Build a PC for peanuts

[Surreptishus]

That would struggle with hi def movies.

[Bokishi]

Yea but it works good with standard DVDs.

[Lilandra]

It may be good for dvd movies but it sorely is lacking when it comes to games that were made after it's release.

[Bokishi]

We were looking for the most cost effective media machine, not a game machine in which case anything below a Geforce 6800 is lacking.

[angshuman]

Well anyway I think you can get decent media performance with a geforce 2.

Windows MCE 2005 requires at least a GeForce FX5200 for standard definition accelerated video playback. Not that Windows MCE is the be-all, end-all of media center front-ends, but it most certainly is one of the most popular. The FX5200 is able to take a significant fraction of the load off the CPU, and these cards typically ship with very good output TV encoders (contrary to the general perception that ATi's TV encoders are superior). Most pre-GeForce4MX nVidia cards however had very crappy TV encoders, and the CPU had to take all of the burden of decoding. For hi-def accelerated playback, you are going to have to move to 6600-class.

 

I have an FX5200 + Sempron64 based media center PC (std. def of course), and the picture quality is fabulous (compared to my laptop's Radeon 7500's output). Although I have never actually measured CPU utilization numbers, I have never faced any problems or hiccups decoding streams at upto 720p resolution.

[metadigital]

Is that with DivX coded footage, or just a standard DVD in the drive and playing it as a film?

[angshuman]

Is that with DivX coded footage, or just a standard DVD in the drive and playing it as a film?

That was with a 720p WMV stream downloaded from Microsoft's hi-def showcase. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe DVD is no better than standard def (480p)?

[metadigital]

DVD NTSC  720