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#1 2008-02-10 5:33 am
- pja
- Member
- From: Norwich
- Registered: 2004-08-17
- Posts: 79
Pismo 400 - powerful enough for DVDs, but not for movie files
My Pismo 400mhz has 1gb RAM and a new 40 gig hard drive. Running Panther 10.3.9 with the minimal 1.5gig Custom Install (foreign languages, printer drives other unnecessary files not installed).
It plays DVD's fine, but when you try to play a movie in any format (.AVI, DVX, h.264 etc) it drops frames and almost slows to a standstill even on lowish quality 320x240 settings. It's slightly better with VLC than quicktime but usually after a few minutes gives up.
No difference found if the movie is on the hard drive or playing off a disc. I even downloaded the Pirates of Silicon Valley movie when it was on google video and it struggled with that (which is very low quality)
Last edited by pja (2008-02-10 5:38 am)
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#2 2008-02-10 8:23 am
Re: Pismo 400 - powerful enough for DVDs, but not for movie files
Well it's a 8-9 year old computer. 400 MHZ is on the slow side these days; maybe a CPU upgrade would improve things if you can find one. Maybe If you installed Tiger too. I tried my Pismo to watch movies once and it seemed sluggish also. Youtube seems slow too.
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#3 2008-02-10 8:45 am
- pja
- Member
- From: Norwich
- Registered: 2004-08-17
- Posts: 79
Re: Pismo 400 - powerful enough for DVDs, but not for movie files
I understand and agree with that, but the thing I can't understand is how it's able to play full quality DVD movies off the original discs using Apples DVD player yet struggles with youtube and other videos that will work fine on an iPod nano. Is an iPod nano more powerful than an 8 year old Pismo?
You also see from the orignal Pismo ads editing Final Cut Pro which I know is nonsense, but that's a log way from not even being able to pay web quality video properly
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#4 2008-02-10 9:49 am
Re: Pismo 400 - powerful enough for DVDs, but not for movie files
The weak part may be the internal video (which you can't upgrade). The video cards/circuitry, even on today's low-end machines, is much better now then it was then. And of-course today's videos are designed for today's equipment, not what was used 9 years ago.
Last edited by adamjg (2008-02-10 8:54 pm)
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#5 2008-02-10 5:10 pm
- loafer
- Member
- Registered: 2000-11-10
- Posts: 271
Re: Pismo 400 - powerful enough for DVDs, but not for movie files
I am pretty certain that the ATI chip in the pismo has a decoder for dvd video. The quicktime video decoder is not able to do the job on the G3 chip. Some of the ability to decode video has to do with the data rate, my pismo can decode h264 if the bit rate is 300 kbits/sac. Also I would not expect any better than 15 fps.
Last edited by loafer (2008-02-10 5:12 pm)
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