Powerbook G4 Suddenly Cannot Stream Video

[ardpbub]

Hi,

I have had my Powerbook G4 running 10.4 for three years and have had few problems but now all of a sudden I cannot stream video. The playback is very choppy and a lot of frames are getting dropped.

Youtube will work sometimes but Vimeo, Hulu, NBC.com are all too choppy to watch. I know these video streams all work on my friends old PC and that I have streamed all of them on my computer before so I dont understand what the problem is.

Also, I have been noticing that occasionally (not frequently) my computer will freeze up for a minute and the colored wheel will spin. This is unusual but I thought nothing of it until I noticed this video problem.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks a million.

 

[Digidesign]

my wife's powerbook g4 also has trouble streaming shows from sites such as fox.com, youtube, etc. We even installed a clean copy of 10.5 and tried Adobe flash 9 and 10. She used to be able to watch online shows from ABC, FOX, etc. last year, but no longer.

One possibility is that the streaming content has increased in bitrate/resolution which taxes the older computers. With the standard of HD hitting TVs, many of the online sites stream in HD which is difficult for a PBG4 to stream full-screen without lag.

As for the increasing beachballs, I'd recommend running some maintenance crons or doing some cleanup around your old files. If you have some time, patience and a good backup system, I'd reocmmend doing a clean install of OSX.

Good luck