Hardware requirements for PC based player

[JimmyBarnes]

Hope this is the right forum..

What are the ideal specs (CPU, RAM, graphics etc. ) for a PC to show Xvid and DivX movies (latest encodes), and normal bought DVDs?

What are the ideal specs for the above if Blu-Ray movies are added?

What are the minimum specs in both cases, and what probs can be expected from using this?

thanx

JB

[Sharktooth]

the cheapest and cooler modern CPU you can find (you dont want noisy fans to spin up while watching movies), a mainboard with one of these videocards and a 5.1 or 7.1 audio chip integrated, 512MBs of ram, a cheap hard drive or a USB pendrive (to install the OS), DVD drive, linux with MythTV media center.
for blu-rays, you may want to install windows (XP at least, and that may require some more RAM... 1GB would be enough) and a blu-ray software player with DXVA support (powerdvd?).
otherwise, if your going to play blu-ray backups the first approach still works.
a wireless mouse is highly recomended, otherwise you can build your own remote control (google for lirc/winlirc).

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally Posted by Sharktooth

the cheapest and cooler modern CPU you can find (you dont want noisy fans to spin up while watching movies), a mainboard with one of these videocards and a 5.1 or 7.1 audio chip integrated, 512MBs of ram, a cheap hard drive or a USB pendrive (to install the OS), DVD drive, linux with MythTV media center.

Not into Linux, so does this videocard list also apply to WinXP?

Is Graphics PU more important than CPU?

[Doom9]

For WinXP you can add recent ATI GFX cards (the 3xxx and 4xxx series) to the list.. they support full video acceleration of high def content. If you do a lot of high def video conversion, the DGxyzDecNv might be interesting and those only work on the nVidia cards though. But for playback, ATI cards are perfectly fine and perhaps one day somebody will write an accelerated decoder filter for the ATI cards as well.
If you do not care about high def, something like an eee Box will be more than enough for you though. You might also be able to find similar but completely noiseless machines based on the Atom architecture.

[CruNcher]

If you want to have Menu support for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD the only solution is Windows on Linux you currently can do everything like Windows even GPU playback via VDPAU or VA-API but no Menus (yet)
for a ultra low energy consuming solution (not as low as a SAP but much lower then a normal HTPC) i would build a Via Nano system with a low energy Nvidia Card with VP3 Logic
Ati denied to open their UVD1/2 Logic recently officialy so no chance for Open Source Developers to gain access to it (no DGAvcdecATI), that was a major error of AMD/ATI you only get support as a Licensed 3rd Party Developer.

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally Posted by Doom9

For WinXP you can add recent ATI GFX cards (the 3xxx and 4xxx series) to the list.. they support full video acceleration of high def content. If you do a lot of high def video conversion, the DGxyzDecNv might be interesting and those only work on the nVidia cards though. But for playback, ATI cards are perfectly fine and perhaps one day somebody will write an accelerated decoder filter for the ATI cards as well.
If you do not care about high def, something like an eee Box will be more than enough for you though. You might also be able to find similar but completely noiseless machines based on the Atom architecture.

For playback only, how would a GeForce 6200 AGP card (which I already have) do?

Does the type of graphics card you have affect encoding? (I would have though it only affected playback)

thanx
JB

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally Posted by CruNcher

If you want to have Menu support for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD the only solution is Windows on Linux you currently can do everything like Windows even GPU playback via VDPAU or VA-API but no Menus (yet)
for a ultra low energy consuming solution (not as low as a SAP but much lower then a normal HTPC) i would build a Via Nano system with a low energy Nvidia Card with VP3 Logic
Ati denied to open their UVD1/2 Logic recently officialy so no chance for Open Source Developers to gain access to it (no DGAvcdecATI), that was a major error of AMD/ATI you only get support as a Licensed 3rd Party Developer.

I'm afraid these comments are completely over my head

JB

[Sharktooth]

Originally Posted by JimmyBarnes

For playback only, how would a GeForce 6200 AGP card (which I already have) do?

Does the type of graphics card you have affect encoding? (I would have though it only affected playback)

thanx
JB

geforce 6200 does NOT support accelerated h.264 decoding.

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally Posted by Sharktooth

geforce 6200 does NOT support accelerated h.264 decoding.

Would this have any effect on encodes made using Xvid 1.1.3 as it only appears to offer H.263?

JB

[tetsuo55]

JimmyBarnes,

For xvid and DVD all you need is a 1ghz CPU.
I'm not sure if the videocard you mentioned supports hardware deinterlacing which you would need with DVD's

Now if you play xvid videos with a resolution higher than that of DVD these specs are no longer good enough.

Also if you are considering using h264 or HD formats like HDDVD. Bluray and AVCHD. You will need a faster CPU and a netter videocard.

The most difficult video test samples require a Core2Duo @ 3.0ghz to not drop any frames in full software mode(note this is based on a rather old test, before all the optimisations where added to ffmpeg)

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally Posted by tetsuo55

JimmyBarnes,

For xvid and DVD all you need is a 1ghz CPU.

That is what I started with. As time as gone by and especially since recordable DVD became cheap, my rips have increased in resolution and bitrate and I found I had to increase the CPU speed (currently AthlonXP 2400+ 2 GHz) to get smooth playback. Until now though I have not given much attention to graphics which until recently was GeForce4 MX440. Also using 512MB, XPProSP3. Still getting playback glitches (random brief pauses), even after switching to GeForce 6200.

Now if you play xvid videos with a resolution higher than that of DVD these specs are no longer good enough.

The most difficult video test samples require a Core2Duo @ 3.0ghz to not drop any frames in full software mode(note this is based on a rather old test, before all the optimisations where added to ffmpeg)

Is there a link to these samples? And what makes them "difficult"?

Would like to build a new player, but when is enough enough..?

JB

[tetsuox]

My brother is using an Intel Core2Duo E4400@stock 2GHz and has never had any problem decoding any 1080p h.264 content using ffdshow. Tetsuo55 did state that the test was done with relatively old decoder builds. On windows, ffdshow is now significantly faster, and DivX has also recently released a free h.264 decoder that is faster still. My budget CPU of choice right now is the E7200/E7300.

A graphics card upgrade is not necessary at all if you're on a budget imo. However if you're going to get a new CPU, you're likely going to need a motherboard upgrade as well, and it makes no sense to continue with the AGP bus. You can get one of the ATi cards mentioned previously in this thread or (I've switched camps recently so I'm biased) any of the nVidia 8xxx+ series (with a few exceptions).

For RAM on Xp, I think 2GB is optimal, for Vista 4GB (x64 version imo).

You can reuse your old hard disks, but your power supply may have to be upgraded.

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally Posted by tetsuox

A graphics card upgrade is not necessary at all if you're on a budget imo. However if you're going to get a new CPU, you're likely going to need a motherboard upgrade as well, and it makes no sense to continue with the AGP bus. You can get one of the ATi cards mentioned previously in this thread or (I've switched camps recently so I'm biased) any of the nVidia 8xxx+ series (with a few exceptions).

It would be "nice" if I could fix my prob by simply upgrading graphics rather than the whole PC. I'm really only into playing XviD rips up to 720x304 res.

It's wierd, I get the random brief pauses problem with some XviD rips as small as 640x272 (tho many are 720x..) - maybe a software prob..??

JB

[tetsuo55]

Originally Posted by JimmyBarnes

It would be "nice" if I could fix my prob by simply upgrading graphics rather than the whole PC. I'm really only into playing XviD rips up to 720x304 res.

It's wierd, I get the random brief pauses problem with some XviD rips as small as 640x272 (tho many are 720x..) - maybe a software prob..??

JB

Maybe you should check your windows/players

MediaPlayerClassic Home-Cinema with either xvid or ffdshow should be enough to get stutterfree playback (and soon jitterfree too!)

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally Posted by tetsuo55

Maybe you should check your windows/players

Using Zoom Player 5.02 WMV.

MediaPlayerClassic Home-Cinema with either xvid or ffdshow should be enough to get stutterfree playback (and soon jitterfree too!)

Doesn't stutter, just pauses for < 100 ms to maybe ~300 ms at random intervals (2-20 min) in some AVIs (Xvid).

Thought: Is there any alternative to VobSub 2.23 for displaying subs, as all the movies which have the prob have subs?

JB

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally Posted by JimmyBarnes

Using Zoom Player 5.02 WMV.

Doesn't stutter, just pauses for < 100 ms to maybe ~300 ms at random intervals (2-20 min) in some AVIs (Xvid).

Thought: Is there any alternative to VobSub 2.23 for displaying subs, as all the movies which have the prob have subs?

JB

I think I found the problem: VobSub 2.23. When replaced with VSfilter 2.39, the problem no longer occurs (checked 3 AVIs at least 30 min where the problem was previously quite acute). I was even able to return to my old Asus V9180 SE Rev.1.00 AGP card (GeForce4 MX 440, AGP 8x, 64 MB) => smooth playback with no random brief pauses.

To anyone else to whom this fix might be of use: If you put unrar.dll on the path (say in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\), then VStrip is able to decode subs in idx/rar format as well as idx/sub, just as VobSub 2.23 can.

HTH