Looking for a media center solution? C2D may not be it...

If your like me, you have an xbox with an insane HD upgrade (300 gig and up), and have a plethora of movies and even some HD offerings on it.

I have grown to love and cherish my Xbox Media center.

Well since I bought an HDTV, I have learned about the insane amount resources needed to do .x264 playback.

Sadly the xbox cannot handle anything over 640x480 in .x264. (but it can do 720p in DivxHD or Xvid, not perfect, but very watchable for a first time HD experience) I assumed since a 733mhz celeron could almost do it, surely a 2800xp Athlon could it without an issue.

Well unfortunately you need a beefy proccesor to decode .x264 in 720p, and even a much beefier processor for 1080p.

I decided to try a x.264 decoding card, (Nvidia 79xx series) and no luck. just not enough horsepower. The experience improved greatly at 720p, but still a slideshow at 1080p.

So I scoured the web in search of info.

So, I found an anantech article seeing which processors become bottlenecked in .x264 decoding, and apprently, anything e6700 and under cannot play back .x264 unaided without becoming 100% utilized (which then results in dropped frames, choppy playback, dropped audio, slight pauses, etc) The only really smooth playback was the best C2D's with the 8800 GTX. (lowered video card or CPU resulted in only acceptable playback levels, and high 80's and 90's utilization) (Im referring to .x264 playback with all the bells and whistles on and a decent bitrate, typically 5gigs or more per hour of video)

Finding out this info let me to believe a $500 processor and $550 vid card was the only solution at this point in time. (All other components - decent sound card, case, PSU, mobo, ram, etc put me well into the 1400$ range)

Well, I decided to pick up a PS3. And let me tell you, while it isnt an original XBMC killer yet, I am sure some homebrew apps will appear to give similar performance.

But if you want flawless Mpeg4, mpeg2, mpeg1, .x264 avc playback, this is the machine. Plus you get the blu ray playback (only at 1080i/p atm, supposedly will do 720p by 2nd half 07 through firmware update)

The current OS doesnt support DIVX or XVID, but I expect to see the masses drift from Divx in an HD world. Anyone would tell you Divx doesnt come close to quality/size ratio's .x264 does.

Better yet, once the homebrew apps start pouring in, I expect a equally awsome XBMC port or new app. One with DivX XViD etc etc support.

Not to mention at 499$ (not including HDMI cable and 500gb HD), its cheaper than any single piece (C2D 8800GTX) required for 1080p .264 playback.

While this is my experience only, if your into the HTPC thing, especially with true HD playback, a PS3 may be the most cost effective and easy to use to solution. Not nearly all the difficulties of setup involved as a MS MCE build, and not retricted to WM9 formats either.

Hope this helps if you found yourself lost like me in HD playback.

Your best bet may be one of those new Live home Cinemas with a Turion X2. They come with ATi decoding for H.264. They are pretty cool and definitely low power.

http://bp3.blogger.com/_Z49NBhppzo [...] ngar18.jpg

This one is AlienWare but HP has one also. The real key to H.264 is the GPU supporting it.