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| Thread ID: 139330 | 2015-04-15 08:57:00 | Lightbox a big disappointment ! | Misty (368) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1398610 | 2015-04-15 08:57:00 | Greetings We got a year's free membership of Lightbox through being a Spark customer. We have only tried two/three times their catalog. However on all occasions the content has been spotted, ie the streaming has been interrupted frequently and not worth carrying on. We have a connection speed of a consistent slightly over 10 Mgs a second. It is not a service that we enjoy, even free. It could be a time that we tried and things were not quite right at those particular times, but I doubt that ! However, a search on Google does not seem to have these specific concerns !! Should we persist, or is it a known common problem, too common to comment on ?? |
Misty (368) | ||
| 1398611 | 2015-04-15 09:15:00 | Interesting feedback. | Webdevguy (17166) | ||
| 1398612 | 2015-04-15 09:26:00 | I've also had a bad experience with Lightbox, not for myself but for the in-laws. They are also with Spark so we tried setting up the free 12 month sub and went through everything but now when they try use it it just gets stuck on the logging in page. Same problem in all browsers but it does seem to work OK on their iPad. However this is no good as they want to connect the laptop to the TV to watch it. You don't need a fast connection to stream HD video, we are using the 30 day trial of Netflix at home, and have less than 5mbps download speed on our ADSL, and have no problems watching anything in HD from Netflix. Haven't had it stop and buffer once and we've used it a lot. :D |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 1398613 | 2015-04-15 09:27:00 | Almost guarantee if more info is provided there are people here that can help | Lawrence (2987) | ||
| 1398614 | 2015-04-15 11:40:00 | What kind of hardware? I've been using lightbox for a while now and for the most part it's worked really well. I've have however encountered a few issues. 1. Trying to watch something on express at the moment it's released does not work well for me - best to leave it at least a half hour 2. A weak AMD dual core APU in one of my PC's could not stream smoothly, CPU would often hit 100% CPU usage and the video would pause or stutter. 3 other machines I tested worked fine 3. Not related but you are limited to 5 registered devices and can only change one a month, every time windows 10 technical preview updated it counted as a new machine and used up all my devices. I find my PS3 works best but any intel machine or quad core AMD seems to do a decent job, it really shouldn't need this much CPU power but I suspect it's silverlight at fault. I tried an old 2.6 Ghz core 2 duo that's theoretically just about the same processing power as the A4 4000 that wouldn't work and it handles it easily. It could however be more a case of how well the particular video hardware works with silverlight rather than just the CPU. Adding an Nvidia card to the machine that was struggling didn't fix it but reduced the problem to the point where it was tolerable. Incidentally I tried to get lightbox running under Linux and I really can't recommend it. It took much mucking around to get pipelight installed and activated only to have it crash every time I launch a video. Theoretically possible if anyone wants to try it though. Netflix also uses silverlight but can use HTML5 instead which makes it easier to use on some devices. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1398615 | 2015-04-16 00:12:00 | I signed up 2 weeks ago. My home internet connection isnt that great ,but I have almost zero issues once the streaming starts I do get alot of (silverlight?) crashes before I start the stream , but I just restart IE & once the stream starts its all good. I did initially have sound issues caused by my Asus sound card drivers not being compatible with Silverlight . And yesterday I had no sound from the stream, that was a one off & a restart of IE fixed it. Im not impressed with the vid quality , I get much better quality streaming youtube . Just why they went with a Silverlight based system I dont know, really bad planning there. "In 2013, Microsoft announced that they had ceased development on Silverlight except for patches and bugfixes" (wiki) I cant imagine anyone paying for Lightbox now, there isnt a years worth of viewing Im interested in so I'll quit when my free 1year subscription expires. I dont see how they can possibly expect to compete with netflix. When Lightbox see that they arnt going to make any $ from it, Im sure all development of the product will cease (ie better software, more devices) I havnt tried it on my Samsung tablet yet, given tab's arnt that powerfull, Im wondering how will it cope (given dugi's comments) |
1101 (13337) | ||
| 1398616 | 2015-04-16 00:32:00 | Tablets have enough power, the PC silverlight code must just be poorly optimised. Someone on geekzone said they were using a celeron powered NUC successfully so when working properly it doesn't need much power. I side loaded the apk onto my 2012 Nexus 7 and it launches and plays video smoothly. It's buggy though and randomly crashes but plays just fine other than that. It plays netflix perfectly. On a supported tablet it should be fine, it's not supposed to run on the nexus after all. 7" screens are a bit too small for TV viewing IMO though. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1398617 | 2015-04-16 01:43:00 | I haven't signed up yet. Waiting until they bring out a Chromecast app out.. | paulw (1826) | ||
| 1398618 | 2015-04-16 02:25:00 | Tablets have enough power, the PC silverlight code must just be poorly optimised. Someone on geekzone said they were using a celeron powered NUC successfully so when working properly it doesn't need much power. I have a Celeron NUC at home as well and I've used most of the streaming video services on it and they all work in HD without a problem. |
CYaBro (73) | ||
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