I just purchased a stock Core Duo, and I am noticing a problem that hasn't seemed to be addresed just yet. I am running a 1080p television, and I have some 720p and 1080p content laying around that I wanted to test with the Mac Mini. All content has been tested with Quicktime Pro and Front Row. I am noticing that their seems to be a bug with Front Row playing content over 720p. It lags behind by 1-2 frames sometimes, not allowing smooth transitions during motion scenes. I first thought something was strange when I downloaded the XMen 3 trailer in 1080p, if you looked at the first few frames where it shows the Rating of the trailer, it should be a smooth background of green, but with Front Row, you can see very strange artificats of blocks. If you watch the same trailer using Quicktime Pro in fullscreen mode, you do not see this. I have also tested content I've recorded (the tv show 24 - using 720p), and you can tell a bit of lag when watching, but never in Quicktime 7 in fullscreen and original size. Has anyone tried this out yet? Could I have some of you test this out to confirm? Thanks!
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Intel Mac Mini Duo Core + Front Row + 1080p Content Problem
- Thread starter lenn0x
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1) The lag, especially in scenes of high motion, is very likely your CPU dropping frames.
2) Blocking is part of the compression. H264 improves on previous efforts but it is a fact of life. Any scene where there is a low dynamic range tends to show this. Are you watching both on your TV? So far, all the 720p trailers I have downloaded from Apple show this.
That said I only have Quicktime until my own Mini arrives.
2) Blocking is part of the compression. H264 improves on previous efforts but it is a fact of life. Any scene where there is a low dynamic range tends to show this. Are you watching both on your TV? So far, all the 720p trailers I have downloaded from Apple show this.
That said I only have Quicktime until my own Mini arrives.
Yes stock 512. I can understand more RAM = better 
What I can't understand is, how can Front Row be taking up more memory, when playing back the video when it is not drawing the graphics on top? It works "perfect" using Quicktime Pro 7. Maybe Front Row isn't unloading its memory when drawing video fullscreen, keeping its last graphic state in memory, which is just likely a bug.
What I can't understand is, how can Front Row be taking up more memory, when playing back the video when it is not drawing the graphics on top? It works "perfect" using Quicktime Pro 7. Maybe Front Row isn't unloading its memory when drawing video fullscreen, keeping its last graphic state in memory, which is just likely a bug.test
1) The lag, especially in scenes of high motion, is very likely your CPU dropping frames.
2) Blocking is part of the compression. H264 improves on previous efforts but it is a fact of life. Any scene where there is a low dynamic range tends to show this. Are you watching both on your TV? So far, all the 720p trailers I have downloaded from Apple show this.
That said I only have Quicktime until my own Mini arrives.
1) The lag, especially in scenes of high motion, is very likely your CPU dropping frames.
Correct! But scenes should not be dropping if Quicktime can handle the same scenes with 30%+ free. Likely the backbuffer is still drawing, when it shouldn't be (no graphics on the screen)
2) Blocking is part of the compression. H264 improves on previous efforts but it is a fact of life. Any scene where there is a low dynamic range tends to show this. Are you watching both on your TV? So far, all the 720p trailers I have downloaded from Apple show this.
I am using MPEG-2 TS streams, but the 1080p Trailers I tested as well were in H.264 from Apple as well..
That said I only have Quicktime until my own Mini arrives.
https://forums.macrumors.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=2218182XIII said:
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BTW, you have X1600 256 MB GDDR3, the Mini has a "slightly" different graphicscard...
Josias said:https://forums.macrumors.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=2218182
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BTW, you have X1600 256 MB GDDR3, the Mini has a "slightly" different graphicscard...
Don't quite understand the first bit of your post, but yes, my iMac GPU is somewhat better