Watching HD-DVDs with a 5920 at 1.5GHz?

I've been using my wife's old Mac Powerbook for a few years to browse the web and read email in the living room but I've recently started looking into getting a new PC notebook. Somewhere along the line I started looking into Asus and have been following the latest models. The F3SV-B1 looks like a pretty good machine but when I was finally ready to buy one the dealer was temporarily out of stock.

So I went to Best Buy and saw a customer checking out an Acer 5920 and asking some pretty intelligent questions so I started talking with him and he got me interested in that model. The BestBuy AS 5920-6313 is cheaper than the Asus F3SV-B1 by about $300 (and actually more than that because I'd be buying an extra 1G of RAM if I buy the Asus F3) but it has the faster 8600M GT, rather than F3SV's 8600M GS. But the Acer has a T5250 1.5G rather than the T7500 2.2G processor. The LCD display is really much higher res on the Asus. I don't need the hi-res but it still might make fonts look better when I set the fonts to be bigger in the Display control panel.

But the selling point for me for the Acer 5920 might be the HD-DVD drive and the HDMI port on the Acer. Reading this forum I am unclear whether the HD-DVD drive is fast enough and the processor is fast enough to watch an HD-DVD movie without glitches. Is it? If so that'd be pretty cool because I'd want to use it in the living room with our 1080P HDTV sometimes. Netflix.

Considering that decent stand-alone HD-DVD players will probably be down to the $200-300 level by Christmas should I be considering the Acer?

 

if it didn't handle HD-DVD movies they wouldn't advertise it 1080p playback... it's fine for that and I bought one just for that reason and HD TV

 

Yup it is fast enough.. just DO NOT upgrade the video drivers if you decide to get it.. I did a 3rd party video driver upgrade which hosed my HD playback capability ..

I too was in your shoes.. was planning on getting an ASUS but this beat it in price/performance category ..

 

klas - that's good news. How many HD-DVDs have you tried with it and did you get any glitches at all?

ginzero - thanks for the warning. Apparently you didn't generate a restore disk?
Occh. Can you figure out a way to get back to the HD playback capable driver or are you going to live without it?

 

You simply do a system restore to factory default, using a recovery image on the secondary hard disk partition. It works flawlessly, and the notebook is as good as new. All the factory default drivers are installed.

 

How large is the secondary hard disk partition? Is it large enough to make the notebook into a Vista and XP computer? Eventually I might find that I want to also have XP on the notebook and I'm wondering how I would do it.

 

Core activity while watching HD-DVD is about at 65-80% on each core.

C2D 1.5ghz is good enough You can also thank the 8600GT for this as well

 

What I'm trying to learn is if anyone has seen any glitches when using the 5920 to watch an HD-DVD movie via the HDMI port. For me one of the major selling points of this notebook would be that I could forgo buying a dedicated HD-DVD player in the near future. There are other manufacturers with the Santa Rosa platform, C2D, 8600M GT, etc in the approximate price range.

Of course when/if HD-DVD eventually gets down to the $149 price I'd probably just buy one to set next to the TV to integrate it into the home entertainment setup and get rid of the long HDMI cable that I'll have to run across the rug from the laptop to the TV (or maybe not because I'd still want to occasionally play some games on it), but in the meantime will the 5920 play an HD-DVD well?

I'm talking about glitches where if Outlook goes to routinely check mail or some app does a quick thing in the background while I have a movie running will the video or sound out the HDMI port drop out for a half second? If I use the computer to check IMDB while I'm watching an HD-DVD will it hang? That type of stuff?

So far the answer from you guys is that theoretically I will have no problems. How much real world experience do we have with this thing and HD-DVD disks.

 

watched King Kong last night on my 46" 1080p TV and there were no glitches. I had other apps running on background.

 

Klas, thank you. That was what I wanted to hear!

I think I'll drive over to Best Buy and take another look at it.

 

HD-DVD playback is fine, but i am having different issue though, which is 1080i HD TV playback, it's a bit choppy. I hope it's just drivers. will keep you posted.

 

Another question occurs to me and is pretty basic:

The T5250 1.5G processor is going to be slower than an Asus T7500 2.2G -- but by a significant amount? Is this going to be make the computer feel slower? A 2.2/1.5 ratio (and I know there's other architecture and bus speed differences too) is a pretty big ratio. Does a T7500 really feel faster in opening apps, loading web pages, and things other than the frame rates of games (which have a lot to do with the graphics card)?

Right now my main computer is a 2.2G P4 and I think it feels sluggish because there are so many background processes running these days - plus it's been three years since I've reinstalled XP Pro and I've loaded a lot of different things on the computer. With a dual core I suspect even slower processors are going to feel faster.

 

the Pentium 4s are very slow compared to the C2Duos. 1.5 ghz is definately alot slower than the 2.2ghz one, and the 7500 has a 4mb cache, not 2mb, and an 800mhz FSB and not a 667mhz one. In reality though, the 1.5ghz is still pretty fast for most things, but you'll see it slow down more when you have several applications running than you would with the T7500.

The reason you won't have a problem with HD-DVD playback is actually the 8600M GT, which assists the CPU in decoding HD, which is vital in a laptop like th 5920G where the CPU just can't cut it by itself.

 

One more very basic question about the T5250 running at 1.5G vs a T7500 at 2.2GHz.

I believe the T7500 architecture is better on its own than the T5250 architecture, and then there is the 2.2/1.5 ratio of faster clock speed so the T7500 is obviously faster. But is it noticably faster for things like opening apps? loading web pages? and general Vista eye candy? I know the 8600M GT will help out with the graphics when I compared to a 8600M GS so that's encouraging.

Currently I am using a 2.2G P4 that is three or four years old and XP Pro seems really sluggish at times. I figure for two reasons 1) it's been at least two years since a clean install of everything and I load lots of stuff, 2) I have background firewall, virus checking, and spyware processes running along with other stuff on this old CPU. I am hoping that with C2D, even though it is only T5250, will feel really speedy running all the extra background processes.

If I spend more on a computer with a T7500 will I notice it to be a significantly faster computer or will those speed improvements be in areas that are not really noticable - except for things like frame rates in games or length of time processing large photoshop files (which I don't do)?

 

A 2.2ghz P4 is an old, very slow processor by today's standards.

I have, in the house, an older P4 2.53ghz desktop system built in 2001, and my current laptop is a 1.83ghz T2400 Core Duo (which won't be quite as fast as the more recent T5600 Core 2 Duo). The laptop beats the pants off the desktop for daily use, it's noticably faster and more responsive, especially when any multi-tasking is going on. Never mind games, neither system is used for that.

 

Sorry for posting the follow-up speed comparison question twice. I didn't realize that there was a page 2 of this thread and didn't see my first posting.

So I've come to the opinion that the T5250 will feel fast enough compared to what I currently have (based on the C2D handling all the background processes that have been slowing down my P4) and that the extra speed of a T7500 might not even be noticable on most of the stuff I do. Even with the very occasional gaming I might do on it, the faster 8600M GT will be helpful in making up the difference between a computer with a slower 8600M GS but a faster T7500 with the larger cache.

I will be following the issue of whether the processor is on a ZIF connector as it would be excellent to be able to drop in a faster compatible processor when they get dirt cheap in a while. I can do that type of stuff.

My real issue is does it make sense for me to buy this model over faster processor models to get the HD-DVD player, when in a while (probably before Christmas) HD-DVD stand-alone players will be cheaper? Doing HD-DVD from a notebook will have some extra costs the way I currently have my AV setup. I will need a long HDMI cable to get from the notebook to the HDTV and I will need a long optical audio out cable from the HDTV to the AV receiver (both of those cables are not cheap) - unless I buy a new AV receiver with HDMI inputs and those are only now getting down to a reasonable price.

Anybody know of a santa rosa notebook that has a faster T7500 AND a 8600M GT in the $1200 price range? I have not seen one.

and

klas, not sure what you mean by 1080i HD TV problem.

 

I've tried playing and recording HDTV (1080i & 720p) while watching HD-DVD and it wasn't an issue for CPU, however, I am using Acer Arcade to play HD-DVD and I have some weird issue, where if I try to fast forward the movie and resume play sound gets all messed up. Not sure what's the issue here yet. Anyone else using Acer Arcade?

 

Just to update here:

When playing HD-DVD using Acer Arcade and using pause or fast forward it cripples HD-DVD playback. Also, it would occasionally crash the system.

I've tried PowerDVD Ultra and that seem to be non issue.

By accident I lunched Media Center while watching HD-DVD in PowerDVD which caused HD-DVD playback to stutter Closing Media Center didn't help the stuttering to go away, so I had to restart PowerDVD

Btw, make sure you update intel inf drivers, it will allow you to wake up on USB.