Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Random Thoughts: Youtube Channel App on Wii

Yes, I still use my Wii on some occasions.  Usually, it's just to browse the web or use the Youtube app and its hapless streaming and buffering insanity.  I remember long ago before the html5 video days that Youtube videos used to stream at 240p reliably on the Internet Channel but those days are long gone.  While the Youtube app plays videos at crisp visual detail, the buffering insanity means you'll barely ever get to watch anything.

Last night, I had an idea to improve my usage experience of this horrible app.  This is to play only videos with smaller resolution when encoded on Youtube.  You'll spot video preview images that sport a letterbox-like black borders versus those that have the full screen when you search for videos.  I think that these imply the video source uploaded to Youtube was not ideal and the server encoding ended up producing odd borders.  Less video image information per packet, should mean better buffering, hopefully.  I tried it on one video and got reasonable streaming performance.  I will look for other videos and see if this theory works.

As a funny extra random thought.  Try browsing the Nintendo Miiverse using the Internet Channel and laugh at Nintendo.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Playing Sims 3 on Origin Offline

I'll keep this brief.  I lost my internet connectivity all morning and thought it was a good time to test Origin and Sims 3.  All that I've seen online suggests that Sims 3 will only work online due to Origin's insistence of logging in when running the game.  So when I ran Origin, it gave me a login window and a note that Origin was not available (due to the internet).  I logged in anyway, and then Origin went to my library but also setting the client to Offline mode.  I was able to launch Sims 3 and Mass Effect 2 like this without issues.

A small note on Mass Effect... you will not be able to connect to the Cerberus Network.  You will get an error message but you'll be able to load your save just fine.