Downloaded the Quicktime 7 public preview yesterday and got myself some of the hi-def trailers and proceeded to watch them on my Z3 via my XP2600 + ATI AIW 9800. A bit disapointing really. The playback was so choppy and slow it was like watching a slideshow. So I looked on the net for another H.264 codec player and found the Moonlight mpeg player. So I proceeded to watch the Batman begins trailer and... WOW. The frame rate was miles better although still not smooth (I would say around 15 to 20 fps) but it was nothing short of spectacular on the Z3. The clarity and the colours and definition have to be seen to be believed. The Serentity trailer was fantastic as well. I really cannot wait for hi-def DVDs to come out. Unfortunately it will not be for another year or so. Damn.
I'm afraid you'll never get smooth playback of high-def stuff with that CPU.
You're looking at 3000+ if you don't want to drop frames.
Check out the windows high-def showcase: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...tShowcase.aspx
__________________
Sony HS50 : Sony STRDE597 : HTPC Running MCE2005 : Sony Speaker Package
Well, I've been to wmvhd.com and downloaded the hi def clips there and they play perfectly fine on my computer. I don't know what codec they use but I have no problem at all. I think apple are still optimizing their player because at the mo it's worse than the Moonlight player. Whether it's the H.264 decoding that is causing the problem I don't know.
What what I have seen thus far Im not very impressed with the H.264 codec. It is really resource hungry - I mean not even a top end system could play 1080p, also the black levels are appalling. In contrast WMV9 1080p plays perfectly on a moderate PC with a moderate video card and gives much better black levels and contrast.
Also I have yet to see an mpeg4 based HD clip which compares to 720p mpeg2 TS or 1080i and that includes the natively encoded microsoft samples. I would have the higher file size any day!