If your CPU is too slow for HD playback (720p and 1080p), there is a way for fixing it, without making any hardware upgrades. Reading this article, you will learn, how to make your video card's GPU do video acceleration instead of your CPU. That increases video playback performance immensely and takes quite some workload off your CPU.

Video card manufacturers have been embedding video decoding codecs in their cards for some time now, but if you want GPU accelerated HD video, you need at least an ATI Radeon 3000 series or Nvidia Geforce 8000 series ( GTX 640/320 and older excluded). This can also be done on laptops, if you have a dedicated video card and not integrated graphics. Follow instructions:

1. Download Media Player Classic: Home Cinema (GPU accelerated).
2. Extract it somewhere on your drive.
3. You will notice, there are two folders inside this archive, Mplayer - 32-bit and Mplayer - 64-bit. 64-bit version is for 64-bit Windows and 32-bit for 32-bit ones. Go inside one folder and run the executable ("mplayerc.exe" or "mplayerc64.exe").

4. A quite old-school looking player will open, but it is one of the most powerful. Before using it for x264 playback, you should modify one option. Go to "View" - "Options". In the left field select "Playback" and after that "Output". All you have to do is change DirectShow preference. If you are running Windows Vista, please change it to "EVR" and if you are running Windows XP, change it to "VMR9 (renderless)". After that click "Apply" and you are done.
5. Now you can watch HD videos and your GPU should be doing the work. In all other video players settings will remain unchanged- no GPU acceleration there

Some netbooks already support GPU video acceleration and can play HD videos smoothly even though they are based on a power-saving Atom processor. Such example is HP Mini 311-1000NR
with 6.25 hours of battery life.

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Name: Email:  do not notifynotify Title: UBBCode:         -color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge   Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

sonac  - Try downloading again   |93.103.42.xxx |2010-03-01 09:20:43 I tried this and it worked. @Den Harris: I could download this file normally. Try downloading it again. Maybe this verison on this site is somehow different from yours. Quote 0 0

Den Harris  - Well damn.   |75.95.167.xxx |2010-03-01 06:49:05 I'm not sure why no matter what I try doesn't seem to work. I was trying to use this (Btw, your link for the download is broken) but still didn't work. I'm going to try to update the computer's drivers but MAN do these mkv files piss me off. Quote 0 0

Pete Stevens  - Amazing!   |94.173.96.xxx |2010-02-21 10:55:54 Thanks a lot, that works brilliantly! I'd tried to use VLC which I'd heard could run .264 MKV files but it kept stuttering. With Media Player Classi all of the stuttering has gone! Incidentally, I'm streaming the MKV files over my network to my Acer Revo R3610 in my living room; I'm very impressed that this software has been able to make that possible where VLC failed. Thanks again, Pete Quote 0 0

peter digiorno  - niggalicious   |76.127.200.xxx |2009-12-09 17:58:51 This was very helpful but now I cant seem to get the audio to sync up with the video play, I've tried to tweak the audio but to no avail, any advice? Quote 0 0

Sean   |93.103.42.xxx |2009-11-27 01:39:03 So you are saying, that you've tried this and it ain't working? That's strange. I am using this both on my stationary PC with 4870 X2 and on my laptop with 9600m GT and it works great on both. It should be working.... Quote 0 0

lEN  - Not working with 9700m GT   |145.37.208.xxx |2009-11-26 04:46:39 Isn't my video card supposed to support this? I know it will play Blu-Ray discs over my GPU but i cant get it to play x264 or other high def files over my GPU. Do you have any tips? I already have the latest nVidia drivers Quote 0 0

Rowland2004  - AWSOME For Netbook!!!!!!!!!!   |76.188.153.xxx |2009-11-23 07:45:55 This made streaming HD movies over my netbook possible. Because trying to stream HD over a network on a Netbook uses mostly CPU power and putting it all on the GPU makes it Happen. Quote 1 0

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