[MPlayer-users] H.264 and advice on new hardware.

[Gaute Strokkenes]

Hi.

I intend to purchase a new computer soon.  Now, knowing that the h.264
(MPEG-4/AVC) codec has recently become popular I would like to ensure
that my new box will be fast enough to play as high-quality encodes as
possible.

My monitor is an Apple Cinema 23" with a 1920x1200 resolution and a
19:10 aspect ratio.  Basically, it's a 1080p monitor with a few extra
pixels at the top and bottom.  As such it would be nice to make sure
that my new machine can reliably play back 1080p h264 encodes.

The mplayer from CVS from 00:40 GMT on 22 March (today) is unable
(just) to play 720p on my present machine.  This is understandable
since it has a relatively ancient Athlon XP 1800 CPU.  Therefore I
have been googling around in order to find out how much CPU power I
would need in order to play black at various resolution, but I haven't
had any luck so I figured I should ask the question here.

(My new machine is going to be an amd64 box running Linux.  It's going
to have a relatively recent nVidia card, so if those funky h264
hardware acceleration thingies that nVidia is supposed to be toying
with ever become usable under Linux that might be an option, but it's
not something I'd like to rely on at this point.)

-- 
Gaute Strokkenes
I like the IMPUDENT NOSE on that car..  Are you a TEEN-AGER?