[Cube] G4 Cube as HTPC or media machine?

[Philip J Robar]

On Dec 28, 2005, at 10:03 PM, Philip J Robar wrote:

> On Dec 28, 2005, at 9:37 PM, Scott Strungis wrote:
>
>> I am trying to evaluate the suitability of my Cube as an HTPC.   
>> It's in
>> the living room now and is being used for DVDs, CDs, iTunes ...
>>
>> When it comes to DLed TV shows, I can manage lo-res stuff, but any  
>> Hi-Def
>> streams that I grab up can't be played full speed with VLC, Xine, or
>> MPlayer.
>
> As far as HD you're out of luck with even with the fastest upgrade  
> you can buy for your cube. The problem is that even on G5's Apple  
> and the graphics card makers haven't exposed the hardware that  
> would assist with decoding HD so HD decoding on all Macs is  
> software only and therefore depends on raw CPU power. Even G5s  
> strain to decode HD content. My Powerbook 1.33 GHz G4 can't decode  
> even 480P smoothly.

I've done some more playing around and if I let the download finish  
first and I'm doing nothing else 480P H.264 encoded content seems to  
play back correctly on my Powerbook. Anything higher in resolution is  
a slide show.

This media player looks nteresting. They claim to be the number one  
seller in Japan.

http://www.iodata.com/products/products.php?cat=HNP&sc=AVEL&pId=AVLP2% 
2FDVDLA&ts=2&tsc=15


Phil