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astralfx · May 1, 2005, 10:37 PM

i am using a mac mini 1.42G with 1GB ram... may i know any better player able to playback HD contents @ full frame rate full quality? or... i must use G5?

Big Mac · May 2, 2005, 12:24 AM

Apple's software appears to require a G5 for HD playback.

Uncle Skeleton · May 2, 2005, 01:15 AM

I went down to the Apple store last week to test exactly that. Their 1.42 mac mini played my full size 720p 3ivx encodes at full framerate (24 fps) using about 90% of the CPU. With 60 fps material I'm confident it would choke, but I haven't actually ever seen true 720p60 material on TV...

But to answer your question, QTPlayer (using the 3ivx codec) is capable of playing HD content @ full frame rate full quality on your machine.

CaptainHaddock · May 2, 2005, 02:52 AM

Note that the really high-definition H.264 movies (1600x900 and up) appear to need dual 1.8 G5s at minimum. The superb quality and compression of H.264 (better than any other format as far as I can tell) requires serious computing power as a tradeoff.

Big Mac · May 2, 2005, 05:47 AM

The question that I have is, if it will require a computer in the thousand dollar plus to fifteen hundred dollar range (at minimum) to play HD-DVDs, how in the world will set-top boxes have the muscle to play them?

angelmb · May 2, 2005, 09:50 AM

I was going to ask the same thing, do you all remember when DVD Playback was done via PCI cards?, could be this the same thing?

http://www.skymicro.com/products.htm

oh well, my computer is not even PCI-X capable.

jasong · May 2, 2005, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

The question that I have is, if it will require a computer in the thousand dollar plus to fifteen hundred dollar range (at minimum) to play HD-DVDs, how in the world will set-top boxes have the muscle to play them?

STBs use specialized hardware that generally only do decoding and playback.

OwlBoy · May 3, 2005, 12:01 AM

Originally Posted by jasong

STBs use specialized hardware that generally only do decoding and playback.

What he said.

Also, computers (including macs) normally have graphics cards in them that support hardware acceleration of MPEG2 (Current DVDs).

In the future we will see this for H.264 since it will end up on next gen DVDs.

-Owl

Big Mac · May 5, 2005, 03:19 AM

Originally Posted by OwlBoy

What he said.

Also, computers (including macs) normally have graphics cards in them that support hardware acceleration of MPEG2 (Current DVDs).

In the future we will see this for H.264 since it will end up on next gen DVDs.

-Owl

I suspected as much. But I assume that we really should not hold out an expectation that Apple will ever use the next generation decode hardware, since Apple has refused to use MPEG 2 decode hardware for quite some time now.

astralfx · May 5, 2005, 04:00 AM

so... meaning that my cutey mini is not able to playback H.246 source @ full quality full framerate? *sob* i really hope that my mini can playback HD source @ full quality full framerate...

Big Mac · May 5, 2005, 04:21 AM

If you meant that in a serious way, then no, it will not. Eug Wanker indicates in this thread that not even an iMac G5 will be able to accomplish that task.