Lightbox System requirements

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Dugimodo

168 posts

Master Geek

#159854 15-Dec-2014 10:12

I'm doing the 30 day free trial presently and am reasonably impressed overall although I'm not sure if there is enough content I personally will watch to keep me subscribing once the trial ends. What I couldn't find anywhere on the website or via Google search is a list of basic PC system requirements to run lightbox which seems like a fairly fundamental piece of information that should be easily found.

Anyone know what is needed hardware wise? I have tried 3 PCs at home, my gaming machine has no trouble at all and can stream while gaming but the other two are a different story. The laptop is a quad core AMD based machine and all 4 cores sit constantly at around 50% while playing a show.

The media PC in the lounge however only has a dual core A4 4000 and it sits at > 80% CPU usage with regular spikes to 100% and will not play smoothly. It has an Nvidia GTX760 graphics card and can play blu-ray perfectly fine so I suspect it's a silverlight issue. This might be the killer for me as I'd have to spend approx $160 to upgrade to a quadcore for one streaming service.

I'm also dissapointed that the Nexus 7 is not supported, I understand the argument about Samsung and market share etc but given that Nexus is the benchmark android tablet from google themselves it seems like it would be a good place to start.

Killerkiwi2005

374 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1197609 15-Dec-2014 10:33

Silverlight and flash both required more resources than native/html5 apple made quite a big deal out of longer battery when netflix went html5

Lightbox device support is honestly pretty poor, the only reason we even trialed it is the wife likes outlander

Netflix is going to stomp then unless they fix the device support (they took short term gain with samsung/apple over long term success)

trig42

5810 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#1197611 15-Dec-2014 10:35

Has Silverlight got an option for Hardware decoding? I thought it did.
Can't be that taxing - it works fine on a Samsung SmartTV. I haven't used it on a PC though.

Lightbox

301 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Lightbox

#1198083 15-Dec-2014 21:13

Yeah, I'd make sure that hardware acceleration is enabled - and maybe try troubleshooting your Silverlight installation.

More devices coming up.

Lightbox - we are online TV.

Dugimodo

168 posts

Master Geek

#1198210 16-Dec-2014 07:23

How does one do that then, I see nowhere to change any silverlight settings.

Never mind, found it. Acceleration is ticked and everything works so no need to troubleshoot, it just needs better than an AMD A4 4000 it seems to play smoothly.

Dugimodo

168 posts

Master Geek

#1206400 31-Dec-2014 11:51

As an update, the PC version is way too resource hungry and uses 50% CPU on my quad core laptop and 100% on the dual core PC that started this thread but I installed the PS3 version and that runs perfectly so I'll just use that.

Inphinity

2780 posts

Uber Geek

#1206412 31-Dec-2014 12:10

Hmm, interesting, had not noticed an issue myself, even our lowly Celeron N2820-based NUC handles Lightbox flawlessly (although CPU usage does get quite high, it doesn't peg at 100% and doesn't skip a beat). Are you trying to multitask while watching, and that's where you're having issues?

Dugimodo

168 posts

Master Geek

#1206545 31-Dec-2014 15:45

Nope it's just doing the one thing, maybe it's an AMD CPU issue of some kind because my intel based machine is fine although it's not a fair test as it has a lot more power to spare.
I also think it's not using the graphics hardware despite everything suggesting it should be.

I have the same issue on both the laptop using AMD graphics and windows 7 and the media PC using Nvidia graphics and windows 10, the only common point between them is both are using an AMD APU.
The quad core one manages but only because of the 2 xtra cores. I really like the Idea of using a NUC, almost bought one several times.

Lenovo

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Inphinity

2780 posts

Uber Geek

#1206589 31-Dec-2014 17:50

Hrmm, curious. Just watched an episode on another PC here, AMD A6 3670-based running Win7, which sat around 35% CPU throughout (the NUC Celeron is usually around 65%). Is there really that big a jump between the A4 and A6 series? Bizarre! Silverlight itself merely states a 1.6GHz CPU requirement, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean that will cope with any specific content.... I agree it's unusual for nothing spec wise to be given or recommended on Lightbox's site, I guess they're going with "If it runs a supported OS & browser it should cope".

dklong

167 posts

Master Geek

#1218690 20-Jan-2015 22:57

I had similar issues with the Silverlight client but in my case my gaming PC had an AMD chip in it as well and it ran fine at full screen.. My Intel Nuc didn't cope so it's not an Itel vs AMD thing. Silverlight is definitely NOT using hardware acceleration in some cases and apart from a tick box that seems to be a suggestion rather than a command, I couldn't find many options to tell why.
The IPad client worked fine and the newer PS3 client seems to work well... But it is very much a lucky dip whether a media PC will work... Even if it runs H.264 and full 1080p Blurays just fine!

Good luck finding a solution and if you do... Let us know! :-)

Cheers

michaelmurfy

meow
13243 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1218721 20-Jan-2015 23:40

All my PC's including an iMac from 2009 play it fine for me. Just checking, have you got updated graphics drivers installed?

Also my laptop (Alienware 14) plays it fine on its Intel GPU.

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MindstormNZ1972

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1218724 20-Jan-2015 23:46

My Notebook uses a i3 and was having poor performance also when plugged into my TV at 1920x1080. Lowered to 1600x900 and now plays perfect.

Wade

2225 posts

Uber Geek

#1218828 21-Jan-2015 09:16

Back at the beta trial stage I was running lightbox fine on my Atom Z2760 tablet

Dugimodo

168 posts

Master Geek

#1218982 21-Jan-2015 12:13

The machine in question is running windows 10 technical preview so it could be a driver issue but I assumed not as the windows 7 laptop with a faster clocked CPU with twice as many cores often hits 50% which would tend to indicate a similar load. Curiously enough I fired it up to show a friend the issues last night and it played perfectly (still occasionally spiking to 100% CPU just much more briefly). Perhaps background windows tasks + high CPU load + weak CPU is all it is.

The A4-400 is the weakest AMD desktop APU around @ 3Ghz and although it calls itself a dual core I believe it has some shared resources meaning it performs like a dual core in some tasks more than others. Still many of you are using what I'd consider low powered devices successfully.

I did install a GTX 760 that I had available after initial testing using just the onboard graphics was so poor. I didn't think it really helped much and the APU should have enough graphics horsepower but maybe it has. Perhaps rather than intel vs AMD on the CPU front it's more of a case of what graphics hardware you have and how well it supports silverlights hardware acceleration.

In any case I consider my issue solved by using the PS3, it's much better than the PC and gives it another job to do besides playing Blu-ray :)

mdav056

607 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#1234365 10-Feb-2015 22:02

Ah. Lightbox runs fine on my generic I5 PB PC, but I was unable even to login on my ASUS VivoTab also running win 8.1 (it just went round and round for ever). The lightbox help people said that this ASUS tablet was not supported, that Lightbox runs on PCs (it IS a PC), and to clear cookies. Clearing cookies did nothing to help. Reading the Geekzone discussions, I focused on Silverlight, uninstalled it, reinstalled the latest version, and lo! everything works.

So, not being able to login at all may suggest updating Silverlight, if anyone gets that problem.

Runs well without stuttering, but no audio; I'll work on that!

gml