On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Allan Gottlieb <gottl...@nyu.edu> wrote: > I am getting a new laptop. (likely dell 6430). > The two graphics options are intel HD 4000 and nvidia NVS 5200M. > Dell is as expected suggesting the 5200M. > > I do not need 3D or fast response. Dell hinted that DVDs might not play > with the intel HD 4000. This seems weird to me as the 4000 is supposed > to be a big improvement over the 3000 and I can't believe dell or others > would have sold laptops that can't play dvds > > Any comments or experiences?
My Duron 750MHz was able to decode DVDs in realtime. After that, all you're doing is blitting (or using xv) the frames to the screen. I would be absolutely shocked if the Intel HD 4000 GPU couldn't handle that basic of a 2D acceleration function. Now, DVDs use MPEG2. Blu-Ray uses h.264, which is a much harder beast to decode in realtime. It's possible the HD 4000 GPU can't handle hardware decode of h.264, but I don't know. I've never looked into it. (Software decode of 1080p h.264 on my Phenom 9650 worked somewhat, but highly active scenes would cause frame drops.) -- :wq
