What effects DVD playback on a laptop?

[chuchichan]

I'm going to be purchasing a laptop (most likely an IBM Thinkpad R51). I am currently configuring it and would like to know what hardware to invest in in order to get high quality DVD playback. Does the video card matter a whole lot? How about RAM and screen resolution? One other option that I can think of is the read speed of the DVD drive. Is 8x too slow?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Matthias99]

DVD video is "1x" DVD speed; any drive will work fine. Each "x" for DVDs is lot bigger than on CDs.

If you don't have hardware video acceleration (found on the more recent ATI laptop chipsets, and probably also on the more recent FXGo ones from NVIDIA), it's all up to your CPU. Faster RAM (not more) would help, but this is rarely an option on laptops.

Screen resolution? DVDs output at a fixed resolution. I suppose without hardware acceleration there might be more CPU load if you scale them up to full screen, but not much.

I seriously doubt any new laptop would have any problem playing DVDs, no matter how 'low-end' it is.

 

[jkj]

I agree no new lappy is going to have problems playing a dvd. Have you looked into the sager lappys from pctorque.com?

 

[chuchichan]

What exactly are "sager lappys"?

 

[jdiddy]

Originally posted by: chuchichan
What exactly are "sager lappys"?

Sager Laptop. They make laptops for companies like Alienware but they sell thier own Sager brand at alot less.

 

[tiap]

Here's your answer again. I've got a Centrino 1.5 with a radeon 7500 and 16mb of vidram with a ultradrive dvd/cdrw. Plays dvd's flawlessly. Newest thinkpads have a much better vid chip. Try for the better resolution screen if your into movies.
PS I use a plextor 708a in an external case with firewire or usb2 for drive imaging with it. Also works great

 

[John]

I have a Latitude CPx P3 650, 512MB memory, and an 8MB ATI Rage. I use PowerDVD 5 and playback is flawless.

 

[Yanagi]

A 1X DVD player and a 600mhz cpu and above would play DVDs perfectly.

 

[chuchichan]

Would the screen resolution matter for DVD playback? I'm getting mixed responses on this one. Someone else said that DVDs play at 720xsomething, so that increased resolution wouldn't really matter.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: chuchichan
Would the screen resolution matter for DVD playback? I'm getting mixed responses on this one. Someone else said that DVDs play at 720xsomething, so that increased resolution wouldn't really matter.

DVDs are 720x480 (usually). Like I said in my first post. It may up CPU load slightly without hardware acceleration, but it's still going to run fine on any new laptop. How many people have to answer this before you believe them?

 

[chuchichan]

I believe you now. Thanks.

 

[TeeJay1952]

Make sure the IDE controllers in Device Manager are set to DMA and not PIO.

 

[chuchichan]

I'm not familiar with these settings. What do they do exactly?

 

[Lonyo]

PIO IIRC allows up to 16MB/s transfer rate from the optical drive (DVD drive).
DMA allows up to 133MB/s
It basically gives faster access to the DVD drive.

 

[chuchichan]

Why would someone want the PIO setting then? Does DMA take up more battery life or take away processor power from other system processes?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: chuchichan
Why would someone want the PIO setting then? Does DMA take up more battery life or take away processor power from other system processes?

PIO (Programmed I/O) is actually an older standard, and *it* takes more processor time. DMA (Direct Memory Access) allows the IDE Controller to manage the I/O, essentially. The older setting is retained for compatibility with older hardware, and sometimes gets turned on by mistake (or if Windows is having trouble getting things to work in DMA mode). I doubt it would be a concern with a newer laptop.

 

[chuchichan]

I see...thanks everyone for your feedback.