my PS3 with all my daughter's BluRay movies on it.

That being said. I haven't had any problems with 1080 on my 2010 MBA.

I've used VLC, MXPlayer etc.
 
matrix07 said:
I thought it's hardware-accelerated, no?
Click to expand...

I tried most of the players and VLC came out top on CPU usage, there is little to none hardware acceleration on Mac`s outside of Apple`s own QuickTime. The version of Movist I tried was free at the time. One of the key factors is picking a player that will develop alongside the OS, there have been many fantastic players for windows, and equally many have fallen by the wayside due to lack of development.

VLC is by far not the most integrated OS X application, presumably as it grew up on Microsoft`s dominant platform, however in fullscreen it`s simply not an issue and it`s still the fastest (64bit), most efficient player at present for OS X to play MKV`s

I would really like some of the more integrated, Apple-esque player catch up on performance, however my observations so far are more CPU cycles and some even running dual process. Movist has now gone comercial and it will be interesting to see how it develops as a player, if I see regular updates I will give it a shot, if not then sadly Movist will also be forgotten about...
 
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