playing bd/hddvd movies smoothy

[v1rtu0s1ty]

I would like to upgrade to a newer machine next year. Right now, my Athlon 64 3000 is not able to play hddvd movies well. It's slow.

I would like to know if Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz would be enough for playing hddvd/bd movies.

Thanks!

[MeNTaIPaTleNT]

Yes, but it also depends on your graphics card and display.

I would say an 8800 series card would be the lowest I would shoot for...and they are still very good cards. I have an 8800GT which still runs top end games flawlessly and can be found for around $100. I'm not sure what the ATI equivalent is.

Your monitor/TV has to be HDCP compliant.

[Sharktooth]

8800GT is old tech and if he is not interested in games it is completely useless.
an ati HD 4350 costs about 35$ and does the job in an excelent way, including 7.1 audio thru HDMI even without any audio cards installed...

[DJ Bobo]

Well, guess what? you don't need to upgrade your CPU if you're just about HD movies!
You get yourself a decent graphics card and welcome to the blu-ray world! Anything from the ATi Radeon 2400 Pro (except the 2900 XT) will do the job.

And for trailers and rips, just make sure you purchase CoreAVC, it will fully exploit your CPU!

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Sorry guys, been very busy the past few days. DJ Bodo, what do you think abot CoreAVC for linux, does it work pretty well? My video card, 6600GT, is jurassic but does a great job in playing 1080i mythtv recordings. So I guess if I really want to play those intensive video bitrate movies, I need a video card at least 8800GT or greater and a real beefy cpu.

So looks like if using CoreAVC, my current cpu as mentioned by DJ is enough but card isn't. What if not using CoreAVC solution, is getting a beefy cpu and a video card the only way to play them smoothly?

[Doom9]

Actually, with MPC HC, you really don't need CPU horsepower.. I haven't tried MOV (who need's Apple's crappy s***), but high def content generally is no problem.. it doesn't have to be a Blu-ray or HD DVD disc. I'd get a very recent low-end GFX Card from ATI or nVidia, couple it with the latest driver and MPC HC (and of course for HD-DVD/Blu-ray PowerDVD3, ArcSoft TMT or the latest WinDVD - PowerDVD 8 doesn't play HDDVD without file hacks). So, with less than a $100 investment you'll be fully HD capable.
However, if you're still running AGP, finding a suitable card is going to be tricky and you might have to upgrade anyway.. but unless you need lots and lots of CPU power (e.g. for x264 encoding of high def content), I'd go for a simple Core2Duo chip (or a Phenom X3).. those offer more than enough horsepower.

[DJ Bobo]

@ v1rtu0s1ty
For starters, I don't know of a version of CoreAVC that would work on Linux (unless you use some kind of windows emulator, but I don't know much about Linux, so, never mind).
You may wanna try it first before you buy it (www.coreavc.com)
As far as the graphics card is concerned, even if you have the old AGP interface, it shouldn't be a problem, you can easily find AGP versions of ATi's Radeon HD3450 for less than 45€ (and then may be you could find MPC HC useful as Doom9 suggested...)
Generally, I would rather go for ATi's cards since they offer more video acceleration features than nVidia (VC-1 for instance is better handled by ATi cards)

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yes, another vote for a Radeon 3xxx series card. These have very complete hardware acceleration that will work in almost all cases.

Do keep in mind that if you've backed up your BluRay discs, you may have issues getting these backups to play correctly using hardware acceleration.

To avoid this, make sure you follow DXVA specs when chosing x264 settings ;)

~MiSfit

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Actually, with MPC HC, you really don't need CPU horsepower.. I haven't tried MOV (who need's Apple's crappy s***), but high def content generally is no problem.. it doesn't have to be a Blu-ray or HD DVD disc. I'd get a very recent low-end GFX Card from ATI or nVidia, couple it with the latest driver and MPC HC (and of course for HD-DVD/Blu-ray PowerDVD3, ArcSoft TMT or the latest WinDVD - PowerDVD 8 doesn't play HDDVD without file hacks). So, with less than a $100 investment you'll be fully HD capable.
However, if you're still running AGP, finding a suitable card is going to be tricky and you might have to upgrade anyway.. but unless you need lots and lots of CPU power (e.g. for x264 encoding of high def content), I'd go for a simple Core2Duo chip (or a Phenom X3).. those offer more than enough horsepower.

Yeah, I remember, my 6600GT is AGP. Looks like I will have to upgrade my mobo as well. :( Time to search for more sidejobs :D

[v1rtu0s1ty]

@ v1rtu0s1ty
For starters, I don't know of a version of CoreAVC that would work on Linux (unless you use some kind of windows emulator, but I don't know much about Linux, so, never mind).
You may wanna try it first before you buy it (www.coreavc.com)
As far as the graphics card is concerned, even if you have the old AGP interface, it shouldn't be a problem, you can easily find AGP versions of ATi's Radeon HD3450 for less than 45€ (and then may be you could find MPC HC useful as Doom9 suggested...)
Generally, I would rather go for ATi's cards since they offer more video acceleration features than nVidia (VC-1 for instance is better handled by ATi cards)

Ok. I'm going to search about MPC HC. It's the first time I've heard it. :D

[ghostonline]

VC-1 is supported on NV current IGP/ lower end of video cards (any cores that have vp3). with updated driver(support up to L5.1)+ MPC-HC, nv cards can decode more h264 files in dxva than ati's.

as far as right now, if you want dxva in h264, nv card is a better choice.

othervise, just pick a quad and coreavc, then you don't have to worry about playing.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Right. If you want to do the whole system, a C2Q and a PCIe card is a good bet. If you just want a quick GPU drop-in replacement for AGP, you can get by with a Radeon 3xxx.

~MiSfit

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Yep, I've finally decided. I will just assemble a new machine next year with at least quad core and hopefully 8g of memory. I really need to beef it up so I can also install other application like virtualization, etc. I will also be using this machine to study new stuff. Found out the other day that I'll have work until 4Q of 2009. :(

But yeah, I'll make sure that the mobo has PCIe slots. :)

Thanks guys!

[DJ Bobo]

Well, you never mentionned virtualization and stuff before, in which case you'd really need a quad core and a lot of RAM.
Lucky you, you may be one of the very first people to enjoy those new AMD Phenom II processors with 3GHz and 8MB cache, which will come out next year *envy*