Screensaver performance vs. normal channel

Archived
1

Well I just finished up a screensaver I’ve been working on and I’m very disappointed. I developed it as a normal channel so I could start it whenever I wanted without having to go into the main settings and I pretty much just changed “RunUserInterface” to “RunScreensaver” and the performance as a screensaver doesn’t come anywhere near the performance as a normal channel. So I guess my question is, what is the performance penalty of running an application as a screensaver?

-JT

2

I think that probably depends on whatever is running in the background when your screensaver launches. When you developed it as a normal channel, you were giving it full priority as the only thing running on the system. When it runs as a screensaver, however, it’s in a separate thread that doesn’t get the same priority as the main thread. I’ve noticed that having an roAudioPlayer running in the background has a significant impact on the performance of an roImageCanvas. I also noted in another thread that the roOneLineDialog also eats up a lot of CPU when the ShowBusyAnimation is being displayed, so there are any number of things that could be running in the main thread that could hinder the performance of the screensaver thread.

3

I realize that, but I would assume pretty much nothing is running during a “preview” or while the UI is sitting at the top level channel menu. It’s pretty frustrating. I spent a lot of time on this only to find it’s pretty much useless when changed to a screensaver.

-JT

4

“renojim” wrote:
I realize that, but I would assume pretty much nothing is running during a “preview” or while the UI is sitting at the top level channel menu. It’s pretty frustrating. I spent a lot of time on this only to find it’s pretty much useless when changed to a screensaver.

-JTDoesn’t the box do background updating and such(so that even if one never enters the channel store, the box will still silently update channels, and firmware)? I can see the screensaver thread being deliberately throttled so other functions can be prioritized. Although, if that’s correct, I’d agree that if nothing else was happening, the screensaver thread might as well get top priority.