Monday 29 August 2011

HP DM1-3100SA Netbook Review- Part 3

Graphics
This task was quite open ended so I tried it out on a few things.
TL:DR- There were some issues playing HD content with video becoming choppy, but normal content should be fine.

Firstly I tried playing a couple of .mkv files in VLC media player. I have a copy of the Top Gear Middle East Special, which is 720p and played perfectly well in a window and full screen. This was with mains power and the power settings on High Performance. I also have a 720p Family Guy Special episode, which again worked fine. However if I unplugged the mains, the netbook changed power plan to HP Recommended and the video instantly became choppy and unwatchable.

Next up I ventured on to Youtube and did a search for “HD”. I decided to try and play the TRON: Legacy film trailer in 1080p (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9szn1QQfas).
First time I tried this, it wouldn’t play full screen. When in 720p, this was fine in window mode and acceptable full screen, although there was some slightly judderiness to the video.

I tried out some HD videos on BBC’s IPlayer. First HD programme I could find was ‘Made in Britain’. In both window and full screen mode this suffered the same slight judderiness as Youtube on 720p.

I left the recommended videos to last, just in case these were any different to real word use (such as TV shops showing uber awesome HD footage that works particularly well on that set).
A link to an IMAX HD clip was provided (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou6_MkIvKOo), which suffered the same problems as TRON.
There was also an Adobe Flash video (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/live-player/). This worked fine full screen and looked awesome.

At the end I went back to Youtube and TRON and it appeared to play full screen. Maybe the moral of the story here is that it will play 1080p, if you are doing nothing else at the same time.


I previously mentioned in a previous review that I used Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to render some photos. It was not the greatest, the overall speed of the application was quite slow on the netbook and netbook screen itself didn’t have the best colour reproduction while it did have a decent resolution for the size of the screen.

Games wise, I haven’t time to try any games, but if I do I’ll make a post.

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