minimum requirements to play 1080p

[Kumo]

i'm trying to build a CHEAP universal-video player,something like a simple mediacenter.i'm wondering how would be a minimum configuration to play fluently every kind of video,including 1080p(h264,vc1 or whatever).what are minimum cpu and graphic card required to play everything smoothly?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hard to say...

GPU acceleration has gotten very good recently with MPC - Home Cinema's special decoder.

If you want to rely on that, then any processor (maybe a low end E2xxx series processor), an 8500/8600gt or 2400/2600 pro for the video card, and at least 1 gb of ram - preferably 2.

That should handle just about everything. Get a stronger CPU if you're paranoid. E6750 should handle _everything_ in pure software, worst case.

~MiSfit

[Shinigami-Sama]

Hard to say...

GPU acceleration has gotten very good recently with MPC - Home Cinema's special decoder.

If you want to rely on that, then any processor (maybe a low end E2xxx series processor), an 8500/8600gt or 2400/2600 pro for the video card, and at least 1 gb of ram - preferably 2.

That should handle just about everything. Get a stronger CPU if you're paranoid. E6750 should handle _everything_ in pure software, worst case.

~MiSfit

the thing about that is that theres still a lot of old broken spec streams
and not everyone is willing/can recode them to be compliant

so I'd fall back with a mid end dual core and maybe coreavc, its pretty cheap still
and that should be able to handle any of the non-acceleratable encodes

of course its looking like DXVA2 might be capable under XP soon if ATI/nvidia enable it in their drivers, but I wouldn't count on it till more info is released

[Blue_MiSfit]

Interesting.

I would imagine that most of the broken spec streams "floating around" aren't as demanding as (for example) at 25mbps H.264 stream from a BluRay disc.

In any case, CoreAVC was able to handle 10-12 mbps H.264 just fine on my 3800+ X2, so any Core 2 Duo should handle things pretty well.

~Misfit

[Shinigami-Sama]

Interesting.

I would imagine that most of the broken spec streams "floating around" aren't as demanding as (for example) at 25mbps H.264 stream from a BluRay disc.

In any case, CoreAVC was able to handle 10-12 mbps H.264 just fine on my 3800+ X2, so any Core 2 Duo should handle things pretty well.

~Misfit

according to some talk in the coreavc forum a month or two ago some BDs had out of range motion vectors so thats something to watch out for as well

[Blue_MiSfit]

Interesting. Hopefully the DXVA decoders will improve a bit :)

~MiSfit

[Shinigami-Sama]

Interesting. Hopefully the DXVA decoders will improve a bit :)

~MiSfit

well they can only decode what the UVD can handle
and they can't handle broken spec all that well
as they shouldn't have to...

[Kumo]

is linux better(lighter for hardware) for playing video?would it help on a slow hardware?

[Shinigami-Sama]

is linux better(lighter for hardware) for playing video?would it help on a slow hardware?

not really
AVC just takes A LOT of resources to decode
a decent dualcore will be able to do it

and depending on the pricing of it it might be worth the wait for those tri-cores
they should be able to handle it easy

[Jackie]

Hi,

how do I know if DXVA is really working, can I see that anywhere? I have a Geforce 8800GT.

Thanks

[Shinigami-Sama]

Hi,

how do I know if DXVA is really working, can I see that anywhere? I have a Geforce 8800GT.

Thanks

open up the task manager (ctrl+shift+esc)
if its not using a bunch of your CPU and is using like 0-6% then you're on DXVA

[Inventive Software]

There may be a log file called dxva.log around somewhere. On my system, it's C:\dxva.log...

[Shinigami-Sama]

There may be a log file called dxva.log around somewhere. On my system, it's C:\dxva.log...

I notice that WPM creates that automagicly when ever you open a wmv file in current directory

that'd explain the 0 in it

[Inventive Software]

If DXVA is enabled and working, it'll either say "Index control class freed", or 0. If it's not working properly, there'll be a ton of errors. ;)

[Jackie]

Hi,

I don't have a dxva.log file, and my CPU usage doesn't change, no matter if I set Direct X Accelleration in WMP11 or not. I have the latest Forceware driver installed, how can I examine what's going wrong? Is there a diagnostic tool?

[Shinigami-Sama]

Hi,

I don't have a dxva.log file, and my CPU usage doesn't change, no matter if I set Direct X Accelleration in WMP11 or not. I have the latest Forceware driver installed, how can I examine what's going wrong? Is there a diagnostic tool?

then you don't have acceleration
or you can't accellerate that file