Recommendations for a laptop with 1080p playback

Hey guys,

I'm in the market for a new Asus laptop and I have need some recommendations. I'm looking for a lightweight and fast enough laptop to support 1080p file playback. I plan to hook up the laptop to an external HDTV a lot to play 1080p files.

I found this one on amazon, Amazon.com: ASUS UL80Vt-A1 14-Inch Thin and Light Black Laptop (11.5 Hours of Battery Life): Computer & Accessories. Would it be fast enough to play 1080p files without any lag?

Thanks for any help!

 

just about everything except a netbook will play back 1080p files, so long as they're encoded properly. The intel GMA 4500HD - the IGP used with the core2duo chips can do it, so can most radeon IGPs (anything 3000 or newer). All nvidia IGPs can do it since, damn, forever.

For example, my $350 walmart ACER (yeah, *sigh*) will play back bluray with 20% cpu usage.

But, playback depends a lot on proper encoding. The ul80vt can do it using either of its two graphics chips, if the file is encoded properly.

 

Really? I hooked up my brother's laptop he bought over the summer to the TV and the 1080p file lagged really bad. He bought this one:
Amazon.com: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life): Computer & Accessories

Also the 1080p file it played was encoded fine. It played very well on my friend's ps3.

 

1080P flash, or was this from an external BR drive with the UL30?

 

This was off an external harddrive.

 

External drives are terrible for streaming HD media from. Try it locally and see if there's a difference. It was night and day for USB vs SATA for a 20+GB HD movie..

 

Sorry, I forgot I did play it off the local drive.

 

Not all the players are capable of using the GPU acceleration. For example I tried running a 1080p movie on my laptop with BSPlayer and it took %45 CPU power. I tried the same movie with Windows Media Player 12 and the CPU usage was around %15.


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@Ardent: Oh ok. That's disappointing, I thought I was onto something

@ramgen: Windows 7 has some decent GPU accelerated stuff built in but MKVs still posed a problem for my friend. I think we ended up getting CoreAVC for him.

Perhaps this link will be of use: 720p-1080p HD Video playback on any netbook even you 10v

 

Generally, windows 7 + haali.su/mkv (mkv splitter) will GPU accelerate everything than can be accelerated.

 

It turns out the player I was using wasn't handling it well for some reason. I used a different player and it works flawlessly now! Thanks for the all the help! Guess I'll go for a cheaper laptop now, haha!

 

So what's the verdict, doctor? What's the cheapest lappy one can get to play 1080p videos either locally or off of an external?

 

Good to hear! What player/setup did you end up using, for future reference when people Google this thread?