I have an "antiques roadshow" (i.e., circa late 90s) TOSHIBA Tecra with 1.5 gb memory. It plays streaming BBC Iplayer programmes through VGA cables and over a good 10 mega BB connection ok but the picture occasionally judders, presumably as the agéd processor cannot cope with the amount of data being thrown at it. I am prepared to invest in a new laptop with 4gb memory and an i5 processor and HDMI if I felt this would be the way to better playback and streaming. Can anyone advise please?
Laptop requirements for TV through VPN
Originally Posted by Gefil:
“I have an "antiques roadshow" (i.e., circa late 90s) TOSHIBA Tecra with 1.5 gb memory. It plays streaming BBC Iplayer programmes through VGA cables and over a good 10 mega BB connection ok but the picture occasionally judders, presumably as the agéd processor cannot cope with the amount of data being thrown at it. I am prepared to invest in a new laptop with 4gb memory and an i5 processor and HDMI if I felt this would be the way to better playback and streaming. Can anyone advise please?”
“I have an "antiques roadshow" (i.e., circa late 90s) TOSHIBA Tecra with 1.5 gb memory. It plays streaming BBC Iplayer programmes through VGA cables and over a good 10 mega BB connection ok but the picture occasionally judders, presumably as the agéd processor cannot cope with the amount of data being thrown at it. I am prepared to invest in a new laptop with 4gb memory and an i5 processor and HDMI if I felt this would be the way to better playback and streaming. Can anyone advise please?”
Just about all laptops these days have the same components in them as they are all generally sourced from the same manufacturers, just depends what OS you want on it. e.g OSX, W7 or a variation of linux.
An i5 is perfect just make sure it has a decent graphics card with dedicated memory.
I have a HP laptop T8100 dual core processor 4 gb ram and 256ram graphics card running w7 and streaming to tv's connected via hdmi or svideo works perfectly without any juddering (I have 10 mb BB).this is about 3 years old i think
How about before buying another laptop - stick in an extra stick of ram into the laptop (cheap 2nd hand ones on ebay) install (dual boot) a light weight OS encase your running xp and see if that makes a difference? for example this is easy os to install and use and is lightwieght
http://www.jolicloud.com/download (review) http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/20...-jolicloud.php
Do you need a laptop? or what about a getting a dedicated pc to sit next to the tv? e.g an acer revo? or do what i have done I have a HP DC7700 E6600 dual processor 3.5 gb ram and 256ram graphics card only cost about £110 and it streams perfectly, its a small form factor so the base unit is tiny. Or are you looking to replace your existing laptop anyway?
HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Toshiba are all reputable makes, you will hear bad and good stories about all makes of computers online, but the main thing to stick by if your looking to get a new machine is what is your budget? and whats the best value you can get out of it?
Many thanks for this. I wanted to gather this sort of opinion and detail about what to get, particulalrly as regards the graphics card. So dedicated memory of, say, 256 and above is important as well as the i5 type? My main idea was eventually to hook the laptop up to the tv via hdmi as I cannot get the BBC iplayer out of the UK.
Originally Posted by Gefil:
“Many thanks for this. I wanted to gather this sort of opinion and detail about what to get, particulalrly as regards the graphics card. So dedicated memory of, say, 256 and above is important as well as the i5 type? My main idea was eventually to hook the laptop up to the tv via hdmi as I cannot get the BBC iplayer out of the UK.”
“Many thanks for this. I wanted to gather this sort of opinion and detail about what to get, particulalrly as regards the graphics card. So dedicated memory of, say, 256 and above is important as well as the i5 type? My main idea was eventually to hook the laptop up to the tv via hdmi as I cannot get the BBC iplayer out of the UK.”
I do not know about getting iplayer when you are out of the uk, but I'm sure Google has a lot of articles on that suggestion.
But an i5 would be perfect you can get reasonable deals online around the £500 + for what you need if it falls in the budget (as i do not know how much you want to spend).
If you streaming iplayer via a proxy if your outside the uk then maybe that is the problem causing the buffering, I do not know that one but that's a guess
If you can get 512mb ram dedicated graphics or more I would go for that, 256mb is adequate I have found, but 3gb ram inside that machine as well is a bonus. to be honest its a combination of the amount of ram, dedicated graphics card and a decent processor is what you will be looking out for and hdmi, anything else the laptop has is always a bonus.
here are some around the £500 price range as that is what i could find for the specs you asked for
http://www.box.co.uk/Lenovo_B570_i5_...e_1129166.html
http://www.box.co.uk/Samsung_RV511_1054342.html
http://www.box.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5750G_1091433.html
http://www.box.co.uk/products/ids/at...lection/page/5
amazon has a few but they seem to be refurbs, same with pc world. I do not know where you intend to buy your machine from or what the prices are like in spain. i have had a look through google and it seems that box.co.uk has the best prices so far, but I have no idea what they are like as a business and what the laptop warranty covers i.e. if you buy it in England and take it over to Spain to be used.I can remember that Samsung offer a worldwide warranty (i think).
But try my other idea of sticking in an extra bit of ram into the old laptop and bunging on a light wieght os that may breath life into the old machine. I have done that on old towers that run P3's and they seem to work alright, you cant multitask when they are streaming but I like to take things apart and fiddle
