Who does the de-coding?

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Hello,

a random question I am interested in.

I remember when I had my 6 year old laptop, playing 720p videos (circa 4.5Gb in size) was choppy and not enjoyable.

Now I have a MBL and a Samsung smart TV which can play 1080p vidoe (circa 10Gb in size) without a problem.

The question is: who is doing the actual playing? Does the MBL simply stream the file to the Samsung TV over DNLA while the TV processes it? Or does the MBL send a video-signal to the TV over LAN and the TV simply projects the image?

I read that the MBL has a 1Ghz processor and 256Mb or RAM, hence why I think it is weird it would be able to handle 1080p video better than my old laptop (which had a 2.4Ghz dualcore + 2Gb Ram). But then again, I am sure a Samsung TV does not have very impressive sounding specs either (but maybe a dedicated chip?).

Thanks to someone who can explain this to me :slight_smile:

2

The WD is just sending the file contents via DLNA and your TV is doing the decoding and playback.  Most, if not all, playback devices (Smart TVs and Set Top Boxes such as the WDTV) have dedicated hardware doing the decode and video / audio rendering.