Will the Samsung R530 with Intel GMA X4500 graphicsd output full HD?

Hi

I've been trying to get an answer to this question, but keep getting different ones

I'm thinking of buying a Samsung R530 laptop. It has an HD screen (although not 1080p) and an HDMI out port

What I'd like to know is will this laptop play 1080p mkv files on my Full HD TV?

It has an Intel GMA X4500 Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0 deely and a Mobile Intel GL40 Express chipset

According to Wikipedia it won't:

But on the Intel site matrix it will support mpeg-2 and x264 (mkv) files at 1080p, but that's with a G43 or G41 chipset, no mention of GL40

Although I've used lots of abbreviations, I'm pretty new to this, so go gently

Cheers

 

The chip on Intel GL40 is called Intel GMA 4500m, and its not that bad really.
If you install Splash Media Player, i was able to view the 1080p Avatar trailer with DXVA and no stutter whatsoever.
And if im not mistaken the latest Boxee beta also support DXVA on Intel GMA chips now.
Just try downloading the latest Intel graphics driver from Intel website first.

Important:
Intel DXVA only works in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

 

Cheers, DEagleson

I don't really know what those things you mentioned are. But I reckon you're telling me that, with a bit of tweaking, this laptop will play 1080p files

Playing 1080p through HDMI is one of two reasons why I need a new laptop, so thanks for answering

I'd appreciate any other feedback, if only just to confirm what the man has said

Thanks again

 

dayman,

The short answer is yes, it can. But it will need the correct configurations, unless you have Windows 7 and love using the built in Windows Media Player 12. With other players. the correct config can be confusing to do (it was for me). In an attempt to figure out how this works I did some research, and have started documented my findings in a post. You can find part 1 here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=462970

 

Thanks man, appreciate it

It has Win 7 so I should be sweet?

I had a look at your guide, but it's a bit bamboozling for me. I'll have a good read of it tomorrow before I buy this thing. I'm trying to do this on the cheap (under £400), so I'm guessing there may be a few issues. But if they can be worked out I'm happy to work them out. Unless it's a Revo, in which case it's too hard for me

 

It is a tricky answer, with Windows 7 you can play 1080p mkv out the the box only if you use Windows Media Player 12. If you like that, cool. A lot of ppeople don't for it's poor feature set. But with other media players you will get very choppy results unless you tweak them. The reasoning behind this is kind of complicated, hence the very long winded post.

 

Thanks a lot, again

May I ask what it is about WMP12 you don't like? I don't really know what a feature set is

At the moment I always favour VLC over WMP because I can't seem to get video to 'fit' my TV using WMP. I'd like my films to fit my TV screen 'out of the box', if possible

 

Answer: While its capable of decoding H.264 "out of the box" you dont have any subtitle support.
And i really like my subtitles. xD

Both Splash Media Player and Boxee enables DXVA by default if the hardware supports it.

And i usually dont recommend using VLC for anything in high definition as it only supports cpu decoding, and that can be a killer on low spec systems like the Intel Celeron notebook my brother owns.
(Link in signature, with pictures if you click on the blog link there)

And if your looking for a nettop to use as a media center pc, i can recommend the ASRock Ion 330.
Its bigger than the Acer Aspire Revo, but has a DVD or Bluray optical drive and easy access for hardware upgrades.
Mines running Windows 7 with latest Nvidia drivers and Boxee beta.
When XBMC's DXVA matures i will probably switch from Boxee.

 

For me, my favorite is Keyboard shortcuts. When I watch movies on my laptop I like to be able to jump forwards and backwards N seconds, turn volume up and down, pause and replay etc without having to target my mouse cursor. Almost any media player let you customize the keys, but not WMP.

DEagleson is right, if you use VLC it doesn't matter what video card you have. VLC just doesn't use any hardware acceleration at the moment. So it all depends on how fast your CPU is, and my guess is it wouldn't be able play the highest quality 1080p mkv. Put it this way, I get choppiness on some of my 1080 H.264 when I use GOMPlayer software decoder on my 2.4Ghz quad-core desktop. That's why I researched the topic in the first place. So I don't like the chance of the T4300 on the Samsung very much.

First time I heard of Splash, so I download the free version today. The interface looks pretty good but no WMV support at all! That makes it a lot less desirable. It also appears to not support keyboard shortcut (at least no option in Settings) or it's a pass for me.

It seems to me that Splash is designed to be supplement to WMP instead of replacing it outright.

I agree with you re VLC, however their team announced that DXVA will be supported in v1.1 (current 1.0.5). They may be able to turn this around yet.