Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Can you play HD movies on Macbook Air?

M

mekhattak

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 16, 2010
4
0
Hi, This is my first post and I am trying to find out if you could play HD 1080p movies on Macbook Air. I know it doesn't have blue ray or a dvd drive but if you can get it on the hardisk would you be able to watch it on macbook air.
And if you are able to watch it then would be the same quality as it is supposed to be.
 
Yes, HD will play on a MacBook Air. But your limited to the screens resolution of 1280x800, enough for 720p, but not 1080p, which is 1920x1080.
 
thanks for the quick response man. so if I am buying it just to watch HD movies then its the same as the macbookpro 13" or 15"?
 
VLC should be releasing an update in the near future for H264 hardware acceleration on OS X we might be able to play 1080p then at least 720p should suck less juice. I believe the air will play 1080p on windows?
 
mekhattak said:
thanks for the quick response man. so if I am buying it just to watch HD movies then its the same as the macbookpro 13" or 15"?
Click to expand...

My Rev A MacBook air played 1080p mkv files with vlc 1.1.1 smoothly. No problem at all.
 
Thanks man. Now MacBookAir seems like a good option if you are going for a laptop that is portable and you can watch HD movies on it and is a MAC
 
You're better off with a MBP. The air lags when watching even You Tube videos after 5-10 minutes. It does play DIVX movies flawlessly but for the same money MBP is a better option. Twice the battery life too, go with SSD either way!
 
Thanks man. One more thing. How would you compare the MacBookPro with the Toshiba Satellite a665-3dv?
 
DiamondGCoupe said:
You're better off with a MBP. The air lags when watching even You Tube videos after 5-10 minutes. It does play DIVX movies flawlessly but for the same money MBP is a better option. Twice the battery life too, go with SSD either way!
Click to expand...

Hey man, im a prospective MBA buyer who's looking to pick up your 2.13ghz SSD model. Are you using the accelerated Flash GALA release?
 
Note that the MBA will display 1080p on an external display. However, when trying to display 1080p with a browser plug-in, it sometimes stutters and has problems. If you use an actual HD capable player/video, outside of a browser, it works perfectly. The Nvidia GPU is perfectly capable. Video on my 24" LED ACDs is STUNNING. I think it's better than my HD TV, as the colors are out of this world.

Apple just started allowing low-level API access to the GPU's resources. This means that in time the MBA will actually do hardware decoding of h.264. Even in browsers, the MBA's HD video playback capabilities will get better fast. I have noticed Apple improving GPU drivers almost constantly with each 10.6.X update. The MBA truly does just keep getting better and better without any physical changes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back