I'm coming to realize that my HTPC system sucks. It needs more power when it comes to playing x.264 720p material.
My plan is to continue using this system using Media Portal as my front end. The future seems a little hazy to me regarding x.264 720p in the Windows universe, especially when it comes to future HDCP concerns and XP vs Vista (my understanding is that some graphics cards HD hardward decoding can't be fully utilized unless you're running Vista).
I am somewhat on a budget, so my feelings are I can either put more money into a graphics card or money into a CPU and more memory (all will have to be upgraded either way since I'm still using a AGP based system). My question is when trying to decide where to put my power emphasis, I want to try to ensure that I can continue using MP for all my content and that it won't become a performance handicap.
Do you think the future development of MP is going in a direction where I should be focusing more on software based decoding (better CPU/memory with either FFDshow or CoreAVC) or on GPU hardware based decoding (my concern relating to all this DRM issues and MP being open source.)
Or does it really not matter at all?
My plan is to continue using this system using Media Portal as my front end. The future seems a little hazy to me regarding x.264 720p in the Windows universe, especially when it comes to future HDCP concerns and XP vs Vista (my understanding is that some graphics cards HD hardward decoding can't be fully utilized unless you're running Vista).
I am somewhat on a budget, so my feelings are I can either put more money into a graphics card or money into a CPU and more memory (all will have to be upgraded either way since I'm still using a AGP based system). My question is when trying to decide where to put my power emphasis, I want to try to ensure that I can continue using MP for all my content and that it won't become a performance handicap.
Do you think the future development of MP is going in a direction where I should be focusing more on software based decoding (better CPU/memory with either FFDshow or CoreAVC) or on GPU hardware based decoding (my concern relating to all this DRM issues and MP being open source.)
Or does it really not matter at all?