Really old hardware with HD content?

[jmontana]

I switched from GBPVR to XP MCE a while ago, but now that I've got a new HDTV, I'm considering switching back. My issue has to do with my aging hardware. Upgrading the PC really isn't an option right now, because it's too cost prohibitive. My setup right now is a Dell Dimenson 4600 (2.4 GHz P4) with a PVR-150 for capturing analog cable, and the All-in-Wonder 9000 Radeon that came with the PC for output. I've been able to drive the HDTV in 1920x1080 mode with the AIW card.

I'd like to be able to hook up my ATSC antenna to a new Hauppauge card (maybe the 2250) and record OTA HD content. I'm sure that recording won't be an issue, what I'm wondering is whether the P4 is going to be able to keep up with the playback? I've got 768 MBs of RAM in it and it's currently running XP MCE.

I'd love to know if there's a downloadable HD sample file I could test with before committing to the 2250.

Thanks!

[sub]

I dont have any sample HD files for you to download, but I suspect you'll find that video card is a bottleneck, and probably wont cope with HD playback. The CPU should just scrape by assuming a more capable video card.

[jcjefferies]

If you Google "HD" or "H264" and "clips" or "samples" or "trailers" You will find lots of short 720p or 1080p videos of around 2 minutes. Such as :-

http://www.h264info.com/clips.html

Using one I proved my 2GHZ Athlon was just able to display 1080p with a reasonable video card but my 2GHZ P4 couldnt quite as it was running at almost 100% most of the time. If the processor cannot cope then the cheapest solution may be a video acceleration card which off loads the video processing to the video card. If your computer has a PCI Express slot then there are plenty of card available with an HDMI socket shuch as NVidia GeForce 210. This web page lists various Nvidia and AMD video cards that support H264 processing:-

http://imouto.my/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/

[sub]

He's probably more interested in MPEG2 HD samples, since that's what ATSC uses in the US. H.264 is a different beast, and likely to be too much for his hardware.