WinDVD2000 Requirements

InterVideo WinDVD2000 Requirements

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Requirements

| WinDVD2000 requires the DirectX 6 runtime to be installed prior to running.

The PC has a variety of components that make up its combination of capabilities. Software DVD playback quality and performance depends on several of these components heavily. They include:

1. CPU Speed
2. Graphics Subsystem
3. Graphics Bus Type
4. Graphics Memory
5. Audio Subsystem
6. Audio Bus Type
7. System Memory
8. System Cache Sizes

The most important components to overall performance are the graphics subsystem and the CPU. Software DVD has several playback modes that are dependant on the graphic card:

- Software only playback, with all decode processing done by the CPU.
- Motion compensation hardware assistance performed by the graphics processor.
- Motion compensation and IDCT (inverse discrete cosine transforms) hardware assistance performed by the graphics processor.

Each successive case reduces the load on the CPU, so CPU requirements can vary widely based on the graphics processor.

In addition, there are two types of content available, one based on film (typically Hollywood movies) and the other based on video (music videos and Betacam/ camcorder content). Film based content plays back at 24 frames per second and video based content plays back at 30 fps or 60 odd and even fields per second. Video content requires more horsepower to decode, and will use more CPU than its film-based cousin.

So, with all that in mind, here's what you can expect, based on some examples of CPU types and speeds:

- Software only playback of film content: 300A Celeron CPU
- Software only playback of video content: 350 MHz Pentium II CPU
- Motion Compensation assisted playback of film content: 266 MHz Pentium II CPU
- Motion Compensation assisted playback of video content: 333 Celeron CPU
- MC and IDCT assisted playback of film content: 233 MHz Pentium II CPU
- MC and IDCT assisted playback of video content: 300A Celeron CPU

Best video playback is achieved on graphics subsystems that focus on video as well as 3D performance. These include:

Matrox G200, ATI Rage Pro and 128, S3 Savage 3D, Savage 4, and GX2 chips, Trident Cyberblade, Intel i810 and i752, SiS 6326 DVD, 3Dfx Voodoo 3, and Nvidia TnT, TnT2, and TnT2 Ultra.

Other qualified graphics subsystems include:

The Nvidia Riva 128 series, the Intel i740 and Real3D Starfighter series, the 3DLabs Permedia 2, and the 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee.

WinDVD2000 works best with graphic cards that utilize a hardware overlay surface to display video. This is common with nearly all graphic chipsets created since 1998.

| Without a hardware overlay surface their is an increased demand on the graphic card which can turn into a bottleneck to performance. Even the fastest CPUs will not be able to compensate for the lack of a hardware overlay surface. Many cards that utilize software overlay surfaces will either fail to work or suffer from decreased performance and video quality.

| Running 640x480 16 Color will run SUPERVGA.DRV or VGA.DRV. WinDVD2000 will not be available in this mode. Switch to a different resolution or color depth. Full windowed hardware acceleration with this version of the drivers is only possible when running at 16bpp modes.

| The DirectShow version of the software will not work in Windows NT since Windows NT does not support DirectShow. Motion Compensation support will also not work since the graphic drivers do not support that feature.

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