Hi there,

I've been playing back the TV shows recorded on my Humax on my notebook which is quite an odd one. Just SD recordings, not HD and it works fine with VLC. It's not a very powerful notebook.

But I was wondering if a netbook can handle playback of SD at fullscreen without skipping.

Has anyone tried this on a netbook, and if it worked (or didn't) what netbook did you try this on.

Thanks in advance

Yes works well on my Samsung NC10

And it's fine on my Advent 4211

Thanks for the answers guys, although both those netbooks are at the higher end of the processor range or speed. How does the resolution fit? What is the SD resolution by the way? I was wondering how VLC works before full screen mode as the 600 pixel high resolution of those laptops may mean you can't actually view all the controls without scrolling the screen around. Is this true?

Has anyone tried with a higher resolution netbook?

Actually, another question for your netbooks, do 2.5" external HD's work from the power provided on your USB port? My older laptop needs a power supply as well which is no good really when travelling as I may want to put the films on an external drive.

All I know is I can run my maxtor 60gb HDD from the usb port on my advent netbook should I need to, I prefer to use a large flash memory stick.

Depending on channel SD uses (worst to best)

544 x 576 (eg All ITV 1 regions on sat except ITV West Country at the moment)

704 x 576 (eg ITV 1 on Freeview)

720 x 576 (eg BBC 1 and ITV 1 West Country on satellite)

The bitrate (and hence file size) also varies.

I have an Acer Aspire One 150 running Windows 7 RC 1. Last night I transferred a BBC2 version of Top Gear to an SDHC card via a USB carrier. The Acer has an SD slot in the side, plugged in the card, fired up VLC and hey presto - it just worked. The native resolution for the netbook screen is 1024 x 600.

I have to say that VLC with SD files from my Freesat+ on my Sammy N110 play great. I tend to copy them across to the hard drive via a USB stick (just so when I am watching them I don't have anything sticking out of the side I can damage). The ability to copy files from the Humax is a great feature, I'm never stuck away from home without something I want to watch.

Now, the USB ports will certainly power a 2.5" external drive; however, the N110 does everything it can to squeeze as long as possible out of the battery (and it does this well), but adding an external drive does tend to sap the power a bit.

If the purpose of your question is to determine if you should buy a new netbook, then I suggest you wait a bit, the Sammy N510 will be released soon and the technology it employs (ION) coupled with the rumoured HDMI port, means it should be a better bet for A/V work. However, I'm still a bit dubious about its ability to handle HD work.

Anybody any feeling if an ION based netbook would be able to handle some (obviously not Freesat) HD stuff? My N110 struggles badly and even I think it is too big a gap for an ION machine to jump (more than happy to be told I am talking rubbish and that there is a way even the N110 can handle HD )

Thanks for all your answers.

I'm not entirely sure if I should hold back a tad and wait for the next generation to come out. But it is reassuring to know that a standard netbook can still play Humax SD shows without problems.

This is one of the best features for me with the Humax. The only problem is that my current laptop which is a ancient 12" Dell is at the end of it's life.

If it's a D400 or better they make excellent internet devices. I BOUGHT a D400 very recently as it's silent, low temperature, and streams music and video perfectly from network drives. It's a 6 year old machine with a new lease of life. I did stick an additional 512MB of ram in (was lying around), a better wireless card (dead cheap ebay) and bigger hard drive (from a dead laptop) though.