Running Blu-ray on T-60P with FireGL 5250

The price of external Blu-ray players has dropped, which brings me to ask a question. I've already checked with Lenovo support in GA, but they couldn't answer this one.
Can the FireGL 5250 with 256MB of memory support Blu-ray playback? I've run the Cyberlink BD Advisor, which returned the answer of having an ATI X1600 as a minium for playback. Are the 5250 and X1600 similar in specs? Running the 5250 appears not to have all the HW features to run picture in picture, but right now I'm interested in basic playback. The T60p shows great HD TV playback with a USB HD tuner (720p?) but I want to give BR a try.
Any help on this would be appreciated. Sure, I could go and buy the drive, and return it if not up to specs, but before doing that, I'd want an opinion or two or three.
Thanks!!

 

Your USB HD Tuner is delivering broadcast grade ATSC. This is 720P or 1080i video in a M2TS with MPEG2 Compression (<20mbps). This is comparatively easy to decode compared to Blu-Ray (up to 50mbps h264 or VC-1).

I would think your FireGL 5250 probably supports h264/VC-1 decoding, but due to it's age I'm not sure (my T40 with a Radeon 7500 certainly didn't).

Your best bet is to download and try some Blu-Ray class video. The closest thing I know is Elephants Dream (get the 815MB version). This is a full 1080P h264 rendered video with AC3 audio. It doesn't quite match Blu-Ray bitrates but it gets very close. If you can play this back in VLC with low CPU usage (under 40%), then your GPU is taking the load. If your CPU usage is much higher than that then your CPU is having to do all of the decoding.

h264 and VC-1 decoding just came to integrated chipsets (e.g. the Intel x4500, Radeon HD3200, and Geforce 9400M), but it has been available on discrete chipsets (at least on desktops) for a couple years (e.g. my Geforce 7600GT from mid 2006). If your card supports these codecs, you will be fine. If not, you will have trouble.

Also, according to this table, the Fire GL 5250 is equivalent to the Radeon x1700.

 

Thanks for posting your in-depth reply. You've said a lot, some of which I did and didn't know. With the FireGL on par with a X1700, surprisingly the CyberLink BD Advisor doesn't list the X1700 as a minimal hardware requirement; it lists the X1600 and X1800, omitting the X1700. The BD Advisor also says the FireGL doesn't support the secondary video codecs h264 and VC-1 decoding, which support picture-in-picture and other functions.
I also tried to d/l "Elephants Dream," but it has been moved/unavailable at this time. I would have liked to try it see the playback.
All in all, I'll have to purchase in the future a laptop that supports Blu-ray, or just watch it on the big drive-in screen at home.
Thanks again.