From Friday nights in to boredom at airports, laptops now serve a purpose of more than just writing Word documents and surfing the Internet. Users are upgrading their drives to view Blue-Ray DVDs and access high-quality movies online from popular content websites. Here are a few tips to ensure you get the most out of watching movies from your laptop.
Change Your Power
Typically laptops default to a low performance. This conserves power and is beneficial when working on programs such as Word or writing an email. When running a video, however, the laptop must utilize more energy—especially HD videos that require a higher output of power. You can combat this setting by simply changing the power management to a high performance setting within your laptop’s settings function. This can be done in Windows by going to the Control Panel and finding the Power Options menu. You can also click on the battery icon on the taskbar and access Power Options.
Upgrade Your Notebook
If your laptop is older even by a few years, it is not current with the technological needs of HD videos. Laptops are now faster and more capable of the performance necessary to sustain the power required to view a movie. Lightweight laptops are not only easier to carry, but also optimized for performance. If you are going to be spending hours watching movies, an investment like this will yield much more positive results.
Check Your Programs
Watching HD movies causes your laptop to work harder. It has to decode the content. Stopping any anti-virus software running in the background, closing out of any open programs, removing any malware, and keeping a clean system will ensure your laptop doesn’t have to work harder than it already will. It is also possible that you experience reduced power when transferring files between laptops or onto other devices, so be sure to finish all of these tasks before inserting the movie or downloading one off of a website.
Use Graphics Chips
Modern laptops come with a graphics chip to assist processors with any high-definition movies you want to play, which is known as GPU-acceleration. They are designed to display video and graphics while taking away the load from the processors. If your laptop is an older model, using a graphics chip will ensure that the video plays effortlessly and does not skip while running at just a small percentage of its maximum load.
Following these techniques will help ensure you have a pleasant, uninterrupted experience when watching movies on your laptop. It is not tedious to perform a few simple tasks so that your laptop doesn’t have to work harder and cause you frustration in the movie-viewing process.
Source:
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/graphic-cards/156701-how-play-hd-content-movies-netbook-laptop.html
