Choppy 1080 playback to HDTV

[WeatherMan]

Go to a movie trailers website, and have download some 1080p content, play it in either VLC or Media Player Classic, if you don't have any issues then it's itunes

 

[Okedokey]

How much speed do you think you really need for 1080? My HDDs are theoretically capped at 300mb/s but I have only seen it get close to 140mb/s once. Average is around 70mb/s. I have enough speed to play 1080 files on one monitor and game on the other.

Well around 30MB/s is what I would plan for. You have high performance hdds, so its a ridiculous comparison. His is half the speed at best.

The OPs hdd spins at 90 rotations per second but even then, the drive is slow (5400rpm). As you said yourself, usually 70MB/s. Not too far off 30MB/s which it needs to achieve. Run your 1080p content and then run any other program and watch the HDD bottle. This would cause stuttering as only a proportion of that throughput is available - potentially less than 30.

The GT330M is a great GPU and it will even beat a HD3000 on the sandy bridge CPUs - and they can easily handle HD content. Furthermore your CPU is not working hard at all (tapping its foot waiting for the HDD).

IMHO, the HDD is bottled. OP, try USB3/Thunderbolt (preferably) or USB2.1 external storage thereby by-passing the HDD. Even try ReadyBoost and see if performance improvements with HD video. Almost any 4GB USB drive formatted and dedicated to RB has helped me, particularly with SSD free laptops.

Test the drive speed issue man. Also make sure you have it plugged in. This will prevent (usually) HDD head parking, which slows it down in order to provide some protection from damage (being a laptop), but more for the battery life. So it parks, you ask it to fire up HD, its slow and you get stutter. It will also run at slower rotation speeds on battery.

Also do check the codecs as Weathman said - another good idea.

Also go here and make sure you have the latest Intel Drivers and SATA port drivers.

 

[salvage-this]

I get that my drives are faster than his. the point that I was making was that you do not need a USB3 drive to test 1080 files. Even the theoretical cap of 300MB/s gives you quite an over head.

Any flash drive that can consistently read over 30MB/s will be fine to test it with. That is all I was getting at.

 

[Justin]

Oooh forgot about this thread.

A few things have developed since I started this thread. After not being to solve it for the past couple of weeks, I decided to get an Apple TV just to be able to watch my iTunes content. Plus, it saves me the hassle of transferring my laptop from my desk onto my TV which is in another room on the first floor.

But to answer some of the questions here:
- My HDD is a 5400rpm. I also checked the GPU temps while during video playback and it's around 60c.
- Both the TV and my laptop have 60hz refresh rates.
- My Mac doesn't have Thunderbolt. It's an older 2009 model.

However, I don't usually check how much space I have left on my HDD's often and I saw this last week. Would being low on space have something to do with it?

 

[salvage-this]

could be. Might want to do what Okedokey mentioned and defrag the drive. See if that helps at all.

 

[Justin]

Always did defrag the drive and that didn't do anything.

 

[salvage-this]

Do you have a flash drive that you can test the video from? Is the file DRM locked?