Hardware requirements to play H.264 1080P videos?

[PremiumG]

Here are my specs:
Pentium D 2.8
1 Gig DDR2
7600 GT
playing H.264 1080P off an internal IDE hard disk and the video jumps and is laggy.
Using Windows Media Player Classic

Should I upgrade the processor? Is the H264 codec too demanding?

 

[imported_MadHatter]

Read these:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2886
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2890
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2874

 

[Raider1284]

im pretty sure the cpu is what is slowing you down. It needs the processing power to decode/play the file. The old mac laptops for example couldn't play 1080 output, but the new ones, with the intel processors in them have no problem playing them.

 

[nanaki333]

i played blu ray movies on my bd-rom with an x2 4200 in my HTPC and it jumped between 40-70% cpu utilization. never going above 70 though. .ts streaming files used less.