Looking for a cheap laptop to play 1080p x264 and blu-ray files

[bigshotceo]

Firstly, I'm not sure if this is the correct forum, so I'm sorry if it should go in another one.

I'm looking to buy a laptop that can play my 1080p x264 backups, as well as my blu-ray m2ts backups from a USB hard drive. I was wondering; what's the cheapest processor/onboard graphics chip that can perform this? Right now I'm looking at the t3400 and the t4200; are they powerful enough?

As well, I see that some laptops have the GMA 4500mhd, which supports hardware blu-ray playback; could I safely assume therefore that it would be able to play back my blu-ray rips without dropped frames? Would it provide an advantage over the "regular" 4500m for my x264 rips?

Finally, is USB 2.0 fast enough to support playback of blu-ray files (average file size being 10 to 30 gb per two-hour movie)?

[neomaine]

bigshotceo,

Its not the size that matters , really, but the bitrate of the video file. For USB 2.0 the max, if everything is perfect, should be able to sustain 35-40MBs/sec. BR native covers a wide range but tops out around 25-30MBs if I remember correctly so you should be all set. I'd make sure your external drive was properly defraged to make sure reading the large files remained as constant as possible.

You could always bring along a sample to a test at a local B&M. Since, the USB 2.0 shouldn't be a problem, you could always ask to copy a file from a flash drive or a DVD to test playback with the on board video. Though virtually all nvidia and ati chipsets should have DXVA available. Just make sure you use a media player like MPCHC or VLC to be able to take advantage of it.

[jagabo]

USB 2.0 is 480 Mb/s or 60 MB/s. Real world performance is about half of that -- 240 Mb/s or 30 MB/s. Blur ray bitrates are in the 20 to 30 Mb/s. So USB 2.0 can easily handle it.

The bigger issues is decoding of h.264 encoded video at 1920x1080 24p or 30i with deinterlacing. You will need at least a dual core CPU to handle this properly in software. Or a GPU that can handle it in hardware. Also, don't count on GPU decoding to work all the time so it's best to have both a dual core (or better) CPU and GPU decoding.

The GMA 4500mhd is sufficient for 1080p but I don't know how well it deinterlaces 1080i. Mabye an AMD/ATI laptop like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152087