1080p Video - Missing the Muscle?

Hi guys,

Just hoping someone can confirm something which unfortunately I think I already know. I invested in a rather pricey camera recently which does 1080p, 50fps video recording. I have of course been eager to see how clips look on the bigger screen, only to find they seemingly bring my ageing laptop to its knees.

Rather dated specs are...

Centrino Duo T2600 2.16GHz
2GB RAM
Geforce 7950GTX

Should it be playing this level of content normally or is this camera going to ultimately cost me more than I bargained for? The annoying thing is I've SO nearly got it running - not sure if anyone's had any experience with SMplayer/Mplayer but with a bit of tweaking I've managed nearly-smooth playback, the video is just slightly slower than the audio. Any other player basically shows me a slideshow.

Any tips & tricks to improve this would be great but I obviously know you can't polish a tu*d!

Thanks

Tom

quick question
laptop screen res?
reason i ask is my laptop is 17" but more relevant the screen res is 1920*1200?
if your laptop is say 1280*1024 or something similar then you are only going to see partial screen size

Not my forte, but I have some links which might help a little.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vector_Video_Stand... - monitor resolutions (notice HD1080 at 1920 x 1200 or 1920 x 1080)

http://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/products/articl...

Personally I would go for HD720 quality. There's little wrong with that, and your laptop ought to be less pressed to handle it. Also, consider converting your vid files to Mpeg4 if they are not already.