Hardware specs Options

[ruddiga]

Hi im looking at buying the DigitalNow TinyTwin DVB-T Receiver. however i am a bit worried that my laptop specs may make my viewing experience for HD not so good
These are the specs
Pentium M 1.73ghz
502mb ram (dunno why its that number)
128mb gfx

thanks

[0ldfart]

Hi im looking at buying the DigitalNow TinyTwin DVB-T Receiver. however i am a bit worried that my laptop specs may make my viewing experience for HD not so good
These are the specs
Pentium M 1.73ghz
502mb ram (dunno why its that number)
128mb gfx

thanks

I think you may want to wait untiul you have a more powerful machine. That laptop will play Standard Definition material ok, but is not suitable to to much in the way of HD TV.

HD TV resolution varies depending on where you are and what channel. The most CPU intensive is 1080i which really needs a dedicated graphics card and a dual core CPU. The requirements for 1080p, which are less intensive, and the same in terms of processing requirements as bluray, can be seen here http://www.cyberlink.com/stat/bd-support/e...requirement.jsp

see specifically; the "processor" and "graphics card" sections

[edit]

can get away with a decent onboard chipset (ie 780/785g) instead of dedicated gpu but success with this arrangement will vary with some software, ie, fine for MCE but will not work with 1080i on Mediaportal

[gilesp]

From my experience, for an HTPC:
- On-board graphics are fine, you don't need a graphics card
- CPU speed is not a big deal, nor are # cores, unless the machine will be doing other things a lot
- As with everything else, plenty of memory is good - at least 2G
- Memory bandwidth is important, at least DDR2-800 dual channel
- USB tuners are sensitive to the bandwidth of the USB itself and the USB hub in the machine.
Watch/record is chancy (more than one channel at once).
PCI-e seems to be more reliable than USB. Don't even think about USB-1.
- Keeping the capture off the system disk is probably a good idea (I haven't tried it though)

[Jed]

actually 1080p is higher bit-rate than 1080i.

I think you may want to wait untiul you have a more powerful machine. That laptop will play Standard Definition material ok, but is not suitable to to much in the way of HD TV.

HD TV resolution varies depending on where you are and what channel. The most CPU intensive is 1080i which really needs a dedicated graphics card and a dual core CPU. The requirements for 1080p, which are less intensive, and the same in terms of processing requirements as bluray, can be seen here http://www.cyberlink.com/stat/bd-support/e...requirement.jsp

see specifically; the "processor" and "graphics card" sections

[edit]

can get away with a decent onboard chipset (ie 780/785g) instead of dedicated gpu but success with this arrangement will vary with some software, ie, fine for MCE but will not work with 1080i on Mediaportal

[0ldfart]

actually 1080p is higher bit-rate than 1080i.

That may be the case - the issue is of the machine's ability to process it. 1080i seems to present more of a challenge for low-end hardware than 1080p. There are screeds of posts on this issue on the MediaPortal Forum, particularly in regard to on-board graphics chipsets (780/5g etc)