Low Spec PC for Blu-Ray (1 Viewer)

[jimwin]

I thought I'd post my findings here, as I couldn't find any useful information on the net.

The Cyberlink website has very specific minimum hardware requirements for playing Blu-Ray disks. My HTPC is based on a E2140 cpu, which is below spec, but also has a Geforce 8500 video card, which supports DXVA for H264 video.

I've just installed an LG Blu-Ray drive, and the good news is, that the two combined very happily play my first Blu-Ray disk (I Am Legend), with pretty low CPU utilisation (under 40% at 1.2Ghz speedstep).

So if anyone else is wondering if your low spec PC will cope with Blu-Ray, the answer is probably yes, as long as your graphics card can do DXVA.

Jim

E2140, 2GB Ram, Geforce 8500, WinXP, PowerDVD 7, MediaPortal 1.0 RC3

 

[revs]

Agreed - as long as the Graphics Card can do hardware acceleration, you are fine.

I have a feeling the high spec is not for the film - but for the extra games and such they plan on adding to blu-ray disks!

 

[joystick]

....but 40% cpu load WITH DXVA seems quite high to me, isn't it?

usually the GPU should do all the work....?

cheers

joystick

 

[jimwin]

Hi joystick,

its high-ish! With both the MPC-HC video codec and the cyberlink codec I can play a 1080p MKV file at 10% cpu load.

I thought with Blu-Ray there is some decryption done by the CPU on top of the decoding? Maybe it's this that is adding the extra load!
Quick correction, powerdvd.exe seems to be fluctuating between 30-40%. This is with RMClock controlling the CPU frequency, so it drops from 1.6GHz to 1.2GHz when it's under 50% used, so in theory around 500MHz being used for Blu-Ray...