Here is a short video showing a 1080p 50fps football video, being displayed simultaneously on two identical IBM Thinkpad Z61p laptops released in 2006. They both have Core2 Duo T7600, 3GB RAM, SSD drives and 32-bit operating systems. However one is using a Broadcom BCM970015 Crystal HD Video Decoder PCIe card, which can be bought for around £10 GBP from Ebay.
Notice just how smoothly and easily the Z61p laptop with the Broadcom card displays this 1080p 50fps in full screen with barely any CPU used, whereas the other Z61p running the stock AMD Mobility FireGL v5200 256MB internal graphics, really struggles to play the same video and ends up being very buffered, jerky and using maximum CPU. The Z61p on the right is running slightly ahead of the Z61p on the left, so you can watch the right and then look left to see the same footage for direct comparison. Please note that my smartphone only captures video at a maximum of 30fps, so naturally the full smoothness of the 50fps video on the laptop will not be shown. I think this video should still highlight the stark differences and benefits to this video decoding card though.
I hope this video helps potential purchasers of the Broadcom to decide if it is worth it or not. In my opinion it clearly is worth it, especially for the price and it breathes fresh life into older laptops!
Here are the detailed specifications of the video file played:
EPL.2016.12.31.Liverpool.Vs.Manchester.City.1080p.50fps
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4 / Version 2
File size : 4.65 GiB
Duration : 1 h 42 min
Overall bit rate : 6 472 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2010-02-22 21:41:29
Writing application : no_variable_data
Writing library : no_variable_data
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.2
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1 h 42 min
Bit rate : 5 960 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 50.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.057
Stream size : 4.28 GiB (92%)
Writing library : x264 core 148 r2744 b97ae06
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=23.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 1 h 42 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 spf)
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : 22 ms
Stream size : 282 MiB (6%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
