Thinkpads Forum

Hi,
I'm searching for a good tablet for my study works, but it should also be able to play films in HD quality (8-25GB per film). So I'm wondering if the graphic accelerator built in the X61 tablet series (and of course the CPU) is capable of that.
Hope you can help me out here

Thx

Maybe you could give some samples, like links to movie (clips) so others can test it. Because the term "HD" is probably abused and overused.

Besides, file size is probably not the best descriptor in this case... Think about bitrate, codec instead...

For example, Blu-ray's video stream's bitrate is up to 40Mbps, and can be encoded in 3 different formats. While DVD's is about 10Mbps encoded in MPEG-2. Reference. The higher the bitrate, the more demanding on the hardware. Different codecs perform and demand differently too.

FYI, I have no problem playing the 1080p version of "The Discoverers" on my X61T (C2D L7500 1.6GHz), with some CPU cycles to spare... However, the said video's bitrate is only 8Mbps, and the resolution of the built-in screen is only 1024x768 (dunno if playback at full 1080p resolution will have an effect or not).

The X3000/3100 don't seem to provide hardware acceleration for VC-1/H.264, so the decoding is done (mainly) by the CPU.

I would like to try out Blu-ray playback but I don't have a drive and media. Nor do I have at this moment a sample H.264/VC-1 clip with bitrate that high. FYI, the typical bitrate for the current crop of Blu-ray movies is aronud 20-30Mbps.

Cheers and sorry for the excessive use of links... : )

DevlinStone wrote:Hi,
I'm searching for a good tablet for my study works, but it should also be able to play films in HD quality (8-25GB per film). So I'm wondering if the graphic accelerator built in the X61 tablet series (and of course the CPU) is capable of that.
Hope you can help me out here

Thx

What's HD quality? 720p? 1080p? It can handle 720p just fine. I have a 1080p file, but I'll have to check later. Need to transfer the file to my laptop first. I'll report when I get that done.

Just to clearify, 720p is fine at full screen at SXGA+.

I had some troubles with my 1080p video. VLC player doesn't like the audio/video codec and it shutters. In Windows Media Player (on Vista), that particular file doesn't seem to have sound, but it's perfectly smooth on full screen.

I also downloaded a 1080p sample video from microsoft and unfortunately it do shutter at full screen. This file did play audio. It's perfectly smooth when not full screen.