Core2Duo Mac Mini - 1080p Playback

Casdawer · 18 Dec 2013 at 22:42

Evening all,

A chap at work is selling his 2.2ghz Core2Duo for £200 and I'm tempted to buy it and use it as a Media PC.

What I need to know is, can it handle 1080p playback?

kitkat9933 · 18 Dec 2013 at 23:03

Yes no problem.

bloodiedathame · 18 Dec 2013 at 23:43

It's mostly* down to bitrate my not-fully-understanding-things friend.

I can make a video 1000kbps 1080p it'll look crap but it will play.
I can make a video 1gbps 1080p, it'll look great but won't play.

It's like megapixels on a camera, the value on it's own is not an indication of picture quality.

hanmer · 19 Dec 2013 at 03:30

I rip my Blu-rays to my home server. I then stream them to my Mac Mini core2duo which is attached to my HDTV, plays the files no problem.

memyselfandi · 19 Dec 2013 at 05:36

It'll depend as well whether your player is off loading any decoding to the GPU or doing it all with the CPU. I tend to use 720p files rather than 1080p ones and that makes a ~50-60% change in CPU usage on playback.