Needed laptop speed to play VCDs?

[Big C]

I'm going to be moving to China and I've been thinking about buying a laptop to play VCDs on. How fast of a processor would I need? What about for DIVX movies?
thanks for the tech help.
Big C

 

[Vapour]

You could most likely get by with a 450Mhz system just for playback of Divx. VCD's, which are mpg1 files, could probably play with a bit less.

 

[Erasmus-X]

For the most part, you can watch just about any VCD with a 200 MHz or faster processor. This is only MPEG-1 compression we're talking about here....

 

[bigshooter]

If you want a good Divx performance, I'd go at least 500-600mhz. 450 would be ok for mpeg 2.

 

[JackBurton]

<< If you want a good Divx performance, I'd go at least 500-600mhz. 450 would be ok for mpeg 2. >>


That is a pretty good estimate. However, I'd recommend 800MHz-1GHz if you are doing super high res divx with super high bit rates. But most DivX movie you can get by with a 600MHz system.

 

[Budman]

Enough with the DIVX talk, he was asking about VCD (mpeg-1) .

Like Erasmus-X said almost any laptop will be able to play them easy. unless it's a 486.😉

a low end pentium will play it nicely,so dont worry.

 

[Big C]

Thanks for the help and advice!
Big C

 

[Agamar]

Moving to China eh....man, feel sorry for you...

 

[bigshooter]

Uh... he also said what about Divx movies... jack@ss. 🙂

 

[guzik]

I have laptop with P2/366MHz/192MB RAM and:
- don't have any problem with VCD playback
- to watch DIVX smoothly I have to: 1) close all non-essential applications
2) resize screen to 800x600
3) change color depth to 16-bit
So, I'd say that p2/366 is not much under the speed limit for playback of divx files, probably P3/500+ will do without trouble.
As mentioned by many, for just VCD everything better than 486 should work just fine

 

[guzik]

One more thing:
Hardware in HK stores costs about the same as on Internet here. Actually if you have time and patience, you can find some coupon/rebate/sale opportunities less available out there. Just make sure PS supports both 110/220V and 50/60MHz. I never had problem with ThinkPads, just carried set of plug adapters with me.

 

[thorin]

I was able to play VCDs (mpeg 1) when I bought my Pentium 133. For DiVx (mpeg4) you'll need roughly a P2 450 or better.

Thorin

 

[AnitaPeterson]

My Toshiba Satellite 430 (Pentium 133, 48 RAM, 1.2 GB HD) plays VCDs without any problems - but I have NEVER tried Divx on it.

 

[Mingon]

get a zv enabled pcmcia laptop and a hardware decoder for best results