Minimum for DVD playback

[PAugustin]

Hi,

I have the opportunity to buy an internal DVD player for laptop for a very low price.
Do you think the PII 400 272Mb RAM Win2k laptop I have will be enough for DVD playback ????

Thanks

[Gurm]

Just barely, if you have it tweaked up properly and aren't expecting anything beyond stereo.

PowerDVD recommends at least P3-450, but being honest, even moderate P2's ought to be fine. OUGHT TO being the operative word. There are minimalist players out there, too. No need to feel compelled to use PowerDVD or WinDVD when there are lightweight players.

- Gurm

[agallag]

I had a PIII-600 laptop that had no problems with playback. The 400 should be able to handle it, as long as nothing else is running. The only way to know for sure is to try it, since there are many other factors other than CPU speed that will affect performance. ie. graphics card, mem speed, etc.

[PAugustin]

Yes stereo will be enough otherwise the digital out will be used so the computer won't bother with decoding sound.
I knew PowerDVD would not be good, the 5 is so heavy you need a racing computer to run it.
So a player like Media Player Classic could do the trick ?
I'll check about fine tuning the computer but I guess it is as fast as it can be.

Edit:
the CPU is a PII not a PIII !
RAM is working at 66Mhz and the graphic card is a 2d only 2.5Mb chipset (screen at 800*600)

[rugger]

It will probably be enough CPU power, as long as the video card is powerful enough.

But it is touch and go considering it is a laptop and not a desktop computer.

[PAugustin]

I guess I'll give it a go, I can get the DVD player for 20 euros !

[Byock]

I run DVD movies on a P2 266. But then I have a PCMCIA MPEG2 decoder card.

[rugger]

well, for 20 euros ... go for it, at worst, you can still use it for data dvds.

[VJ]

I have run DVD's on a PII-450 with 384 MB RAM, a Matrox G200 and a Creative AWE32 (only stereo).

Playback was good enough; but I do mention that the system was composed of selected components (proper drivers, ...): it currently runs XP !


Jörg

[PAugustin]

Well my laptop used to run XP but I switched to 2K last time I re-installed the system.
VJ what player did you use on that system ?

[Paddy]

I have played DVDs on a PII 350.

[PAugustin]

OK guys, I should get the drive this week. I'll let you know how it works

[K6-III]

Even better, try the free trial versions of the DVD playback software before buying anything...

[JaG]

Fine idea. Your system is limit but 20 EUR are not too much for an interesting try like this one.

I started playing dvd videos with PII 333 and G400 first using Xing DVD player, later changing to cinemaster sw (both still with Win98SE in 1999). Videos were smooth and worked fine although
G400 didn't have hw motion compensation. Generally it was hard work for cpu and graphics in that time. :-)

A PII 400 notebook like yours I configured with WinNT4 and WinDVD 2000. It worked fine, too. With integrated ATi Rage (and hw motion compensation) the videos appeared not completely but at least almost smooth (enough to enjoy it).

In 1999 it was generally told, that with hardware graphics features like motion comensation and / or inverse cosinus transformation dvd video playback should be possible with at least PII 266 based (desktop) systems. Without hw motion compensation or ict in graphics units it should have been a PII 400.

So it's limit but interesting.

Most important at all is that your nb graphics is at least capable to handle the in those time big dvd video overlay (720x576 - pal - most of the time anamorphic). If not you would only get a slide show... Nevertheless it's an interesting try.