How is the 2011 MBP in playing HD Video? (h.264)

[Sunyata7]

I just bought the base-model 2011 MacBook pro with the HR Antiglare display. I want to play HD movies off h.264 files and I was just wondering how well this machine could do that. Does it even do h.264 decoding?

Thanks

 

[simsaladimbamba]

It should do it just fine, as even my 2007 iMac can do this (1080p on a C2D with 2GHz and 4GB RAM). Even older Macs can do this.

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

 

[Sunyata7]

It should do it just fine, as even my 2007 iMac can do this (1080p on a C2D with 2GHz and 4GB RAM). Even older Macs can do this.

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

Cool thanks. When I tried playing an HD Trailer off apple.com/trailers at the Apple Store, it actually lagged quite a bit. But I figured maybe this was just streaming HD?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Cool thanks. When I tried playing an HD Trailer off apple.com/trailers at the Apple Store, it actually lagged quite a bit. But I figured maybe this was just streaming HD?

Maybe it was a slow internet connection, due to many visitors using the same connection.
Just let the trailer load, it will play automatically, if the download is far enough that the end of the clip is downloaded before the playing is over.
When watching a 1080p trailer on my C2D 2.8GHz MBP, QT Player X will use around 10% CPU (out of 200% available CPU).

Maybe some other process was hogging up the CPU?

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Have a look at Activity Monitor (Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.
Also check the "System Memory" tab to see what your "Page ins:", "Page outs:" and "Swap used:" are.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

Further reading:

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Making The Most of Activity Monitor
What Is Activity Monitor (or How to Take Your Mac's Pulse)​

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[johnnj]

It's fine. I can play 1080p mkv fine both locally and streaming from my server.

I use both VLC and Plex.

I have one running right now.

 

[JTToft]

I want to play HD movies off h.264 files and I was just wondering how well this machine could do that.

- So well that it can play at least four 1080p H.264 video files simultaneously.

 

[Prodo123]

- So well that it can play at least four 1080p H.264 video files simultaneously.

Well for me, that's 3 1080p YouTube videos + 1 iTunes 1080p movie + 1080p iMovie project.
'Nuff said.