Originally posted by: Moralpanic
Wow, is this how intense HDTV decoding is? What about HDTV receivers, they can't be running 3ghz+ are they?
BTW, it looks AWESOME on my GDM-FW900.... but it rocked my system.
the coral reef@1080p ran fine on my $500 dell 2.66/1 gig hyper X, 9700 TX. A skip or 2 at the beginning but only cuz I was moving my mouse around and my tool bar popped up.
Not to say it wasn't nice but I have seen better 1080 then this clip though. That clip also uses alot of underwater film. Not really a great test of clarity.
As for your question, HDTV at 1080p is intense. Thats because the sample you are watching here is 1080 progressive. Normal current HD TV is 480p (720x480) for DVD (not really considered HD), then usually 720i and 720p (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080). "i" is for interlaced and "p" is for progressive. Interlaced scans every other line of resolution while progressive scans them all sequentially. The interlaced only needs roughly half the data throughput as progressive, typically.
As for what you just saw in WMP... thats a little different. WMP uses a compression to allow for a high quality 1080p resolution with a lower size, but it makes you machine work harder. Kinda like playing MP3's instead of WAVs. The necessary computer power on a home computer is also a little deceptive because you are running alot more overhead then a HD decoder made just to do one task, process HD. I don't know exaclty what the requirements for an embedded cpu and system would be like for a DVD player to do 1080p but it wouldn't be anywhere near what you need on a computer. Maybe 1/3rd but I'm guessing. You just need a decent speed DVD reader that can transfer the necessary bandwidth. I think thats where the bottleneck would be. I doubt it will matter alot because I don't think you'll see 1080p movies on a normal DVD unless they are compressed like what windows did for the HD T2 (which only runs on a computer due to the WMV format it's written in but is also only 720p). It will probably be Blueray or something similar that will bring normal MPG-2 DVD's. Who knows though, maybe microsoft will continue to rule the world by controlling the DVD market too by making WMV DVD players that can hold 1080p on a normal dual layer DVD... scary thought.