Saturday, May 11, 2013

How to watch Netflix (Watch Instantly) in Linux - a great resource for How To's from Wikia

How to watch Netflix (Watch Instantly) in Linux - a great resource for How To's from Wikia:

'via Blog this'

Systems that work reasonably wellEdit

  • System: Intel Celeron G530@2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 32 bit.  DH61CR mobo.  Onboard video.
    • Using Wine as per above article
    • Installed IceWM and am NOT using any form of unity, which robs cycles from the graphics.  This nearly eliminated tearing and frame skipping.
    • Turned on Option AccelMethod sna in xorg.conf.
    • Results: Only a wee bit of skipping and tearing, smoother than virtualized. (Tried that too.)
  • System: Intel 2.53GHZ Core 2 Duo, 512 MB Ram alloted to the VM. Integrated Video Card Intel GMA 4500MHD/Solid State HD
    • Settings: Recommend switching your audio driver from pulseaudio to ALSA so you can get synchronous audio, No 3D support installed on VM
    • Guest OS: Windows 7
    • Results: Video is smooth playback is fine
  • System: Intel i7 2GHz/4GB Ram
    • Settings: 1.2GB RAM alloted, Activated Direct3D support for Guest, Installed Guest Additions
    • Guest OS: Windows XP
    • Results: Watching Instantly in Full Screen, not choppy at all.
  • System: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz
    • Settings: Allocated 2GB Memory. 128Mb video memory
    • Results: Works great
  • System: Intel Pentium E6500 Dual Core @ 2.93 GHz/128MB ATI Fire GL V3400 PCI-EXPRESS GDDR3 DVI
    • Settings: default
    • Guest OS: Running Windows XP on Ubuntu 10.04.
    • Results: Works great
    • Statistical Results: Bitrate 64/1050 (a/v) with frame 20/10 (rendered/dropped) or alternatively bitrate 64/235 (a/v) and frame 25/5.
  • Systems: Intel Core 2 dual core, 2.133GHz/nVidai GeForce 6800
    • Settings: 512GB RAM Allocated, 2 CPUs, enabled PAE/NX, enabled VT-x/AMD-V, enabled Nested Paging, 128MB video RAM, enabled 2D and 3D acceleration, Guest additions installed without DirextX
    • Guest OS: Windows XP
    • Results: Works OK
    • Statistical results:
  • System: amd athlon II x2 250 3ghz dual core, onboard/integrated ATI radeon 3000, 256MB memory dedicated to video, 1920x1080 resolution, 4GB ram
    • Settings: default, vbox guest additions installed but no directx support, sp3, ie8, switched from pulseaudio to alsa to fix audio sync
    • Guest OS: Windows XP (under ubuntu 11.04)
    • Results: Works great full screen/HD
  • System: Intel Core i7 980X 4.27GHz (Hex core), 2x GTX 480 SLI (3GB VRAM), 12GB DDR3 1866MHz
    • Settings: 4GB RAM allocated, 4 CPUs, PAE/NX, VT-x/AMD-V, Nested Paging, 128MB VRAM +2D,3D acceleration, guest additions.
    • Guest OS: Windows XP SP3
    • Results: Playback is perfect in all scenarios
  • System: Intel i5-3570k, GeForce 8800 GT, 16GB DDR3
    • Settings: 8GB RAM allocated, 4 CPUs, IO APIC, PAE/NX, , VT-x/AMD-V, Nested Paging, 256 VRAM, 2D accelleration, guest additions.
    • Left PulseAudio, but changed audio controller to ICH AC97 -- had to download and install drivers from RealTek
    • Guest OS: Windows 7 64-Bit
    • Results: Great so far, need to try with less CPU and RAM dedicated to VM. Switching from having VM present Intel HD Audio to ICH AC97 made it go from crawling to looking great. Previously went in super-slow motion at any resolution, now fine at fullscreen 1920x1200. Even works in seamless mode. No sync issues.

Tips

  • Increasing alloted memory from 512MB to 1GB doesn't seem to make any difference
  • Enabling Direct3D acceleration in VirtualBox with Guess Additions will enable video acceleration in Silverlight and allow for HD playback. Using Guess Additions and WineD3D together might break video playback
  • Decreasing VirtualBox's window size improves playback
  • Running Silverlight seems to play the same in Firefox and Internet Explorer
  • Playing at a lower Bitrate improves playback
  • Running Windows XP SP3 and Google Chrome Netflix WebApp in kiosk mode improves presentability and performance

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