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Posted: **Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:19 pm**

There has been quite some fuzz about recomendations needed for the next generation systems and all weird stuff is showing up.

The following info was taken from C't 4 -6-2-2006 and translated by me:

Minimum for the NEC HD DVD player and samsungs blu ray player:
Pentium 4 3,0 GHz (or Athlon 3000+) and a 128 mb videocard.
Samsungs recommends Geforce 7800 or a ATI radeon X1800 for speeding up decoding of h.264/AVC or VC1.

HD-signals are only possible through HDCP.
the DVI or VGA output will probably only give the standard quality no high definition !

This is what so far has been reported to the press. So no weird guesses about dual (core) processors or 256 or 512 mb video cards.

Posted: **Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:52 pm**

Yes, an engineer working on one of the upcoming Blu-ray drives said something similar to me last week. In fact, he's actually recommending a dual core CPU.

Currently, there is not allot of media or the specs have not been approve yet. I have the 2x testing here and I can say its slow and does not really work with single CPU, I am trying to convince them to change there specs to dual core machines.

Sorry, I can't say what company he works for.

Posted: **Sun Feb 12, 2006 8:22 pm**

So far everything I've been hearing has been pretty scary for the system requirements. I'm thinking this will be holding back the formats more then the price tag in the end.

Posted: **Sun Feb 12, 2006 10:47 pm**

I've been doing a bit of digging, and it seems that it may not be as bad as it sounds...

The problem seems to come from a lack of bandwidth. There is simply a LOT of data transferring from the HDD to the drive, and if they both share the same IDE cable, then it gets pretty hard to make that happen. Furthermore, it will also depend greatly on how I/O wait is handled, by both the CPU and the controller connected to the drive.

This MAY mean we'll be seeing more SATA interface drives from manufacturers when it comes to BluRay, then what we've seen with DVD and CD technology.

We'll just have to wait and see!!

Posted: **Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:20 pm**

I don't think its a bandwidth issue. The CPU is needed to decode and playback the video. That's why video card companies are building support into their drivers so that the GPU can take some of the load off the CPU.

Posted: **Mon Feb 13, 2006 12:43 am**

what about the Samsung and NEC models previewed ? were they Parallel ATA ?

Posted: **Mon Feb 13, 2006 4:37 am**

Hmm seems that your both right it seems that the issues is the datastream incombination with the codec but only for high definition material.
The datastream needs to be decoded !!

That makes me think as current older videocards don't have High definition outputs would that mean that they also don't need encoding optimalisations because the output is just normal defintion ???

Also I just talked to some more folks and they confirm that current prototypes are working on single processors but that some companies would like to raise it to dual processors !!
However most likely the new scenario is that some companies will put it under recommended but not as minimum !

Also the following is interesting
According to one source:

It is quite normal that samsung recommended more powerfull gfx-cards and not a extra processor because GPU optimalisations are probably more effective in this case as a extra CPU and buying a expensive new graphics card is going to be easier to accept for the public.

Hmm I'm personally not so sure about that last part I think it depends on the market.

Posted: **Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:50 pm**

RJW wrote:T

HD-signals are only possible through HDCP.
the DVI or VGA output will probably only give the standard quality no high definition !

Firing Squad had an interesting article talking about HDCP.

You want to know a secret? None of the current ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards will support the full capabilities of Windows Vista.

But let’s start from the beginning. This story starts with my upcoming LCD Monitor Round-Up. As you know, a good monitor should last several years and outlive every other component in your PC, other than perhaps a keyboard or a mouse. So, when it came time to do another review of LCD monitors, my attention turned towards “Windows Vista-ready” monitors: those with HDCP. After all, it makes no sense to recommend a monitor that will go obsolete in just a few months.

At the time I started my article, there were only 10 PC monitors with DVI/HDCP support (we’re reviewing 5 of them). I was disappointed, but what was surprising is that many of these monitor manufacturers weren’t advertising their HDCP support. For monitors, HDCP support is the most important feature for having a “future proof” solution.

What is HDCP?

HDCP stands for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection and is an Intel-initiated program that was developed with Silicon Image. This content protection system is mandatory for high-definition playback of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs. If you want to watch movies at 1980x1080, your system will need to support HDCP. If you don’t have HDCP support, you’ll only get a quarter of the resolution. A 75% loss in pixel density is a pretty big deal – Wouldn’t you be angry if your car was advertised as doing 16 mpg, and you only got 4 mpg? Or if you bought a 2 GHz CPU and found out that it only ran at 500 MHz?

You can read the entire article here!

Posted: **Sat Feb 18, 2006 11:17 am**

Yep just found out that there is no card that works for HD content in other words.
When the next generation DVD formats arrive on the market you need to buy

A new GFX cards
B new drive
(C New processor +Motherboard if some people get what they want !)

Posted: **Sat Feb 18, 2006 1:36 pm**

RJW wrote:Yep just found out that there is no card that works for HD content in other words.
When the next generation DVD formats arrive on the market you need to buy

A new GFX cards
B new drive
(C New processor +Motherboard if some people get what they want !)

Or JUST a PS3.... which is looking like the cheapest solution for BluRay playback at this point

Posted: **Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:13 am**

dolphinius_rex wrote:
RJW wrote:Yep just found out that there is no card that works for HD content in other words.
When the next generation DVD formats arrive on the market you need to buy

A new GFX cards
B new drive
(C New processor +Motherboard if some people get what they want !)

Or JUST a PS3.... which is looking like the cheapest solution for BluRay playback at this point

due sometime in 2007.

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recommended system requirements.

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