Spec required for BBC iPlayer?

[HangTime]

Bit of a strange thread I know, but here goes.

Basically my dad has told me that while iPlayer used to work fine, it's now really jerky on his PC. I suspect this is because they've increased the quality of the video, it's over 600MB for a 1hr show now whereas before I think it was around 300-400.

It's the same if he downloads the programmes before watching, so it's definitely not an issue with his internet connection. I suspect the problem is that the onboard GPU can't do hardware video decoding and his cpu is too weak. Currently he's running a ~2.6ghz Celeron with 768MB RAM on WinXP.

What I'm wondering is whether my old PC would be good enough. It's an Athlon64 @ ~2.5ghz with 2GB PC3200 and a 6800GT. Would this be able to handle iPlayer playback smoothly?

 

[radderfire]

What I'm wondering is whether my old PC would be good enough. It's an Athlon64 @ ~2.5ghz with 2GB PC3200 and a 6800GT. Would this be able to handle iPlayer playback smoothly?

My guess is yes, sounds a much better spec, but would be easy to test wouldn't it?

Rgds

 

[coupe69]

You would say it's gotta be better than his current setup, can you not test it on your old pc? Try downloading a half hour show and give it a go.

 

[Amp34]

Easily. My desktop is the same except it has an x2 4400 and it runs fine. My parents PC (Athlon 3000+, 512MB Ram and a Nvidia 5200) also plays it fine.

 

[griffo_001]

I'm sure i read somewhere [Correct me if i'm wrong] that BT throttle the amount of bandwidth iPlayer can use in the evenings (before midnight) - My BT line is definitely the weak spot in my set-up. Obviously this may not apply to you, especially if you're not with BT Hope this helps.

 

[HangTime]

Wouldn't be that easy to test as I'd have to setup my old pc, currently it doesn't have an OS installed. Basically I recently put it back together using bits and pieces that have become redundant over the years, like my old hds (2*160GB RAID0), Audigy 2 etc with some vague idea about using it as a download box, not sure how it would actually perform these days. But it sounds as though it should be OK.

To be honest I was just a bit taken aback, I know a 2.6ghz celery is very slow by modern standards, but I've played xvid and the like on similar spec machines before with no trouble at all. It's the sort of system I thought would always be fine for general usage.

 

[_TubbZ_]

If thats the case along the bottom when you are on a video is an option for "use lower bandwidth" maybe decreasing the bandwidth might free up the need for additional raw processing power!!!

 

[coupe69]

Wouldn't be that easy to test as I'd have to setup my old pc, currently it doesn't have an OS installed.

Ahh I see, tbh I should imagine with the extra cpu and gpu horsepower your old machine has it should quite easily manage a bit of iplayer

 

[Th3D0n]

you can run iplayer on a p3 with a radeon 9800

 

[Th3D0n]

you can run iplayer on a Pentium III 1.13 GHz with a radeon 9800

So a 2.6ghz Celeron with 768MB RAM can do it!

 

[andrewdodd13]

Are you talking about the downloaded version or the flash version? The flash version runs fine on my Atom N230 (at 1.6 or 1.2 underclock) with 2GB RAM. The hard install will probably take a lot more oomph because of the DRM that it comes with.

 

[mothermachine]

flash version runs fine on my P4 2.0ghz with 1GB ram, xp 64 and on-board intel graphics. i control it wirelessly using my iphone and i'm on 24mbit BeThere broadband.

 

[Xelene]

Check he hasn't got loads of crapware on the PC

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

I'm currently running on a P4 2800 MHz, 1 GB PC3200 and a Geforce 6800 in a Shuttle case and it plays BBC iPlayer and 4oD fine so I'm sure that your AMD 2500 MHz with 2GB PC3200 and a Geforce 6800 would serve fine. My machine will only start to crumble when I play on Skyvegas. I guess the Flash is a bit too much for it.

 

[HangTime]

Check he hasn't got loads of crapware on the PC

Fairly unlikely I would have thought, it's got full windows updates and antivirus, plus router and windows firewalls, he's also fairly sensible when it comes to browsing habits.

I'm talking about both the web and downloaded version btw, initially I thought the jerkiness could have been due to the streaming so I got him to try the downloaded version to rule that out.

Anyway I've decided I'll sort him out with a more up to date solution, makes more sense than me having gear sat around doing nothing. Thanks for the input guys.

 

[paininlife]

lol ,it might sound lame ,but my oldddd Intel P4 1.8 ghz , 1.2 gb ram and FX5500 xp sp3 runs iplayer totaly fine,( r u talking abt the iPlayer app or the streaming directly from bbc web site??)

 

[Rroff]

Possibly with only 768Mb RAM if theres a lot of software on there - theres not much free RAM? which could cause stuttery video... or out of date drivers...

iplayer even the HD content plays fine on my old netbook with a sloooow mobile celeron-m and intel GMA so that spec should handle it more than fine.

 

[HangTime]

There's should be sufficient RAM, I've monitored it before. I set the PC up so there isn't much in the way of background tasks, iPlayer would need to be whoring 500MB+ RAM for that to become an issue.

Drivers should be relatively up to date, I'd be amazed if any updated drivers has come out for such an old chipset in the past year or two. Certainly any hardware updates that have made it to Windows Update have been taken.

I might ask him to try monitoring CPU usage during playback if he's not deleted the download, just seems a bit suspicious that it used to be fine before BBC upped the quality, I think the poor Celery can't handle it by itself.