SlingPlayer for Mac Public Beta Review (Page 9 of 9)
Performance
Performance is outstanding and video quality is very, very good. Many of the beta testers have remarked that they feel the quality of video on the Mac is better than that of what they see in Windows. I’ve not been able to fully quantify this statement since I've been running SlingPlayer PC almost exclusively inside Parallels on my MacBook Pro. I’ll just have to take their word for it.
As for CPU performance, on my MacBookPro (1.83 GHz w/1Gig RAM), CPU usage runs about 30% on each core. On my 1GHz flat Panel G4 iMac, SlingPlayer takes up nearly all the CPU cycles. To get consistent video, I have to disable high quality LAN mode. Your mileage may vary as my G4 appears to have some OS problems with excessive CPU usage in general. Sling Media recommends a minimum system of a G3 at 600 MHz. It is highly doubtful that a 600 MHz G3 will give satisfactory performance. Most G4 users with clock speeds of 1 GHz or less have reported performance issues with the video being very slow to appear, screen going blank for a while if anything else is done, etc. It is hoped that as the program gets closer to full release some of these performance issues on older machines will be addressed, but it is entirely possible that they just don’t have the processor power necessary to handle the amount of processing power that SlingPlayer needs.
The program is very stable, and continues to perform well even when the CPU usage is very high. At one point using my MacBook Pro I connected to one Slingbox using SlingPlayer for Mac. I connected to my other Slingbox using the Windows version running under Parallels. At this point, my CPU usage was still not much more than about 70 or 80 percent on each core. So, I started playing some music in iTunes while running a slide show in iPhoto. Finally, my CPU usage was running about 96% consistently on each core. I ran this way for about 15 to 20 minutes, and SlingPlayer for Mac didn't miss a beat. The video stayed rock solid, and the quality was still outstanding.
Additionally, I have tried running two copies of SlingPlayer for Mac simultaneously, and the performance was outstanding as well. Just duplicate your copy of SlingPlayer and you can run multiple instances of the program and connect to multiple Slingboxes simultaneously. I do not believe Windows users can do this.
Finally, I have tested SlingPlayer for Mac in poor LAN conditions. A week or two ago, I was cleaning my garage while watching some college football. My Wi-Fi signal was very weak. SlingPlayer never crashed, and would adjust the frame rate and quality depending on how good the wireless link was at the time. When the speed got too low, the video would freeze, but as soon as the link was good enough again, SlingPlayer for Mac would start showing the video without any issues.
Wishes
One unusual thing Mac users may notice is that if you hit the close button on the player window, the window not only closes, but SlingPlayer actually quits. Most Mac applications allow you to close all Windows but leave the application open.
At present only OS X Tiger (10.4) is supported. Support for Panther (10.3) is supposed to be in place sometime during the public beta.
I hope that eventually, Sling Media will really make use of the capabilities of the Aqua interface in OS-X, which would make the Mac experience even more enjoyable. At present if you minimize SlingPlayer to the OS-X dock the video freezes. Additionally, the Aqua and Quartz environments in OS-X provide opportunities for unique ways to view video. One way would be to actually view the video on the desktop. Other ways would be to view the video in a floating window that could be positioned to any size and anywhere on the screen with a user-set opacity. This would allow you to see content underneath the video window while still viewing the video. Additionally, along with window opacity, Aqua allows you the ability to decide if you want to allow mouse clicks through the semi-transparent window. A video program that does an excellent job of implementing these kinds of features is Video Viewer.
SlingPlayer for Mac also needs to be scriptable. It would then be fairly simple to write a simple AppleScript that would in one click open up SlingPlayerMac, connect to a Slingbox, connect to a device and a favorite channel. It would make the player much more flexible and add another “Mac” capability.
Finally, Sling Media should look at making SlingPlayer for Mac “services” compliant. This would allow OS-X utility programs such as “Grab” to be able to take screen shots right from the Player without having to open Grab as a separate program. The services menu is not used tremendously by every program, but a Mac programs really should be services compliant.
If Sling Media could implement some of these window features, it would make SlingPlayer for Mac a truly flexible and outstanding program.
Conclusion
This first version of SlingPlayer for Mac is a very good first step in Sling Media’s venture into software on a platform other than Windows. As a relatively new Slingbox user (July 2006), I am unaware of the quality or polish of previous versions for Windows, but this Mac client offers everything the current Windows client offers. Yes it needs a little polish, but for now it should satisfy plenty of pent up demand from the Mac community, as well as open up a whole new market of users (and very loyal ones at that) to Sling Media. Hopefully, everyone will agree it was worth the wait.
SlingPlayer for Mac looks to be a great piece of software and will hopefully get better and more Mac-like over time.
Happy Slinging.
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