Hulu on a Zotac Ion (Atom 330 + 9400M) - Why won't it work properly?

[Serra]

I expect the answer to this is that Flash sucks and there's nothing to be done for it, but I thought I would check anyway.

I have an HTPC (specs below) and the problem is that while I can do things like play movies and blu-ray content just fine, I apparently can't watch a friggin 320p stream from Hulu when scaled to full screen at all. I start to see little skips everywhere. Changing the resolution I'm outputting at from 1080p to 800x600 seems to help a bit (NOTE: NOT FULLY), but still not a smooth experience. I know the Atom isn't a high-powered processor, but 2x 1.6GHz cores w/ hyperthreading and a 9400m should be good enough for a low quality stream.

Relevant Specs:
- Intel Atom 330 (2x 1.6GHz cores, HT)
- 2GB DDR2-800 (running at whatever the FSB of the atoms is)
- 9400m graphics chip (on-board)
- OS: Somewhat slimmed 32-bit Vista Business edition

I know that Hulu can be highly network dependent, but I have tested this extensively over the last few days and compared it against my laptop... and the output difference is repeatable time and time again.

Any thoughts? I currently don't have a home TV package, so I really would like to make this work.

Edit: CPU usage does tend to spike during playback, sometimes up to 100%. I assume that Flash is non-optimized for GPU so this is all software rendered and some scenes simply choke it... but other sites that offer Flash content at the same resolution (or higher) work just fine, so I don't know what to say.

[ecidious]

I expect the answer to this is that Flash sucks and there's nothing to be done for it, but I thought I would check anyway.



That pretty much sums it up. Until Adobe gets off their fat lazy asses and adds gpu acceleration, the decoding will be entirely CPU based. An e5200 with a 9400 based board would have been a much better option for the time being.

One thing to check is that you don't have the active-x or whatever version of flash installed, that might clear up the low res hulu stream a bit, as would not using the fullscreen option.

Hopefully another codec comes along and slaughters flash soon.

[stevecs]

Yeah, this was the reason why I went w/ the 775 socket version of the zotac board as the atom procs don't have the power to do flash content.