Shifter vs Client: Rendering Speed?

[PeteCress]

Comparing PlaceShifter to Client.

Two shows, both played on a small Atom-powered laptop over WiFi.

The Outlaw Jose Wales (4:3, 640x480 @29.97fps)
The Assasination Of Abraham Lincoln (16:9 1090i @29.97 fps)

Playing "Lincoln" on Client... just doesn't work. All herkey-jerkey.

Ok, play it on Shifter: now it's smooth, but filling in the pixel detail is noticibly slow: we start out with a screen full of rectangles maybe 1/8" on a side. If the action is quiescent enough they resolve into full detail within 1-3 seconds. If not, we get varying degrees of rectangles depending on the speed of the action.

All as expected, I'd guess: Shifter is custom-encoding on-the-fly to adapt to lower bandwidth and saving the little Atom processor from itself.

But the puzzler comes when I try Jose Wales both ways.

On Client, we get full resolution - no pixelation at all, even when scenes are very dynamic.

OTOH, with Shifter, we get what seems tb about the same amount of pixelation/intolerance for much scene change.

Yet, viewing with VLC Media Player, we get seemingly identical results as with Client: good detail, no pixelation.

I'm guessing that's attributable to 640x480 vs 1080i.

But why doesn't PlaceShifter render the lower rez show as seamlessly as Client and VLC Media Player do?

Finally, is it my imagination; or is VLC Media Player rendering both equally well?

Not a lot of practical significance to me - having all 3 products available - but maybe I'll learn something from the explaination.