How to play 1080p on an old computer (AMD Sempron)?

Question

I'm using an old computer - Sempron 2600+ (1600 MHz) and 1250 MB of RAM to play a 1080p avi video. Is there a way to play it smoothly? What player should I use? How about Mplayer and playing the file in a console version of Mplayer with some specific settings?

Answer 1

Depends on the movie. 1080p means only that the video is a HD one. It doesn't specify the codec, the bitrate, so on, so on.

One way to go is using your GPU to decode.
Getting CCCP Pack or the very latest version of MPC-HC will give you the capability of decoding with DXVA.

Of course this means you have to have a GPU which is capable of decoding using DXVA. You can check your DXVA compatibility with this: http://bluesky23.yu-nagi.com/en/ (DXVA Checker)

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Possible GPU options:
- NVidia's CUDA (or DXVA)
- ATI/Intel DXVA

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To use CUDA, you will need to buy a license of CoreAVC.

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Please note: If the video is not properly encoded, you won't be able to decode it with DXVA/CUDA.

Answer 2

If you must resort to software decoding, CoreAVC is probably the fastest decoder around. Works well with MPC-HC with these settings: overlay mixer video output, internal AC3/DTS audio codecs enabled, on windows XP. Avoid ffdshow for both video and audio (ffdshow is fantastic but it is slower.)

Answer 3

You can try (if you have/will have modern graphics card) VLC with "Accelerated video output (overlay)" settings