Minimum System to play DVD's

[doan]

I'm looking for a cheap laptop soley for watching DVD's via network off my server. What's the minimum config that will play a DVD. The slowest hardware I have around to test on is a P2-333 and it seems to do OK. I'm looking at a 200mhz used laptop, but I'm not sure if it will handle playing mpeg-2 video over the lan.

Any thoughts?

 

[Zepper]

Generally you will need at least 500MHz processor unless your video has DVD acceleration hardware support, and that's a desktop processor. I had an AMD k6-2 450 system and it was barely acceptable on full software DVD playpack - I used a Sigma (Hollywood +) DVD decoder on it and that worked fine. I think the minimum CPU that Sigma recommended for use with the Hollywood + was 233MHz with MMX.
. I think a 200 would be too slow even with acceleration hardware, which I doubt that that generation of laptop would have had DVD acceleration hardware in the video logic anyway. I would say that if a DVD-ROM drive was an available factory option for the laptop model, then it would likely play DVDs OK.

.bh.

 

[doan]

Thanks Zepper, I guess I'll keep looking for a faster laptop.

 

[Pariah]

One way to tell if a laptop is fast enough for DVD's, is if it has a DVD drive built in. Sounds kind of obvious, but if the laptop is really old and has no DVD drive, it probably isn't fast enough. In the early days of laptop DVD playback, no laptops had CPU's fast enough for software DVD playback, so they had some form of onboard hardware acceleration. By the time laptop CPU's were fast enough for DVD playback, DVD players were pretty common in laptops.

 

[Gadzookie]

if you want something just to watch dvds why not a portable dvd player liek this ?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp...yId=pcmcat13900050018&id=1099394245802