bare bones linux with h.264 playback

[andresp]

I was wondering what the most bare-bones hardware setup (running linux) could deliver skip free h264 playback (I know that hasn't been prefected in VLC yet -- but I don't want the hardware to be the reason for choppy playback). I would be running Ubuntu Breezy -- maybe even the Xubuntu flavor...

Ram?
Processor?
Video Card?
the computer will have a 7200 rpm hard disk, so no worries there

[nm]

Usable hardware configuration for 720x576 @ 25 fps:

Athlon XP 1500+ is fast enough at least for MPlayer, but VLC might need more power. At least any Athlon64 will work. GeForce 2 or better (GeForce FX 5200 is fine) for a video card.

As for RAM, 256 MB is more than enough without KDE or Gnome. 512 MB could help general system responsiveness a bit with them. H.264 decoding only requires about 50 MB, so the memory requirement is not for it, but for other programs.

For HDTV (1920x1080 @ 25 fps), multiply the CPU requirement by 5. A dualcore Athlon64 X2 3800+ could be enough, but VLC (or libavcodec) may not support threading well enough, in which case you'll need to wait for faster CPU cores or improve the libavcodec H.264 decoder.