So I’m genuinly worried over the claimed .avi support advertised under the supported formats for playback of FC’s MediaPlayer…Don’t get me wrong it does indeed playback such streams / containers however there’s a HUUUGE turnaround in doing so…
Take for example a ~3GB BlueRay rip of a movie in an .mkv container with an xVid video stream (720p) and an ac3 (5.1) audio stream. In any circumstances in a wifi setup this particular movie will playback nicely enough yielding approximately a 500kB/sec (4MBps) sustained throughput over a home wireless network. That should be easily achievable even on a low-grade 54Mbps (g) and hence will playback with no problems whatsoever…
Now take the same rip, the same video and audio streams and put them in an .avi container…Well strangely enough this will now cause a ~5x fold increase in the throughput traffic / requirement and will result in a ~16MBps sustained traffic over the same network. The above will OBVIOUSLY not playback nicely over a 54MBps wifi network, not even a 130MBps one…
Obvious question that arises in considering the scenarios above…how is the huge difference between the two technicaly justified? Leaving the technicalities aside, is FC’s MediaPlayer ever going to be able to handle .avi containers in a more efficient way?