This entry was posted on Saturday, May 26th, 2007 at 21:13 and is filed under Analysis & Commentary, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Saturday, May 26, 2007
You know, it’s a bit of a laugh to remember Steve Jobs introducing iTunes for Windows with his smug banner of “the best thing ever made for Windows” line. Truth was, iTunes had it’s share of problems from the start and never really has lived up to that banner Jobs raised so high years ago. Now with the added capability of video playing, things have just become worse.
Ever since iTunes incorporated video playing, my speedy Windows XP Professional box, equipped with a Pentium 4 3.00 GHz CPU, accompanied with 4.0 GB of DDR RAM, and an ATI video card with 128 MB of video RAM, has struggled to play anything. If I play Windows Media files, DiVX movies, or Xvid stuff, no problem. My box doesn’t even bat an eye. But the minute I try using iTunes, or the heart of its movie playing, QuickTime, bring on the slug. Kinda like that slug in the old Apple add against the Pentium way back in the day. Irony. Select a video Podcast and that alone “freezes” up iTunes for a good ten seconds. Click the play button and, well, get a coffee. Once the video starts rolling, you’ll be lucky to get fluid frames. Breaking it out into it’s own window does help immensely, I’ve noticed, though. Still, though, it’s just not worth even watching in the end.
I don’t quite get the problem. Maybe it’s a Microsoft thing like with Java and Redmond is doing something to prevent good video playing for QuickTime. Maybe it’s an Apple thing and it just can’t code a good video player for Windows. I don’t know. I do know my Macs have no problem with the same files on either a PPC or Intel-based Mac. Why can’t we spread the same love to the Windows box?
I’m sure I’m missing something and there is a tweak to fix this annoying issue, but fact is fact, out of the box, iTunes sucks when it comes to playing videos on Windows and it’s something that needs to be fixed if Apple doesn’t want to ignore a market share tens of times larger than its own operating system market.
May 27th, 2007 at 12:43
You know my newset desktop, a Dell XPS with 4 gigs of RAM, Pentium Dual Core, and dual nVidia cards (SLI) plays iTunes videos just fine.
But my wife’s brand new HP laptop can not play worth anything. The videos are choppy. The laptop has 2 gigs of RAM, an 128M nVidia graphics card, and a 64bit AMD processor. I even tried doing the new Vista “boost” option and plugged a 1 gig stick of memory and turned that option on. Still no luck. Playing iTunes videos on the laptop is useless.
May 28th, 2007 at 15:57
Well, Quicktime has been available for a very long time on Windows and is required to play videos on many web site but has always been a complete piece of junk. It’s ugly with its MacOS style UI which looks dreadful on Windows, it doesn’t respect any of the Windows UI standard (it’s maximise button doesn’t even maximize the window!), it’s slugish, its browser plugin causes your browser to freeze for ages whenenver it loads and crashes the browser every so often, etc. Probably one of the most hated piece of software on Windows. I have to say that I don’t quite understand why Apple has never invested some time and money in making Quicktime a good media player in Windows as it surely would improve Apple’s image a lot among Windows uers.
With iTunes, they’ve made a much better job but iTunes still doesn’t work half as well on Windows as it does on MacOS X. Its first version was so sluggish that it was completely unsusable on the average PC. The current version is OK but the cover flow feature is still unusably slow if you’ve got dozens of albums and do not have a beast of a PC. I haven’t tried to play videos with it though. I suppose that Apple will improve video playback on Windows now that they’ve got a video store but I doubt that they’ll try to make iTunes a great piece of software. They’ll probably make it just good enough as they’ve always done so far with their Windows software and stop there.
June 25th, 2007 at 16:59
Garbage.
It works extremely well in Windows and in Mac’s operating system. I use both on different occasions and have never encountered a problem. I am not a techie type, but a 70 year old computer user of twenty years.
July 16th, 2007 at 20:49
iTunes video playback is not compatible with NVIDIA at the moment. Both Apple and NVIDIA are working to fix this issue, but for the time being there is nothing that can be done.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:50
Yeah, it´s a terrible problem… NVidia users can employ VLC media player to work around the glitch. Drag the podcats from Itunes to desktop and use the Open With option.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:27
I have to agree with the op. iTunes in it’s current phase sucks. I shouldn’t have to have a top-of-the-line pc to watch video content on my computer. This is ridiculous garbage of software to release. I try to watch a downloaded t.v. show and itunes freezes. my pc is twice as fast as my ibook g4, but it somehow is twice as slow when it comes to itunes. despicable!
December 14th, 2007 at 7:39
Glad to hear that someone has figured out it is an NVidia related issue. This is the first time I have seen that info but it’s a good clue.
December 14th, 2007 at 8:28
I agree completely… iTunes videos on Windows machines is a painful experience. However, it’s a two-way street… if you’ve ever tried to use the Mac version of Windows Media Player, you know what I mean.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:41
Glad I found this conversation.
I have a top of the range PC with nVIDIA card and have exactly the same problem. Movies play fine on new classic IPOD but try playing them on the PC at a decent size and it is painful, juddery and out of synch. nVIDIA make great video cards but afraid this just puts me off getting the same. I just want everything to work OK and playing videos purchase through I tunes is not a lot ot ask.
So instead, I plug my IPod into the TV.
Apples support has been grim and nVIDIA a little better, but not resolved this for months!
Cheers
Craig
September 19th, 2010 at 9:19
yo wazzup… i just wanted to say that my opera is freezing when I click on the links… are you using some javascript or something?
September 20th, 2010 at 7:09
Yes, we do use JavaScript in our comments and standard pages. You are the first report of having issues with our site. I would advise you clean your cache, including cookies, and restart your browser and try again.
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