Hardware Question.

[swestrup]

What's the minimum UMPH in terms of CPU power required to decode and play a divx file (without hardware assist)? Our DVD player has died and I'm seriously thinking of just taking one of the old machines laying around, giving it a DVD drive and using it for playing DVDs. If I did that though, it would be really nice if I could just hand it a DivX I've downloaded from the net and have it play it, without me having to convert to VCD or DVD format.

I have an old dual-pentium server (pentium WHAT and at what speeds, I don't know though) laying around that might be sufficient to the task. Or not. Which is why I ask. Any ideas?

Comments

[cloquewerk.livejournal.com]

According to a FAQ answer on divx.com, you need a 600 MHz CPU (so a P-III I guess) and 128 MB of RAM to reliably use the DivX codec, although I wouldn't be surprised if you could get away with something a bit slower.

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

For a real world answer...My laptop, ancient as it is...runs a PIII at 700 MHz, has 384 meg of RAM, and plays DVDs with no problem, under Linux. I have never tried it under Windows...although it also has W2K, which is much more effecient than XP. But I hardly ever run Windows.

ttyl