Is it Iplayer or is it my computer?

[Stu]

Now you know how Clarkson started last weeks Top Gear - if you were watching on iplayer it would be all stuttery, jerky and basically sh** so I just assumed that's what it's like. But I watched Being Human in HD on my girlfriends computer last night and it was basically perfect. She reckons there's no way my old laptop is ever going to be as good as her £700 Dell but I just wondered if there was anything I (or more specifically the wonderful techs on the Org ) could do to improve it. e.g. youtube I can't get better than 320.

[flymo]

assuming that both were compared using the same broadband connection and of course not both streaming at the same time, most likely related to performance of either the wifi network connection, the processor or the graphics performance on your laptop.

[fizzwheel]

Do you still get the option on iplayer to download the program to your laptop before you watch it, then you arent streaming it over the web. Which would remove that from the equation.

If its still cack after that, then it'll be something on your laptop. I would have thought the graphics card more than likely as not, which as its all built in probably wont be upgradeable.

Be handy to know the make and model of the laptop you have if you know it ?

[flymo]

Yeah, you need to download the iPlayer client if you intend to download rather than stream. Careful though as the downloads are large, from memory I think 600MB for a 30 min programme.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by fizzwheel

Do you still get the option on iplayer to download the program to your laptop before you watch it, then you arent streaming it over the web. Which would remove that from the equation.

If its still cack after that, then it'll be something on your laptop. I would have thought the graphics card more than likely as not, which as its all built in probably wont be upgradeable.

Be handy to know the make and model of the laptop you have if you know it ?

Packard Bell - will find out the model when I get home.
Keep meaning to do a proper test between downloading & streaming. but it usually takes so long I get hacked off with it or forget about it
It's more a case of just wanting to view something Right Now! though lol (it's mostly links to youtube - rather than a concious effort to watch something on iplayer)
Makes sense if the graphics card is just to old for nowadays and if as you say it's not upgradeable then that's my answer

[TSM]

check the CPU level as you view iPlayer, note that if you have multiple core CPU that flash/firefox will only use a single core and take that into account when seeing if its maxed out (ie dual core 50% is maxed for a single app, quad core 25% etc), this only applies for non multithreaded apps as ive listed above.

i have noted some issues with flash in Firefox hogging the CPU even when nothing is happening, i get it somtimes then videos start to stutter

If your computer is quite old, it's doubtful that you'll be able to watch iPlayer in HD with a decent frame rate. This is due to the compression algorithm used by the iPlayer. It's quite CPU intensive for your computer to decompress it in order to play it to you.

[L3nny]

Update your graphics card drivers.

I had the same problem on my old Acer netbook, my new one has the same processor, ram etc but a better gfx card and plays even the HD I player perfectly.

If you dont know what graphics card you have from the run prompt type dxdiag, it's all in there.

I just let it buffer for 5 mins before I start watching anything. Works perfectly well on my ancient desktop, cheap laptop, PS3, Wii, phone etc etc.

what TSM said.