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How To Play HD Video On a Netbook
Barence writes with some news to interest those with netbooks running Windows: "Netbooks aren't famed for their high-definition video playing prowess, but if you've got about $10 and a few minutes going spare, there is a way to enjoy high-definition trailers and videos on your Atom-powered portable. You need three things: a copy of Media Player Classic Home Cinema, CoreCodec's CoreAVC codec, and some HD videos encoded in AVC or h.264 formats. This blog takes you through the process."
Well you could be a traveling businessman, have your work on a netbook, but be able to hook up to the conference room HD projector and show your HD Powerpoint (wonder if MS has made that pitch yet "PowerPoint IN HD!!!!). More likely an HD video preview of a product to customer?
I know you're making a joke, but I have a notebook with a Celeron 900 and integrated graphics, and it handles 1080p video just fine.
I expected some homebrew usb2.0 or somesuch gadget with a hardware decoder ... That would have been slashdot-worthy, but hey, it would have been old news ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Sure or you could just be a cool dude who has some HD videos on his netbook who is visiting a friend who wants to watch a movie. You just happen to have the newest Spiderman on your drive and your netbook sports an hdmi out. You now have a tiny portable media server. How cool is that? I mean your netbook is now not just only for browsing the web. You can actually maybe use it to watch a movie, or several even if the ion's claims to battery life hold up. I mean they are shipping with like 160-320gb hard drives now. Might as well use the space up. Throw a ton of mp3s on it and take it to parties, with batteries that will go for hours. If someone does not at least see some novelty or usefulness in this, then they can just go back to their huge tower that they can't take anywhere. My computer (not a netbook, but a 14" acer) is always with me. There are a million reasons that portable can be highly utilitarian and the smaller the better.
zosxavius photography
VLC on an aspire one will play back 1080p video files without stuttering?
I could maybe understand a story about doing this on an OSS system.
You'll have to wait at least a decade. In the country where Slashdot is operated and hosted, a consortium of about two dozen companies conspires to keep H.264 decoding out of open source software. This consortium is called MPEG-LA.
Actually, that's basically my process.
I save all of my DVDs as iso, move them to an external drive, then play them through my netbook (MSI U210) which has 720p HDMI output.
The image quality is definitely superior to my DVD player hooked up directly to the TV, and better yet, it doesn't force me to watch with a 4" black border if I want to see the subtitles.
...and driving good speakers takes more power. I agree with fm6 that netbooks are undermarketted but the space factor and at least the illusion of long battery life are not compatible with a good speaker system.
Hell, today's artificially-loudened-during-mastering transient-loaded bass-heavy music like this* would shred even laptop cones.
*Fun fact: early in the song, a "hot bowl of grits" is mentioned.
Nothing wrong with using a computer as a cheap but decent upscaler. Lately all I've been using is windows media center and media player for video. The quality is great with the right codecs. Don't know what's up with VLC these days, but it doesn't seem to do scaling very well, or at least the last time I tried. Media player works great though. I mean, all I need is a time bar and some buttons at the bottom when I move the mouse and that satisfies those needs and plays anything I have codecs for. :)
zosxavius photography
The secret to CoreAVC's speed is that it cheats... If you compare the frames output, with any other codec, you'll see that the results are not the same. People have commented on how CoreAVC looks different, sometimes "fuzzy". Again, it's going for lower-precision in exchange for speed. This is particularly galling in the case of H.264/AVC, since it has lossless modes, which are supposed to be bit-exact, not "close enough".
Honestly, if you want slightly faster + blurry video, why don't you just grab a lower-resolution copy of the same video, and save yourself the disk space, and money on the software license.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This works for Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD...
Step 1. Install VLC.
Step 2. Done.
I use Hulu Desktop on my Aspire One under Ubuntu NBR, and there is no magic to it.
How did this shit make the main page?
I have personally experienced 1080p h264 videos not playing in VLC, but playing fine with MPC/CoreAVC. The performance advantage of the later is small, but it is there.
Crystal HD would also be a valid solution.
XBMC supports it. I'm not sure if mplayer itself does yet.
It turned my AppleTV into a 1080p beast. Just need a Mini-PCIe slot.
And if you're reading this and HAVEN'T heard of XBMC you're missing out on hands down the best HTPC front end ever made.
I've used it since '05 and on an original XBox and they've come a long way.
Step 3: grab a cup of coffee, because the standard h264 codec with VLC can't manage 720p on a netbook. (have you even tried the listed video?)
Corecodec is a highly-optimized codec that can squeeze just that extra bit of power out of your CPU. There's even a wrapper for it on Linux.
Should you be (un)lucky enough to have a GMA500 GPU in your netbook, it can take care of the decoding for you by using mplayer-vaapi (custom build)
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Slashdot crashes for a day, then upgrades the user id field to a bigint.
at least, that's what happened when comment id (24 bit unsigned) hit the ceiling.