Media encoding laptop

[dajakal]

Are there any good 14" laptops that can handle HD encoding well? I need to replace my desktop, but the only major computing I do now is serving HD video to my PS3, so I'm wondering if I can get a laptop instead. My system right now is an old AMD XP 3200+, and it chokes on HD video (among other things). But I have no idea how current mobile processors stand up to those kinds of tasks, so I don't know if I can live with a Core 2 T-whatever in a laptop or if I need to go with a more powerful desktop.
I priced out parts for a budget i5 system at ~$600 w/o monitor, so I'd say a budget of $800 or so for a suitable laptop would be good. I'm not interested in larger than a 14" laptop, I used to have a 15" and found it too big for me to carry (yes, I'm weak ). So, any suggestions?
Thanks!

 

[mpilchfamily]

Most all laptops now can handle HD encoding relatively well. For better performance you'll want to get the best video card you can find in that size laptop.

 

[alyarb]

just going to say that the correct word is decoding, not encoding.

 

[DaveSimmons]

For serving video to the PS3, you're transcoding, correct? (format conversion)

The video card probably won't help with that since the HD content isn't being displayed on the laptop. If you -also- want to watch HD on the laptop then an ATI 4xxx video card would offer hardware decoding with some PC video player software.

For the CPU, a Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz laptop will have more than twice the decoding / transcoding power of your XP 3200+ with any sofware that supports multiple cores.

 

[dajakal]

Yea, I primarily do transcoding, which is more cpu than gpu. Does that mean integrated graphics chips on laptops can't play HD video well though?

 

[DaveSimmons]

The CPU needs to do most or all of the work for playback with integrated graphics for many formats, but if the CPU is fast enough to transcode flawlessly then playback should be fine on the laptop.

 

[dawks]

If you're transcoding for playback on the PS/3 you'll want a nice and fast Core2Duo at least. Look for 2.5ghz or better if possible just for comfort factor. The video chip will have no impact on this performance (at least for now.. I haven't seen anything that uses the GPU for transcoding to a streaming server).

If you plan on playing back HD video on the laptop itself, then the integrated graphics is not the best idea. Look for something with nVidia ION.. not sure how many laptops have it, but supposedly can handle full 1080p h.264 even with a slow ass 1.6ghz atom.

Or another modern nVidia or ATI graphics chip.

 

[0roo0roo]

any real hd encoding on a non quad is going to take many hours

 

[dajakal]

Like I said earlier, it's transcoding, so I don't know how different that is from encoding. The biggest issue with my Athlon XP 3200 (2.2GHz single core) and Radeon 9800SE system is that it currently can't do real-time HD transcoding, and the buffer is only about 15min worth so I can only watch 15min of video at a time...real annoying. And playback with CoreAVC gets laggy and stutters.
But it sounds like a Core 2 Duo mobile roughly 2.2GHz or better would do the trick for transcoding? Playback might not be an option with integrated graphics that seem common on 14" laptops....

 

[0roo0roo]

if its on the fly with a 3200 which is slow as sh*t really, so slow its not really easily comparable to anything modern then its not really reencoding anything, let alone at hd. at best its probably changing some kind of container formatting on the fly for compatibility. 3200 sounds impressive but it was supposedly comparable to a 3ghz pentium 4..which was a stretch. and those get thumped by even old core 2's a ghz lower