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."

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[syousef]

It's no more than an ad for a codec.

VLC

[Alcoholic Synonymous]

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?

AVC's Secret Sauce

[evilviper]

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.

Re:And?

[bill_mcgonigle]

$ cat ~/bin/mplayer-slowcpu
#!/bin/sh
mplayer -autosync 30 -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=1:fast:skiploopfilter=all $*