BD and HD-DVD Section on Cyberlink

Ian_S

Distinguished Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2005
Messages
7,165
Reaction score
2,124
Points
1,320
Some interesting stuff has now appeared on the Cyberlink site for PowerDVD.

See here...

Confirms the scary CPU requirements. Presumably the BD & HD-DVD code will be available soon. The only drive available today in the UK that is in stock is the Pioneer BDA-101A. The LG-Hitachi GBW-H10N (4x already!) which does CD's as well (the Pioneer doesn't) is also due very shortly, as is the Philips SPD7000 and it's derivatives. No sign yet of any HD-DVD drives or blank media, but I'm sure that will change before too long.
 
CPU

Intel Pentium EE 840 (3.2 GHz)
Intel Pentium EE 955 (3.4 GHz)
Intel Pentium D 9xx series 945 (3.4 GHz), 950 (3.4 GHz), 960 (3.6 GHz)
Intel Core Duo T2xxx series T2500 (2 GHz), T2600 (2.16 GHz), T2700 (2.33 GHz)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6xxx series E6300 (1.8 GHz), E6400 (2.13 GHz), E6600 (2.4 GHz), E6700 (2.66 GHz), E6800 (2.93 GHz)

AMD Athlon 64 FX series FX-60 (2.6 GHz), FX-62 (2.8 GHz)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 series 4200+ (2.2 GHz), 4400+ (2.2 GHz), 4600+ (2.4 GHz), 4800+ (2.4 GHz), 5000+ (2.6 GHz)
AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 (2 GHz)

System Memory (RAM)
512 MB or above, 1 GB is recommended

Disc Drive
Blu-ray Disc drive or HD DVD drive

Graphics Card

NVidia

GeForce
6600 GT
7600 GT
7800 GTX 512
7900 GX2
7900 GTX
7950 GX2

ATi X1600 series
X1800 series
X1900 series

Video RAM
256 MB graphics card memory or above

Display Devices
HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) compliant display (DVI, HDMI connections) for digital output
TV (composite, componet, S-Video) or computer monitor (VGA) for analog output

Operating System
Supports only Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installed

Software
PowerDVD HD DVD or BD version. Note: An easy way to determine whether your version of PowerDVD supports Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD is to look for the Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD logo on the main screen of PowerDVD. If you don’t see either of those logos, it is likely your version of PowerDVD doesn’t support Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD title playback.



Ouch!!
 
Amusingly I have got an HDCP compliant graphics card without even trying :) Processor not up to it but then I'll be upgrading next year anyway. Not that I am in any great rush to get HD DVD or BluRay on my PC.
 
Nic Rhodes said:
CPU

Intel Pentium EE 840 (3.2 GHz)
Intel Pentium EE 955 (3.4 GHz)
Intel Pentium D 9xx series 945 (3.4 GHz), 950 (3.4 GHz), 960 (3.6 GHz)
Intel Core Duo T2xxx series T2500 (2 GHz), T2600 (2.16 GHz), T2700 (2.33 GHz)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6xxx series E6300 (1.8 GHz), E6400 (2.13 GHz), E6600 (2.4 GHz), E6700 (2.66 GHz), E6800 (2.93 GHz)

AMD Athlon 64 FX series FX-60 (2.6 GHz), FX-62 (2.8 GHz)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 series 4200+ (2.2 GHz), 4400+ (2.2 GHz), 4600+ (2.4 GHz), 4800+ (2.4 GHz), 5000+ (2.6 GHz)
AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 (2 GHz)
...

Ouch!!
Well, maybe not too ouch. The Core 2 Duo series knock the spots of just about the rest of the processors in the list. Even the E6300 which as a brand new processor is only £130'ish. Give it another month or two and it may well drop further. Forget any other Intel processor unless you prefer to save on heating bills :)

See here for an interesting read...
 
Ian I have been an over clocker for years now, these number are fine for a new purchase but for those that have existing machines that they want to drop a drive into, doesn't make good reading.
 
I just finished my HTPC upgrade and looks like i can support it. I am just counting down the days untill a HD rom drive is released.
 
Nic Rhodes said:
Ian I have been an over clocker for years now, these number are fine for a new purchase but for those that have existing machines that they want to drop a drive into, doesn't make good reading.
No, I guess it doesn't really. The only crumb of comfort is that Intel's new Core 2 Duo CPU's are much cheaper than the old Netburst Pentium D processors and finally don't need ridiculous cooling. A Core 2 MB and processor upgrade could be as little as £200 and provide a decent step up in performance for all but those users who already meet the requirements.

Still, that is only movie playback. Using either format for it's large writable capacity is a drop-in upgrade.

Also useful on the Cyberlink site is the fact that they're stating you only need an HDCP compliant video card *IF* you connect to a digital display. So, it looks like VGA will work in the same method as CE players and component outs. That takes away some of the pain. See here. That ought to be good news to some.
 
Nic Rhodes said:
Ian I have been an over clocker for years now, these number are fine for a new purchase but for those that have existing machines that they want to drop a drive into, doesn't make good reading.

Definatly especially as there is no AMD x2 3800+ which is probably the most common amd processor for people spending less than £1000 on a PC. It's Intel rival the 6300 is on the list though.

The percentage of PC's that can currently run this must be tiny.
 
Noggin1980 said:
Definatly especially as there is no AMD x2 3800+ which is probably the most common amd processor for people spending less than £1000 on a PC. It's Intel rival the 6300 is on the list though.

The percentage of PC's that can currently run this must be tiny.
I'd guess that if it's equivalent is the 6300 that it ought to be OK, esp. if overclocked as well.

If the no. of PC's that can perform playback is tiny (and relies heavily on offloading work to the GPU) then what about encoding the stuff if you want to get an HD camcorder? Looks like we'll be back to the good old days of leaving the PC overnight to do its stuff...

Now, who's going to be the first company to offer something like a Broadcom decoder on a PC graphics card? If you did that presumably the CPU requirement drops significantly as we all know the Toshiba has a slow (by these standards) P4 inside. That would be a very welcome step in the right direction for the PC world.
 
I'd guess that if it's equivalent is the 6300 that it ought to be OK, esp. if overclocked as well.

While they are the two competing chips at the low end the intel chip is more powerful, and more expensive. The 6300 beats the 3800 in the vast majority of benchmarks and sometimes significantly.

I can't find any decodeing benchmarks but in terms of encoding the intel 6300 is closer in performance to a AMD 4600 rather than the 3800.

If a chip isn't concidered powerful enough by the developer it would be a dangerous assumption to assume they are wrong because the rival chip is.

You could very easily be right that an overclock to a 3800 would do it. The percentage of people willing to overclock is tiny again though.
 
Interesting that only dual core processors appear on the list. Will the software actually use both cores or are they just listing newer (current) CPUs to boost sales? :devil:
 
mr_yogi said:
Interesting that only dual core processors appear on the list. Will the software actually use both cores or are they just listing newer (current) CPUs to boost sales? :devil:
Have a read through this. I guess they're going to err on the side of caution to minimise potential support calls. However, it does seem that it really is CPU intensive.

If you add in things like PiP then I guess it gets worse still.
 
Nice link

[QUOTE from article] For those of you still running single core CPUs, things aren't looking too good right now as far as high definition support.

is a little worrying though but dual core is the way forward, will it work on my BP6? ;)
 
Nic Rhodes said:
Ian I have been an over clocker for years now, these number are fine for a new purchase but for those that have existing machines that they want to drop a drive into, doesn't make good reading.


An AthlonXP 64 @ 2.2GHz really is easy and cheap to get to, and has been pretty much entry-level for a while.

I would be amazed if people are shocked that that is the minimum spec.
 
Nic Rhodes said:
Nice link

[QUOTE from article] For those of you still running single core CPUs, things aren't looking too good right now as far as high definition support.

is a little worrying though but dual core is the way forward, will it work on my BP6? ;)
Well, they do say that the 'new' core architecture does have more in common with P3 than the old P4... ;)
 
shaithis said:
An AthlonXP 64 @ 2.2GHz really is easy and cheap to get to, and has been pretty much entry-level for a while.

I would be amazed if people are shocked that that is the minimum spec.


well above all my machines.....the link tested some early titles that are hardly maxed out, how will high bit rate MPEG2 / AVC do? We could easily have rates twice what they were in that test and still be in spec.
 
I will be building a new PC next year and I have already decided to get both drives!
 
MartinImber said:
I will be building a new PC next year and I have already decided to get both drives!
Rumour has it at the moment that for the upcoming WinDVD and PowerDVD players you can ONLY install either BD or HD-DVD support not both... So, to get a multi-format player you may have to use WinDVD for one and PowerDVD for the other... It was also stated that this may change in furture releases but I imagine that's a little further off... something else to budget for.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom