Major Player Updates

Rai will post more later, but for now I’ll hit the highlights. We’ve upgraded our player to the latest jwplayer and added a new skin. We’ve also updated the page scripts. You should see performance improvements when clicking buttons and switching between sub and dub version. Speaking of buttons, you’ll notice the side buttons have been simplified. The sd/hd button is now in the player only.*

For our guest and registered users we’ve switched to an ad-supported model using the Hulu player. Guest and registered users will see hulu ads. Premium subscribers will still be ad free.

Lastly, we’ve temporarily disabled the popout player. We need to do a bit more work to integrate the changes and the hulu player. It’ll be back very soon.

Watch for Rai’s blog post and Spazzysam is going to post some instructions with screenshots.

As always, give us your comments and thoughts on the changes. Post problem reports here.

Playing around with the most recent IS ep. with these new changes, I noticed a drastic performance difference between the new and old versions.

The new version playback is way more choppy than the old version in fullscreen, particularly noticable during fast paced transitions and movements.

I have to concur with Coffee. There is moderate to severe judder with any “camera” movement. Pans, tilts, zooms all have judder. Movement within the frame is smooth, but all other movement has the judder. This is similiar to the judder issue DirecTV had with the 4:3 shows (Eyeshield 21, Gintama and You’re Under Arrest!) last August. I believe they corrected it by changing their encoding to 480p on those episodes. I don’t know what may need to be done in this case, however.

Edit: This seems to be a problem with just about every series.

Thanks for the feedback guys! Is it only in Full Screen mode that the playback is jittery, or does it also happen when the player is standard mode?

The Poff and I will take a look into this.
There are a few adjustments we will be making to the player to optimize performance for users of all shapes and sizes- it’s like picking out a mattress for the guest bedroom- not too firm, not too smushy…

Just to be clear, you’re both watching as Premium users and the playback jitter is in the jwplayer from our site? We’re not talking the Hulu player. Correct?

spazzysam wrote:

Two words, spazzy… Select Comfort. :laugh:
(Though I couldn’t even afford that for the Master bedroom, much less the guest bed!)

spazzysam wrote:

It happens in standard mode as well, but less noticable than fullscreen since it’s so small on my screen.

akpoff wrote:

Correct (for me at least).
It’s the Premium jwplayer playback, haven’t signed out to test the Hulu playback yet, but I’ll get to that later today.

spazzysam wrote:

I have to admit that I did not check it in standard mode. Let me “wring it out” a bit more and get back to you…

akpoff wrote:

That is correct, akpoff. I am talking about the jwplayer, not the Hulu player. I’ll do a bit more testing and get back to you-probably late tonight or tomorrow. I’ll have to leave for work soon.

Lol! Inphy and I were joking about that a few minutes ago!

Let us know a few more of the details The Poff inquired about above and we’ll see if we can dial it from a 7 to a 9.

spazzysam wrote:

[quote]Lol! Inphy and I were joking about that a few minutes ago!

Let us know a few more of the details The Poff inquired about above and we’ll see if we can dial it from a 7 to a 9.[/quote]

OK, I’ll do my “Top Gear does jwplayer” imitation… :wink:

…but we need to get it all the way to 11!

Just so you know spazzy, I am having no problems. It is actually working better for me than the previous player. Now, it doesn’t stutter when I pause and then continue. I’m using Opera, so maybe it works well with this browser.
Slick

Just an update. I’ve tried the new version of the player on Mozilla, IE and Opera. No problems with either except a little pause during the opening of Infinite Stratos on Mozilla. It was a very small stutter, and it could have been my wireless.
Slick

I also have to agree with everyone on the choppiness issue with the jwplayer and IE as my browser. It is noticeable for me no matter how it is viewed, and it seems like the framerate isn’t constant.

On a positive note, the load times are fantastic, especially when skipping through the video. To me, this has doubled from the old player, which was quite a bit slower. Kudos on that part. :wink:

Newshawk wrote:

[quote]OK, I’ll do my “Top Gear does jwplayer” imitation… :wink:

…but we need to get it all the way to 11![/quote]

Some say The Stig streams Canaan on his iPhone while running the Nurburgring Nordshleife.

  • It’s just a rumor. :stuck_out_tongue:

sbitzer wrote:

Did you just spill soda all over your keyboard right there? Better get that checked out. :slight_smile:

Our tech team is looking into the jittering problems you guys mentioned, sam will update you all when they find out more about it.

You guys are all crazy! The old player worked fine for me… and the new one does too… so far anyway. I haven’t experimented with it much.

Rai wrote:

[quote]sbitzer wrote:

Did you just spill soda all over your keyboard right there? Better get that checked out. :slight_smile: [/quote]

You, my friend, need to do more research!

EDIT - I can’t believe I spelled it wrong! It’s ‘Nordschleife’

"and you have a Ferrari Enzo"
HA! NOBODY HAS AN ENZO!!!

sbitzer wrote:

I have to agree there.
The player, in and of itself, is huge improvement over the old version in terms of load times, both the player loading up for a page refreash/page transition and in skipping around forward and back.

It’s just the framerate jitter that concerns me, since it’s a big drop in quality from the previous version as far as playback goes.

I’m also using IE, since I didn’t mention it before.

The Coffee God wrote:

[quote]sbitzer wrote:

I have to agree there.
The player, in and of itself, is huge improvement over the old version in terms of load times, both the player loading up for a page refreash/page transition and in skipping around forward and back.

It’s just the framerate jitter that concerns me, since it’s a big drop in quality from the previous version as far as playback goes.

I’m also using IE, since I didn’t mention it before.[/quote]

Reading back on my comment, I guess the word ‘halved’ would’ve worked better than ‘doubled’ :laugh: but it looks like you still understood, so no harm done!

I’ve just enabled the “over” feature for the progress bar on the player, so it will disappear after a bit. Was supposed to already been enabled, but it must’ve slipped through the cracks. Anyway, enjoy!