Minimum hardware requirements for 1080i HDTV

[autoboy]

Originally Posted by Shield

True, to some extent. With native h.264, sure. With matroksa files that apparently don't have a H.264 header or whatever, it falls back on the cpu. At least that's what I've gathered; does this make sense?

There is a problem with the haali media spitter and the cyberlink h.264 decoders where it will not accelerate .mkv files. Unfortunately, Haali is the only setup that can handle .mkv, and cyberlink is the only h.264 decoder that supports hardware acceleration. I was able to get it working by renaming the files to .avi. Hd-DVDs and BluRay plays fine with this setup because they are not .mkv

In this situation a fast dual core is required for .mkv 1080p and this is why many are overbuilding their HTPCs. Personally I could give a damn whether my HTPC can handle HD-DVDs. I would rather pop them into my standalone HD-DVD player and forget worrying about this crap. I can't wait for the HD extender to turn my HT into a collection of appliances, rather than one big annoyance.

[malore]

Originally Posted by Shield

Every time I see you or Nielm post I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity - I've seen your names a million times in the log / config files! Like just now I thought Oooh, is this Malore, as in "Malore's Menu's?" I KNOW that dude!

Thanks, you'll give me a big head.

[Shield]

Originally Posted by autoboy

There is a problem with the haali media spitter and the cyberlink h.264 decoders where it will not accelerate .mkv files. Unfortunately, Haali is the only setup that can handle .mkv, and cyberlink is the only h.264 decoder that supports hardware acceleration. I was able to get it working by renaming the files to .avi. Hd-DVDs and BluRay plays fine with this setup because they are not .mkv

In this situation a fast dual core is required for .mkv 1080p and this is why many are overbuilding their HTPCs. Personally I could give a damn whether my HTPC can handle HD-DVDs. I would rather pop them into my standalone HD-DVD player and forget worrying about this crap. I can't wait for the HD extender to turn my HT into a collection of appliances, rather than one big annoyance.

True, but since there's no commercially available HD-DVD burners, what about the HD stuff you download off the Internet? Many of us play downloaded material from Sage itself. If you want to spend the money on hardware as I have, you will be rewarded with liquid smooth playback of even 1080p content. I don't have to rename files, burn DVD's or anything. Of course I have it going to 3 different TV's already so I won't need an extender - I went with the 4x2 active matrix switch plus component over Cat5 route (with extra RF remotes). I didn't have the patience to wait on an extender, and refuse to have a noisy pc in the home theater or bedroom. Works great by the way.

[morfinx]

I have no problems playing even H.264 1080p content with my lowly rig (shown in sig) IIRC, at around 30-40% CPU utilization.

[Shield]

An Operton is no slouch.

[Fuzzy]

I am running content at 1080p (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4) using PureVideo on my Athlon XP 3000+ (underclocked to 1.6GHz) and GeForce 7600 GS. Seems to play fine, as long as I'm in Overlay mode. In VMR9, it starts to get a stutter now and then. Not sure the source of the problem, but Overlay works fine, so no real reason to mess with it for now.

Haven't tried H.264 yet, as I don't have an HDDVD drive, but may look into that in the future. I'm sure I'll need to upgrade at that point.