Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Will the 11.6" Play YouTube 1080p HD Full Screen Smoothly?

For what it's worth...

I had a Rev A of the MBA and loved it. I was very excited about picking up a new one once they came out. Basically, I'm an Air fan is all I'm trying to say.

Now with that out of the way...

Went to the Raleigh, NC Apple store to check out the new MBA. I fired up the 11" 1.4/64/2Gb MBA and tried to play this video in full screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk

Played fine in 360 and 480. Once I bumped it up to 720 it hitched noticeably, but not so bad that you couldn't watch it. Once I switched it over to 1080 and pushed full screen, it got about a frame per second... or less. It was totally unwatchable.

So I turned the MBA off completely and rebooted it thinking maybe there was something hogging the resources given it was a demo unit with people trying it out all day.

I went to the same video and got the same unplayable video. I made sure the video was precached enough so that it wasn't bandwidth. There was about an inch of red in the progress bar which is plenty for a video on Youtube to run smoothly.

From what I saw you cannot run 1080p flash in full screen on the 11" MBA.

Now... I will probably still get one (a BTO with 1.6 and 4Gb) since I really don't ever watch flash in full screen on my laptop while traveling. But I wanted to put forth my experience with the 11" MBA here today.
 
w00tini said:
For what it's worth...

I had a Rev A of the MBA and loved it. I was very excited about picking up a new one once they came out. Basically, I'm an Air fan is all I'm trying to say.

Now with that out of the way...

Went to the Raleigh, NC Apple store to check out the new MBA. I fired up the 11" 1.4/64/2Gb MBA and tried to play this video in full screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk

Played fine in 360 and 480. Once I bumped it up to 720 it hitched noticeably, but not so bad that you couldn't watch it. Once I switched it over to 1080 and pushed full screen, it got about a frame per second... or less. It was totally unwatchable.

So I turned the MBA off completely and rebooted it thinking maybe there was something hogging the resources given it was a demo unit with people trying it out all day.

I went to the same video and got the same unplayable video. I made sure the video was precached enough so that it wasn't bandwidth. There was about an inch of red in the progress bar which is plenty for a video on Youtube to run smoothly.

From what I saw you cannot run 1080p flash in full screen on the 11" MBA.

Now... I will probably still get one (a BTO with 1.6 and 4Gb) since I really don't ever watch flash in full screen on my laptop while traveling. But I wanted to put forth my experience with the 11" MBA here today.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Maybe Flash 10.1 wasn't installed...

Anyway just get the Safari 5 Extension "ClickToFlash" it allows you to play all H264 Videos using Quicktime instead of Flash which runs a lot better :)
 
hachre said:
Thanks for the info. Maybe Flash 10.1 wasn't installed...

Anyway just get the Safari 5 Extension "ClickToFlash" it allows you to play all H264 Videos using Quicktime instead of Flash which runs a lot better :)
Click to expand...
honestly, the 720p output was fine. i never, ever watch >720p flash content so i really don't care to be honest.

the only other thing i wasn't impressed with was the screen. it was really washed out compared to the MBPs. it has a very tight pixel density, which is nice, but it wasn't as rich in color as the Pros right next to it.

still, i will be getting one next week. just keeping it real :D
 
That is not promising at all. It seems like flash for OSX is lagging way behind flash for Windows. If that is the case that is another check mark for me to keep my TT instead of switching to the Air, because if the 720 option is there, that is all to watch youtube videos. My TT with the similar cpu does it smooth as silk, same can be same for my CD MBP with 10.4
 
w00tini said:
For what it's worth...

I had a Rev A of the MBA and loved it. I was very excited about picking up a new one once they came out. Basically, I'm an Air fan is all I'm trying to say.

Now with that out of the way...

Went to the Raleigh, NC Apple store to check out the new MBA. I fired up the 11" 1.4/64/2Gb MBA and tried to play this video in full screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk

Played fine in 360 and 480. Once I bumped it up to 720 it hitched noticeably, but not so bad that you couldn't watch it. Once I switched it over to 1080 and pushed full screen, it got about a frame per second... or less. It was totally unwatchable.

So I turned the MBA off completely and rebooted it thinking maybe there was something hogging the resources given it was a demo unit with people trying it out all day.

I went to the same video and got the same unplayable video. I made sure the video was precached enough so that it wasn't bandwidth. There was about an inch of red in the progress bar which is plenty for a video on Youtube to run smoothly.

From what I saw you cannot run 1080p flash in full screen on the 11" MBA.

Now... I will probably still get one (a BTO with 1.6 and 4Gb) since I really don't ever watch flash in full screen on my laptop while traveling. But I wanted to put forth my experience with the 11" MBA here today.
Click to expand...

I just tried it out on my 11.6 1.4g/2GB/128 model 1080p played fine in full screen, btw I used Chrome as my browser.
 
noodles5666 said:
I just tried it out on my 11.6 1.4g/2GB/128 model 1080p played fine in full screen, btw I used Chrome as my browser.
Click to expand...

I tried some other 1080p and it played fine too. The Big Buck Bunny was the first one I tried and it wasn't 100% smooth.
 
noodles5666 said:
I just tried it out on my 11.6 1.4g/2GB/128 model 1080p played fine in full screen, btw I used Chrome as my browser.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Can others please confirm as well? Looks like Chrome handles flash better than Safari?

The display unit at Apple Store doesn't have Chrome installed, so I couldn't test it, except with Safari. Heck, half of them didn't even have flash installed!
 
re2st said:
Interesting. Can others please confirm as well? Looks like Chrome handles flash better than Safari?

The display unit at Apple Store doesn't have Chrome installed, so I couldn't test it, except with Safari. Heck, half of them didn't even have flash installed!
Click to expand...

I installed Flash 10.1 on my 11.6/2, and 1080p content on YouTube plays stutter free.
 
I went to my local Apple store and tried a 1080p YouTube video, and it was horribly unwatchable. When I bumped it down to 720p it was perfectly watchable. One thing to note is, I don't know if it was flash or if they enabled HTML5 video.
 
re2st said:
On Safari? Full screen? I really doubt it. I tried with 2 display models at the Apple Store..
Click to expand...

Did you make sure they had the correct version of Flash installed? The release version of Flash 10.1 runs 1080p much better than the preview version of Flash Player "Square".
 
I guess I must question the purpose for buying the Air for 1080p again. It's clearly not the preferred device to hook to your TV due to its underpowered specs, and considering that, it would scale down 1080 to fit the screen.

So I say, don't worry about 1080p and your 11.6" MBA. Not saying you shouldn't buy it anyway due to its coolness! :)
 
The displays at the store I went to had a version of 10,0.. i checked :)

It doesn't use h264 acceleration and is more unoptimized.. It 11.6 ended up getting around 8 fps in guimark..

My Macbook Pro (9400M + 2.53 ghz C2D) i just reinstalled OSX on gets 12 fps with flash 10,0 and can run 1080p youtube easily.

With 10.1, any of the new airs can run 1080p youtube/h264
 
if this is a deal breaker then clearly you are looking at the machine the wrong way

the resolution on the screen isn't even 1080p

if you are going to connect it to an external monitor just get something else

this is meant as an ultra portable laptop, not a 1080p desktop replacement

if you REALLY want to output 1080p, then all you have to do is use firefox + an extension called "Download Youtube videos+"

it will let you rip the video and then you can use mediaplayer classic or SMplayer which supports video acceleration + uses less CPU then running it in the browser
 
ItsJustafnPhone said:
if this is a deal breaker then clearly you are looking at the machine the wrong way

the resolution on the screen isn't even 1080p

if you are going to connect it to an external monitor just get something else

this is meant as an ultra portable laptop, not a 1080p desktop replacement

if you REALLY want to output 1080p, then all you have to do is use firefox + an extension called "Download Youtube videos+"

it will let you rip the video and then you can use mediaplayer classic or SMplayer which supports video acceleration + uses less CPU then running it in the browser
Click to expand...

The GPU in new MBA can handle 1080p video just fine. You need Flash 10.1 and check hardware decoding though. Without these two little steps CONFIRMED it's useless to claim it can't.
 
ItsJustafnPhone said:
if this is a deal breaker then clearly you are looking at the machine the wrong way

the resolution on the screen isn't even 1080p

if you are going to connect it to an external monitor just get something else

this is meant as an ultra portable laptop, not a 1080p desktop replacement

if you REALLY want to output 1080p, then all you have to do is use firefox + an extension called "Download Youtube videos+"

it will let you rip the video and then you can use mediaplayer classic or SMplayer which supports video acceleration + uses less CPU then running it in the browser
Click to expand...

You obviously haven't read through this thread. People are wanting to hook it up to their HDTV.
 
As I sit outside the Apple store in Fair Oaks Mall, I thought I'd jump on and share my 1080P encounter.

The test I wanted to see was the stock 11.6,2GB ram,128GB and the 13.3,2GB ram,128GB units and how they ran the YouTube trailer for "The Road".

I let the trailer fully buffer prior to playback and set the playback to full screen. each version experienced some playback jitter which was more noticeable on the 11.6. The 13.3 managed well, but not without some jitter every so often.

Both machines performed the 720p playback without issue. I am not one to explain how the encoding might have an impact, but merely wanted to share my brief experience with each unit today.

On the flip side, this machine starts from shutdown to ready to go in under 30 seconds. I launched Microsoft Word and Powerpoint each in under 3 seconds. WOW.
 
HagusofNWN said:
As I sit outside the Apple store in Fair Oaks Mall, I thought I'd jump on and share my 1080P encounter.

The test I wanted to see was the stock 11.6,2GB ram,128GB and the 13.3,2GB ram,128GB units and how they ran the YouTube trailer for "The Road".

I let the trailer fully buffer prior to playback and set the playback to full screen. each version experienced some playback jitter which was more noticeable on the 11.6. The 13.3 managed well, but not without some jitter every so often.

Both machines performed the 720p playback without issue. I am not one to explain how the encoding might have an impact, but merely wanted to share my brief experience with each unit today.

On the flip side, this machine starts from shutdown to ready to go in under 30 seconds. I launched Microsoft Word and Powerpoint each in under 3 seconds. WOW.
Click to expand...

Can you check which version of flash is installed? The 10.1 with hardware-encoding or not?
 
HagusofNWN said:
As I sit outside the Apple store in Fair Oaks Mall, I thought I'd jump on and share my 1080P encounter.

The test I wanted to see was the stock 11.6,2GB ram,128GB and the 13.3,2GB ram,128GB units and how they ran the YouTube trailer for "The Road".

I let the trailer fully buffer prior to playback and set the playback to full screen. each version experienced some playback jitter which was more noticeable on the 11.6. The 13.3 managed well, but not without some jitter every so often.

Both machines performed the 720p playback without issue. I am not one to explain how the encoding might have an impact, but merely wanted to share my brief experience with each unit today.

On the flip side, this machine starts from shutdown to ready to go in under 30 seconds. I launched Microsoft Word and Powerpoint each in under 3 seconds. WOW.
Click to expand...


Were they running 10.0? One user mentioned his local Apple store computers were not running 10.1.
 
Corbet said:
Flash on macs sucks, that's just something you have to understand when purchasing an Apple computer.

I'm curious what size TV you're trying stream 1080p for - I bet you can't even notice the difference between 720p/1080p:

http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter
Click to expand...

Let's not get into the debate on flash now. I simply wanted to know people's experience with running full screen 1080p flash-based YouTube HD on the 11" new Air.

I have a maxed-out 17" MacBook Pro, and the 13" new Air on the way. The reason I specifically asked for the 11" is because the size is SO perfect for my needs. I want to know if I missed out anything by not getting it instead of the 13".
 
HagusofNWN said:
On the way out of the mall, I checked and the Macbook Air's were running 10.0r4 versions of Flash.
Click to expand...

Well that certainly explains why people testing it in the Apple Stores had laggy playback. You need 10.1 for accelerated playback.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back