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airplay sys requirements ?
- Thread starter UKBeast
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For $10 it's worth a try. I found it to work fine in concept. With non-Flash web videos it played fine. With Flash videos, I got stuttering. Airparrot TS said it was due to processor demands, Flash and AirParrot both being heavy CPU users. With movies streaming over my home network it stuttered. On the other hand, I have read people rave about it. So I think it's hard to know without trying it. They have a 20m trial period. Just make sure you really challenge it, like maybe streaming an mkv bluray. If you try it, I would love to know the results.
No, it might also be for people that do upgrade to ML. Unfortunately, unless Apple changes there specifications, AirPlay will not be enabled for some Mac models. That doesn't mean we won't upgrade to ML, only that we will not be able to use AirPlay.
Looking around to try and find anything to support or disprove this, as I have a mid 2009 macbook pro, and was really looking forward to airplay mirroring.
I read one forum that said it wasn't there on earlier betas, but had appeared in later ones for older models, but it was for the iMac.
Has anyone got the post-WWDC beta on an older macbook to test this functionality out?
I read one forum that said it wasn't there on earlier betas, but had appeared in later ones for older models, but it was for the iMac.
Has anyone got the post-WWDC beta on an older macbook to test this functionality out?
As it seems this is another cheap microsoft typical strategy of selling new mbps, even though processor of older models is not enough to stream video it should still be enough for other related tasks like, word processing, surfing and so on.. So airplay could be used for almost all tasks except video playing.
If airparrot can do it, why not mountain lion ?
On the other hand, I will probably not need to stream flash while I have html5.
And other annoying thing is, this job is consuming too much processor power which means higher fan noise, higher battery consumption, decreased system performance. As a result our mbps will have a shorter lifetime.
Taking into to account all these disadvantages it is better to step away from airplay mirroring.
I thought it will work like we do with mini display port to hdmi cabla connection, super fast, no lag, no high cpu usage.
Apple should really do some improvements on apple tv in terms of 3rd party applications, samba support, mkv, avi, divx support. Maybe they do not want apple tv to eat mac minis pie on the plate.
My wife's iPad mirrors wonderfully to the aTv. Like you said, super fast, no lag, no heat. Works great. It's just looking like it has to be a hardware coding capability, which the Sandy Bridge has built in and the earlier cpu's don't.
And AirParrot works fine except for some video's, also, it's hard to avoid running into flash video on the web.
which some videos ?
I am just curious about the performance gap between airparrot and mac os airplay
mp4's and mkv's and web flash video. It worked fine for YouTube. So basically, any light-weight video looked fine but as soon as you go into something that either requires substantial cpu itself (Flash) or higher bitrates, it would have a slight stutter which would take the smoothness out of motion. I had it set to medium video quality, max frame rate 30 and 1080p enabled.
I can't speak to how it compares to a Mac running AirPlay. But I can say that we have been using AirPlay from my wife iPad and it does not have any stutter.
qft. Air Parrot is no bueno for anything of good quality....super choppy and unbearable.
Comforting to know that I was not the only one. So many "it's wonderful" statements out there I was starting to wonder if it was something unique to me. I have read that it works better with the "i" series chips.
Exactly.. if you do not have an i series processor airplay sucks..
All positive feedbacks are coming from i series users.
This is the first time I wished to have a newer generation mbp.
Apple is Leveraging Quick Sync in the Sandy Bridge (and now Ivy Bridge Processors) for Airplay Mirroring on Mountain Lion. This almost completely takes the burden of Mirroring off the CPU so you can continue to use your computer. It's the whole: Apple only does something as long as it is transparent to the user (or as close to transparent as they can get to). Unfortunately (as already shown here) many Core2duo and even the original i series processors just can't do the video encoding in real time necessary for a seamless experience. So either A. Apple enables Airplay Mirroring on all computers for ML and receives complains from users with Core2duo processors who experience studdering or B. The only enable the feature on computers guaranteed to work on (i.e. those with Quick Sync) and deal with the complaints from those who don't have the minimum requirements.
Double edged sword. In the end, Apple goes with the option that requires people to upgrade rather than try to make those who can't do something be happy.
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We are in 2012 and encoding process has been in computer science for many many years, still processors are not strong enough to handle this ?
apple is not microsoft and a pc, lifetime of an apple computer is much longer than a pc since every new windows upgrade you need to upgrade the hardware with it. This was one the reasons why decided to switch to apple
Actually, no. They really are not. CPU's are not that good at encoding. They are not designed for video encoding on the fly. Yes they can do it, but in order to handle Airplay Mirroring, they have to do it in REAL Time. This is no small feat. Your CPU would need to be able to handle 30fps encoding in full HD. Further, you still want to be able to use your computer right? What good is Airplay mirroring, if your entire processor is used up just sending the video to your AppleTV? This is where Quick Sync (found in Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Processors) comes in handy. It takes most of the burden off the processor and does it better!
Case in point, my new Ivy Bridge (i7 3770s) Windows Box that I use almost solely for encoding, gets more than twice the frame rate in encoding when using Quick Sync vs CPU only and when using Quick Sync, my processor rarely goes above 30%. I can still use the computer for most day to day tasks without feeling like it is trans-coding videos or anything else. I am sure this is why Apple is pushing Airplay Mirroring to Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge based computers.
Point is encoding is not something new to people, we needed it for many many years before quick sync appears. Why after all years intel decided to put something on the processor to make it fast ?
Until recently, Intel didn't have GPU's on their processors so there was no ability to include GPU encoding on the processor....
No Core2duo has ever had a GPU on the same die as the processor....
I'd really recommend reading this page of an article over at Anandtech.com, it explains how Apple has basically forced the hand of Intel to be more creative with it's processors and GPU's:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/8
Thanks for the very clear explanation of the situation. Mirroring is useless for me if it stutters, so there is no use giving me the option to use it. That's unfortunate as I am not about to drop a few more thousands of dollars on a new MBP (as much as I would love to have one). It's just a little irritating that I have this NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card (that I never use) and here I am with not enough encoding capability to mirror.
But...technology moves on and I obviously am going to be behind for a while longer.
I totally agree with you, I will not buy a new mbp for airplay even though i need it too much. A lifespan of a computer should be at least 5 years and before that I will not upgrade it. I will use my mbp until it gets really unable to operate. Thats why I switched from ms pc to mac os mbp. I was utterly got rid of upgrading my hardware due to windows's service packs, security updates.
For airplay it is better to get an iphone for me.
Thanks to apple, my 2.5 years old mbp is still polished, clean and stable as the day i bought it, if this was pc probably the plastics had been half melted, and it would be too slow with windows.
There are hardware H.264 encoders available, Elgato makes one.
http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Turbo264HD/product1.en.html
That said they're somewhat crappy encoders compared to Handbrake.
For Windows there are encoders that use CUDA or Stream processors (NVidia/ATI) to get the job done quickly, not sure if any OSX versions are out there.
Once converted iTunes can stream them just fine, and as a added bonus your iOS devices will play them natively.
http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Turbo264HD/product1.en.html
That said they're somewhat crappy encoders compared to Handbrake.
For Windows there are encoders that use CUDA or Stream processors (NVidia/ATI) to get the job done quickly, not sure if any OSX versions are out there.
Once converted iTunes can stream them just fine, and as a added bonus your iOS devices will play them natively.
Too expensive, I can buy mkv,avi player with this money.
Its better to wait for a jailbreak comes up then everything will be perfect.
Cheaper than a new MacBook.
Of course you could just let your MacBook run overnight with a queue of encodes for free.
I have a late 2009 Mac book with 8 gigs of ram.....Since I can't get air sharing with mountain lion 
and it was the only feature I was really looking forward to I will stick with snow leopard. I bought Airparrot and have been very happy with it. I did turn the quality setting down to medium so it is far from HD...but it is not choppy playing avi movies and can do flash websites without any stuttering (my cpu sits at about 60% utilization when pushing a flash video website to my TV and about 40% when doing an avi movie)
If you want to stream the video in super high quality with an older mac Airparrot prob won't do very well.....but if you are like me and are happy with average video quality (I turned down the settings to the lowest level that still gave me okay quality) you will be very happy with airparrot it is a great piece of software IMHO and is worth $10!
and it was the only feature I was really looking forward to I will stick with snow leopard. I bought Airparrot and have been very happy with it. I did turn the quality setting down to medium so it is far from HD...but it is not choppy playing avi movies and can do flash websites without any stuttering (my cpu sits at about 60% utilization when pushing a flash video website to my TV and about 40% when doing an avi movie)If you want to stream the video in super high quality with an older mac Airparrot prob won't do very well.....but if you are like me and are happy with average video quality (I turned down the settings to the lowest level that still gave me okay quality) you will be very happy with airparrot it is a great piece of software IMHO and is worth $10!