best media player for slow pc's

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  • olabri
    Junior Member
    Junior Member
    • Apr 2003
    • 10

    best media player for slow pc's

    Hi i have a 450 MHz (with 512 MB ram) PC that i have silenced and am using as a playback-machine in my living room. OS is winXP SP1 and it is pretty much maximum trimmed for performance.

    However, it is a bit tight in specs for playing DivX and other video formats, and I often find that the players I use cause lagging of sound or picture. When using same player/codec on my fast machine i find no synch problems.

    Also some players work better than others. The Core Player is the best i've tried, but it isn't perfect, so my question is:

    -which media player delivers best quality per CPU perfomance?

    thanks

    Olav Bringedal
    Last edited by olabri; 16 Jun 2003, 05:50 PM.
  • setarip
    Retired
    • Dec 2001
    • 24955

    #2
    Try the ever-popular, efficient, low overhead, Windows Media Player v.6.4 (Desktop>>Start>>Run>>type MPLAYER2.EXE)

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    • Toast B|M
      Gold Member
      Gold Member
      • Apr 2003
      • 112

      #3
      I have a same kinda machine that i gave to my sis for her school work, i have played divx/xvid movies on it and it works just as fine using wmp 6.4,so i will second what setarip said above because wmp is not resource hungry and serves the purpose just right.
      www.megamodels.biz | OC Crusaders

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      • olabri
        Junior Member
        Junior Member
        • Apr 2003
        • 10

        #4
        thx for the tip, i thought MS had stopped distributing that one

        and it even works better when i increase its base- priority to "above normal"!

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        • setarip
          Retired
          • Dec 2001
          • 24955

          #5
          "thx for the tip"

          My (Our) pleasure ;>}

          Comment

          • olabri
            Junior Member
            Junior Member
            • Apr 2003
            • 10

            #6
            Fullscreen vs window

            Hi

            I have still some performance problems on my PC.


            What seem to happen is that every time i use fullscreen, the decoder (ffdshow) starts to screw up things. Picture lags behind and suddenly jumps several seconds ahead to sync again. When running in a window it runs smoothely. This goes for all players.

            So i'm thinking: is there a way to force fullscreen to run at lower resolution in the different players. I found a way in bs player, but that one more often than not have problems with xvid.

            Or even better (since i run XP on a TV) to reduce the overall reolution in windows to 640*480 like in the good old days?

            card: ati rage 128

            Comment

            • Enchanter
              Old member
              • Feb 2002
              • 5417

              #7
              Your ATI Rage card is the weakest link here. Replacing it with any current low-budget cards will help boost performance.

              Comment

              • olabri
                Junior Member
                Junior Member
                • Apr 2003
                • 10

                #8
                by using the xp compability wizard i was able to get 640*480 res, but still ffdshow reports a framerate of 9-14 fps in fullscreen.

                even though i got an old video card, it should be capable of more than that?

                Can it be its tv-out that slows it?
                It ran like a dream on a 19" monitor with 1280*1024 res.

                any ideas on how to look for bottlenecks?

                Comment

                • Enchanter
                  Old member
                  • Feb 2002
                  • 5417

                  #9
                  Originally posted by olabri

                  even though i got an old video card, it should be capable of more than that?
                  I know of a system that used the same video chipset, but faster processor (667MHz). It did not produce good performance in video playback but upon replacing the video adapter with a good Geforce2 MX, everything ran happily ever since...

                  Comment

                  • Batman
                    Lord of Digital Video
                    Lord of Digital Video
                    • Jan 2002
                    • 2317

                    #10
                    Reduce colourdepth to 16 bit, and desktop area to 640x480. Turn off any post processing, and then try BSPLAYER.

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