Netbook video playback question

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shaggy77

Gawd
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Jul 2, 2005
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803
Hi,

Got a question about video playback on a netbook. My wife and I have a Toshiba netbook. Model N305 When we bought it a few months ago, I went for the Atom Pine trail N450 with a GMA 3100 for graphics. 1 GB of RAM that I upped to 2GB. Win7 starter OS. Overall it is a netbook however one think drives us both crazy, video playback. Youtube over wire and wireless is choppy if just unplayable. Anything flash based is just takes forever to play. I want to see what direction I should go in to see if I can fix the problem. I am thinking an OS and bloatware. Let me know what you all think.
 
Using MPC-HC can help, as can getting CoreAVC to handle h.264 content (some YouTube videos fall into that category). It can make a dramatic difference on a Netbook with those specs.

KMPlayer is also a very nice media player and highly efficient too.

Ignore the post above, seriously; it's just sheer ignorance to make such a statement when there are tons of people playing YouTube, 720p, and even 1080p content on Netbooks without issues and without that newfangled Broadcom HD encoder card either.

It's entirely possible to do this, relatively easily I might add. Guides like this one:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/02/18/how-to-play-hd-video-on-a-netbook/

can show most anyone how to get such playback working smoothly or at least far better than a stock install could ever hope to do.
 
Hi,

Thanks for the information so far. One thing that gets me is I have a Toshiba Laptop that is about 7 years old that works works so much better with less in the graphics department and I would think about the same in the CPU/NB department. One suggestion I had received was to go with Windows XP since most netbooks are not really meant to have Win 7 on them. This was from a repair shop I was at for an unrelated reason. The guy said they just place XP on most of their customer's netbooks and it seems to work like a charm. He said alot of customers praise them all the time. I don't know if it is a sales pitch or not but it might be worth a shot.
 
XP is used on Netbooks for one reason: it's old and nobody gives a damn about it anymore (except Netbook makers, and most definitely not Microsoft). It's cheap for them and yet another way to milk XP for even more money just a little while longer so Microsoft tolerates it.

An Atom-powered Netbook using Windows 7 with a decent amount of RAM (1.5GB or more, preferably the 2GB max that most have), a decent hard drive or SSD, and you're doing just fine.

If you feel like giving XP a shot, go for it, but it'll cost you unless you've already got a spare license handy. Personally I wouldn't use XP anymore unless there were absolutely zero choice, and with Windows 7 and all that it brings to the table, I can't see why anyone bothers with it.

These are just my opinions and suggestions, not rules set in stone. Experiment, find what works best for you on the equipment you have, then stick with it. I ran Windows 7 on a Toshiba Portege M205 recently a Pentium M 1.5 GHz CPU with 1.25GB of RAM in it; it's a Tablet PC actually, with a Geforce GO FX5200 in it, I was able to make everything work without any real issues, even Aero in spite of the fact that the video chip only has 32MB (so much for the "requirement of 128MB for video RAM").

That machine is nearly 8 years old and it ran Windows 7 just fine, even allowed me to watch 720p content without skipping frames, all because of CoreAVC which - for such older machines or Netbooks - is entirely worth the ~$10 cost. Every cent worth.
 
would switching to a lighter linux distro help free up system resources? what is ChromeOS media playback like?
 
Crap, basically, because the OS isn't in what most of us would consider "alpha" stage so, forget that idea. :)

From my experience, Linux distros don't offer any significant assistance in terms of hardware-assisted video decoding or acceleration; that's something that most apps and codecs and tools for Windows are designed for these days.

I have Ubuntu 10.04 set up as a dual boot on this laptop of mine, and playing a 720p MKV file using Gnome MPlayer is probably about 60-70% CPU usage which of course fluctuates - the same file played back under Windows 7 using the stock multi-format decoder(s) it offers gives me about 40-50% CPU usage. If I enabled CoreAVC as the external decoder (I use MPC-HC for playback) then it drops to 20-25%, big difference.

It's an older GMA950 video chip so, every little bit helps. Still chokes a bit on actual proper 1080p content, but for 720p (my preferred format), it can handle anything at that resolution.
 
I have an Atom 450, gma 3100, and 2gb ram with W7 HP, in a Gateway LT21. I have no issues whatsoever with youtube or hulu or anything. Also, 720p plays back great with the right codecs and mpc-hc.

Just saying that it can be done.. contrary to the 2nd poster's BS.
 
you're going to need a better video chipset to handle 720P, or Flash based content above 480P. Flash is very heavy on CPU usage, and does not offload well to the GPU or CPU... and on a netbook, unless you very specifically looked for one that handled video well (most people are looking at weight and battery life... the opposite of video playback capability), neither the CPU or GPU are stellar performers.

Your best bet is an ION or ION2 based netbook, or a GMA4500HD chipset. Look for a netbook with an HDMI port on it, and you SHOULD be okay on your video playback issues. Keep in mind that these netbooks (all the ones I have seen, anyways) are going to be around $500 and up. Most people, in that price range, are going to opt for a full sized laptop, instead of a netbook.

I find use in a netbook with a larger screen, and a higher resolution (1280x800 would be nice), and a decent video chipset under the hood, but most people would not be willing to pay for it, given the premium this configuration would bring over a regular laptop with similar specs.

CoreAVC does help, and registering your codecs properly, in general, is a good idea. However, I have yet to see a 720P .MKV at a decent bitrate (converted Blu-Rays, for expample) that didn't look like a slideshow. You'd have to drop the quality below what a regular DVD would look like, for the sake of the resolution... useless, IMO.
 
I played with a LT3103u which has the ATI X1270 video and it could play 720p streams, but i couldn't really multitask with it going. It would take 95-100% CPU power to play it, so I couldn't even comfortably browse the web.

Just thought I'd share that
 
Why would you want to browse the web while watching the 720p stream? that's like wanting to play a video game while watching tv...
 
Hi,

wow awesome response so far. I was thinking not going to the XP route cause its an older OS with a scale back support for future programs such as newer versions of IE for example. I was thinking about springing for a copy of Win 7 HP. Can it be starter edition is that much of a dog? I am doing simple You Tube standard quality video. 360 not even 720. Flash is mainly fishville game on facebook.

As for CPU usage I was looking at 90-100% when anything is being played. I know the CPU is getting taxed. My memory is around 900 MB with the 2GB upgrade.
 
i browse the web and watch 720p if I'm just watching a movie stream while at work, and feel like browsing or looking something up.

Not every movie or TV show requires 100% attention, it's just something for me to watch while at work
 
I have a nb305 with 2gb ram. I can play youtube fine on windows 7 ultimate (clean install)
480 and 360 runs perfectly.(480 a bit choppy for the first few seconds)
720 and 1080 is really choppy, and is suppose to be really choppy. thats why they offer HD netbooks.
 
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