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View Full Version : Streaming video: poor buffering, no pause and GUI fail



Nazim
November 3rd, 2008, 10:14 PM
I just downloaded boxee and must say that I'm incredibly impressed. The interface is nice (although I wish it defaulted back to the most recent submenu or other interface location...).

I watched a couple of episodes of the Daily Show from ComedyCentral.com. The image was slightly more grainy than I would have wished, but I don't think there's much boxee can do about that. I'm guessing it's either my mediocre DSL or the original content that's not very HD.

Two problems I noticed that might be fixable:

1) The streaming video did not buffer enough before it begun playing. Both episodes hiccuped a couple of times at the beginning.

2) The play/pause control had little or no effect on the streaming video. I think it might have paused the first episode the first time I used it, but it didn't ever after that. The problem was also that the grey bar on the lower part of the screen, with all the options, would not go away. My guess is that the software thought the video was paused, even though it was not. But I have no real idea.

I saw a screensaver option, with no possibility of fully disabling it. I hope it's automatically disabled when video is playing.

Apologies if this was already covered. I looked around a bit, but could not find a thread addressing this issue. I probably could have looked harder, but it's late, and I wanted to put down the issues before I went to bed. Thanks for the amazing product. I'm looking forward to the beta.

marcel
November 4th, 2008, 03:06 AM
Thanks nazim

thanks for the report

the screen saver should not be displayed during playback ..if it does then please report as this would be a bug..

regarding the pause/play this is a known feature with certain content videos..

dave
November 4th, 2008, 03:13 AM
The menu stays up until you hit delete or menu on a remote, we should look into a timeout on that; or have it disappear once a function is sent - e.g. you complete a rating or recommendation to friends...

As for buffering, we are at a limit with your connectivity and the sites popularity.

The screen saver would never operate during media playback, and you can go into settings to customize it or disable it completely during the menus. We also take control of your OS-X or Ubuntu screen saver and disable that while boxee is running, of course.

triplefinger
November 7th, 2008, 11:34 AM
I just experienced the no pause, with the Colbert Report. It was just as funny the 2nd time since I had to start it over!

amazing software, thank you.




Thanks nazim

thanks for the report

the screen saver should not be displayed during playback ..if it does then please report as this would be a bug..

regarding the pause/play this is a known feature with certain content videos..

marcel
November 7th, 2008, 12:43 PM
see ..you do not need the pause..:)

jamesfoster
November 7th, 2008, 05:21 PM
Yeah, I've noticed a few funnies with streaming media.

My biggest complaint is the volume control doesn't work. Not having pause is a nuisance but when you implement "Continue watching from where you left off", it won't matter that much ;)

dinyar
November 15th, 2008, 02:07 PM
i'd second that. both pause and volume-control would be very nice with streaming media.

(and i of course second that boxee is extremely awesome :) )