HD-DVD

[jazz_mavericks]

Hi, first time poster, any help would be mucho appreciated!!!!

I have a toshiba equium a200 with a gma 950 graphics card, and an Xbox 360 HD-DVD player. Is there any way i can get my laptop to play HD-DVDs, or is the graphics card too crap?

If it is the card, can it be upgraded at all?

Thanks in advance!!!

[Krispy Kritter]

The quick answer, and only way to know for sure, is to connect it and try it. Although unless your screen supports a native resolution of 1920x1080, you won't get the full benefit of HD anyway.

You will need the latest video drivers and latest version/updates for a player such as PowerDVD that supports HD.

[neomaine]

jazz_mavericks,

I'd give it just a 'maybe' based on the specs at the Intel site:

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm

Basically, its your everyday homegrown 256-bit 400Mhz chip but uses RAM for video memory. Its got built in MPEG2 decoding so if you were playing early version Blue-Ray discs I'd give you a better chance.

However, that's not the case with HD-DVD. Good news is that it looks like it upgradable to PCI Express somehow which would give you better pipe, clock and true video memory. Not sure how that works though.

Either way, as is, I'd expect some high CPU usage. Not sure if that T5500 Core2Duo at 1.6Ghz will do the trick.

Let us know how it goes!!