high def movies?

im not sure if this is the right forum for this question, but is it possible to download and watch high def movies on my laptop? does it depend on your video card? i have a vostro 1500 with the 8600 gt. sorry if this seems retarded

 

Laptops with dedicated video cards can do it.

 

Eh....what? Are you sure or not?

 

I've never had experiences with integrated video cards. All of my notebooks had dedicated cards, and they were able to play high def movies. So, anyone with an integrated graphics card, please tell us if you can or not.

 

No, I meant you contradicted yourself. First you said Not sure, then you said I;m sure

 

Ah, I see your point. My apologies. Post edited,

 

Haha there you go.

 

so can you download high def movies from torrent sites?

 

Yup. Vuze (now integrated with Azureus) is a good source of high-def (and legal) videos.

 

As far as i know, most IGP's can't run HD movies, but some, like the geforce 6150 and radeon x1250 can

 

It depends on the Player, codec/filter and file. A x264 .mkv doesn't benifit from GPU, hence all you need is a good CPU and a nice codec. I use Mediaplayer Classic+Coreavc. That allows me to view 1080p movies at about 1,4-1,5GHz (downlclocked).

 

I agree with the poster above: get CoreAVC codec and all will be fine, als long as the movies are x264 encoded.

 

Exactly movies are by far depended more on CPU than GPU.

i think i saw somewhere
98%CPU 2% or less GPU

 

pure vid hd helps

 

or avivo hd

 

I think you also need a 2+ ghz dual core and over a gig of RAM for most high def codecs.
x264 benefits from the 8xxx series nVidia cards with the nVidia PureVideo software and a compatible video player (I use Purevideo and PowerDVD HD edition).

 

It is very CPU dependant.

On my old AMD Athlon 2600+ machine, HD video would stutter because CPU usage was exceeding what the rig could handle. It has 1GB of ram and a radeon 9800PRO.

I would say you need at least a newer Core 2 duo for smooth playback and it is less GPU dependant to playback high def video.

But yes, you can download and playback high def video, just make sure you have a strong CPU and at least 1GB of ram for a trouble free experience.

 

any1 have any links to HD movies/videos so i can test out my new laptop?

 

Microsofts Windows Media Player HD Showcase

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

just samples of hd stuff, runs great on my laptop looks and sounds absolutely fantastic

 

There are no real major movie HD download sites, are there? No one that I know of offers HD yet, not even iTunes or Amazon.

Nothing legal anyway

In general when building my desktop I was told I needed an HDCP card and HDCP monitor, both of which I obtained. Not sure of the details though. A dedicated Nvidia card certainly helps. Dell in fact makes you purchase one of the dedicated cards I think, before you can add the Blu Ray player option in the configuration.

 

yea im hoping that hd movies will be available for download soon

 

Most likely, its illegal. If the movie you're downloading is copyrighted content that the publisher has stated is not free, and you have not purchased it, its illegal to download and watch it.

 

Does that count trailers?

 

No it doesn't.

Download some 1080p trailers from Apple.com (you can save them to your hard drive with Quicktime Alternative), it's the ultimate can-my-computer-run-HD-test. Two trailers that I've found especially taxing are Pan's Labyrinth and The Fountain.

 

Nah... The Quickime H.264 codec is really bad. The same trailer is smooth in VLC (not CoerAVC) while choppy in QT without GPU acceleration.

I meant downloading trailers from torrent sites.

 

Sometimes it could actually be illegal if it is some sort of exclusive trailer, shouldn't be a problem with getting trailers through torrents. And there are a few legal torrent sites for movies, but I'm not sure if any of them are HD or not. Plus their names escape me at the moment.

 

You are right Quicktime is pretty bad compared to other HD codecs. But that's exactly why I like it to perform benchmarks: if your computer can runs those Quicktime 1080p trailers smoothly without dropping frames, it can handle any other HD video you throw at it.

Plus image quality wise, those Quicktime trailers are better than TV and HD-DVD / Blu-ray rips IMO. They don't suffer from compression as much.

 

When I have my GPU at normal clocks (I keep it underclocked for heat purposes) they run smooth in quicktime. Playing the same in MPC+coreavc or vlc will also run smooth, but at lower clocks (usually) and without GPU. But the smartest is using the same titles that Anandtech uses when they test HD playback.