There are many great reasons to use a Mac. Easy access to propriatory Windows software isn’t one of them. Watching sports online usually include one of a few technologies:
- Flash: Works fine on a Mac
- Sopcast: There is a native Mac client these days
- Acestream: No native client available
As more and more events are being streamed using acestream (free as in beer for windows), being able to take part in these streams would be great. And using bootcamp and reboot isn’t really a viable option…
I was able to follow instructions on this web page to wrap Ace Player HD (itself wrapping VLC) using Winebottler to get it all to work. All the information is in the thread, but as it is spanning over many months, it isn’t quite clear what hints work and what hints did not. Below is a little summary of what I did to make it work on Mac OS X 10.9.1:
Follow this instruction post: http://forum.wiziwig.eu/threads/87110-MAC-OSX-Acestream-2-1-5-3?p=1664117#post1664117
Winetricks were critical.
What you need:
- Ace_Stream_Media (Ace Player HD 2.1.9 (VLC 2.0.5)) As pointed out in some posts, more recent versions DONT work. Perhaps they will now, but these combos did at least work fine.
- WineBottlerCombo_1.7.11.dmg (post suggest 1.7.9, i used 1.7.11 with no problems)
What you don’t need:
- Registry hacks
Where I got stuck (and how I solve it)
- Streams working fine, but picture is very choppy (a few fps). Fixed by switching to OpenGL in VLC config: http://i42.tinypic.com/20q10ew.jpg
- Engine fails to start with some strange error: Reboot (yes…)
Final notes
When shutting down the app, you also need to exit the engine. You do this by right clicking the little “Windowsy” icon in your Menu bar, and choosing Quit. It will take 20 or so seconds before they all shut down (wine, wineserver processes).
