Hd Tv Through Old Laptop

[JD™]

Hey guys,

I broke an old laptop about a year ago, trod on it and the screen broke. I ended up butchering it so it works as a bit of a media server which streams off to the Xbox 360 and Mac for music and films. I didn't have it hooked up to a screen because there was no need.

A couple of weeks back I bought a 37" Samsung HD TV which is great. It has a computer input with a normal monitor cable and comes through nicely with no lag or anything. When I try to play a HD movie (legitimately downloaded, of course) it stutters the video pretty heftily. Now obviously this is a problem with something to do with the laptop, but I want to know which bit is the worst of the bottleneck so I can decide whether to upgrade it on the cheap (it's a bit of a ghetto solution as it is) or start building myself a new media server (which I will end up doing anyway, I just want HD now and that wont happen if I spend 2/3 months building a new PC).

Specs of the laptop are atrocious (and off the top of my head because I'm at work):

Toshiba Equium M50-216

Intel Celeron M 1.73mhz

512mb Ram

Onboard Graphics

Running Windows Server 2008, various services take up about 300mb of the Ram from startup

Instincts pointed first to the onboard graphics, but isn't it the case that the TV should take care of the HD rendering side of things?

Second in that case would be the RAM I imagine. If it's just that then I think the mobo will only take 1gb anyway - will that be enough for the time being?

That's much longer than I hoped it'd be, and typing it out makes me think that probably the only solution is to build something new, but maybe someone can give hope!

Cheers.

[l33th3tr33]

Intel Celeron M 1.73mhz

512mb Ram

Onboard Graphics

I'm guessing all of these, I upgraded my graphics card to one that needed its own power supply and that helped alot.

Also make sure if you upgrade you have enough power going to it.

Yes, I only just realized it said laptop.

Edited July 9, 2010 by l33th3tr33

[isitafox]

Think it'll be down to the processor and graphics card which are a bit tricky to upgrade on a laptop.

Think you'll be best off building up a specific server made to run HD as my laptops running 4gig memory and a 2ghz processor and still hates the hd I record on my Kodak video camera!

[Krisboats]

Short: Build something new.

Long: HD footage takes a lot of work on the processor side of things and the only way to really stop such a burden is to get a graphics card with hardware based HD compatibility. Obviously information travelling from the hard drive will be huge due to the massive bitrate of HD media so your ram will be causing you problems as well. If you were to spend money on the current machine in order to try and improve it you'd be wasting your money.

The TV will do things like data sync correction via the HDMI to ensure smoother playback in case of any small amounts of lost information but again it boils down to a case of "rubbish in - rubbish out" in that the TV cann't stop long stutters and freezing/artifacts within the image.

Idealy you'd be looking for at least a dual core, 2gb ram minimum and a graphics card that has at least a slight amount of grunt behind it.

For an idea my HTPC is running:

Intel e2200 at 3ghz

2GB ram

500gb hard drive

x1950xtx Gfx card.

That does the job just fine, although i did notice with my intel e2180 that while 720p was fine at stock speeds, in order to play 1080p even remotely smoothly i had to get it to 3.3ghz.

The other thing i found is that programs like VLC, WMP, Nero showtime and Powerdvd all stuttered when playing huge 1080p files. The dark knight had random stutters with all of them, no matter what i did.

XBMC was the cure to this problem. It's free, well supported and has a host of features that make the machine into a very sleek media centre. It supports practically every video file out there and stopped any stutters i had with the other programs when playing 1080p files. Available here.

You might as well try XBMC on the current machine, as it is free and easy. But unfortunately i don't know if it'll make much difference.

[JD™]

Thanks for that - it's pretty much all stuff I knew but I was hoping I was wrong.

I'll give XBMC a try for the moment as there's nothing to lose then think about building something.

Couple of questions on that note:

Case - I can probably hide a tower case behind the TV, so I might as well do that than go down the MicroATX route right?

Noise - The whole point of moving from the Xbox 360 to a media sharing PC was to hopefully cut down on some noise, what's the best (read: cheapest) way of getting the grunt without the noise?

HDMI/Monitor cable - what are the benefits of getting a GFX card with a HDMI out as opposed to the normal 15 pin (?) monitor cable which the TV has as well?

Cheers for the help

[Krisboats]

Thanks for that - it's pretty much all stuff I knew but I was hoping I was wrong.

I'll give XBMC a try for the moment as there's nothing to lose then think about building something.

Couple of questions on that note:

Case - I can probably hide a tower case behind the TV, so I might as well do that than go down the MicroATX route right?

Noise - The whole point of moving from the Xbox 360 to a media sharing PC was to hopefully cut down on some noise, what's the best (read: cheapest) way of getting the grunt without the noise?

HDMI/Monitor cable - what are the benefits of getting a GFX card with a HDMI out as opposed to the normal 15 pin (?) monitor cable which the TV has as well?

Cheers for the help

You can hide it behind the tv, but you could look on ebay or the avforums classifieds computer section and pick up a htpc case? Mine was £40 second hand because of a slight scratch on the side and it looks lovely.

Picking up a HTPC specific graphics card (they're usually cheap as chips because they aren't "HARDCORE GAMING FTMFW!!11!!" cards) or downclocking an older high end graphics card should keep noise down, sticking an arctic cooling freezer on the cpu would cost about £15 and they're quiet as hell.

A graphics card with dedicated HDMI should allow for sound as well as image over the HDMI, which saves on cables etc. This can be emulated by a dongle with some cards from a DVI socket. But if you have an amp/surround or run optical audio to the tv then a regular DVI card would be fine and keep the costs back a bit as well.

[JD™]

Wicked cheers, I'll bear that all in mind and get building! No doubt more questions over the coming months, but thanks for all the tips so far.

[Krisboats]

If you want quite a nice setup my advice is to DIY everything. I build my own cables, the sub, the have table, speaker stands. Everything that i can build gets done. Plus you get it exactly how you want it.

Here's mine at the minute....

My next task is a larger have rack so i can fit everything, then new centre speaker then new floorstanders for the fronts. It's taken a while but it's well worth it!

[Revolver]

If only you could DIY a decent looking couch

[Krisboats]

Shush you, it's comfy and once the sound and video start up you don't have the chance to take your attention away from them.

[Krisboats]

I've just thought, do you have a ps3?

if so then your best and cheapest option would be to install windows home server on the laptop and allow the ps3 to navigate to it through the network. The ps3 will play 1080p mkv fine and you can use pretty much any old crappy computer for the windows home server.

[JD™]

I've just thought, do you have a ps3?

if so then your best and cheapest option would be to install windows home server on the laptop and allow the ps3 to navigate to it through the network. The ps3 will play 1080p mkv fine and you can use pretty much any old crappy computer for the windows home server.

Nah, unfortunately not. Good idea though and thanks

[anzo]

My dad just bought some BR player with built in HDD, also with USB input.

What we've done is stuck a ton of music on the USB stick which we can navigate through easily, and can also download movies onto the hard drive, with external HDD optional for more space.

Also came with 5:1 surround sound. It was only really purchased for music, but obviously comes with the HDMI interface for BR.

I can get more details if you want?

[JD™]

My dad just bought some BR player with built in HDD, also with USB input.

What we've done is stuck a ton of music on the USB stick which we can navigate through easily, and can also download movies onto the hard drive, with external HDD optional for more space.

Also came with 5:1 surround sound. It was only really purchased for music, but obviously comes with the HDMI interface for BR.

I can get more details if you want?

That sounds great, but there's extra benefits of the server that I use that I wouldn't really want to be without. For instance, it's synced up to my Dropbox so that I can drop completely legal torrents in there and Bittorrent will start the download automatically. I also run VNC Server on it so that I can control it from anywhere. That, coupled with the fact that it means I then don't have to host any music on my Macbook makes for good times.