No transcoding?!

Runningfree wrote:
Ive never tested 1080p material on my old PC but 720P worked fine.

there is a pretty huge difference in the amount of processesing required between 720p and 1080p...

480p = 338,000 pixels / frame 720p = 922,000 pixels / frame 1080i = 1,037,000 pixels / frame 1080p = 2,074,000 pixels / frame

over double the number of pixels just in one frame alone

Many old-style transcoders just converts the whole file and creates a new one on the fly and that takes alot of horsepower.

this is the only way transcoding happens.

A modern way of transcoding is just to swap the container on the file (example from avi to mpeg) and let the rest just slide by in the stream. The diffrence in CPU usage is huge and the technique is not hard to manage or exotic in any manner.

this is called re-muxing, and while yes it is alot different cpu usage, its not the same as transcoding, and as already mentioned, the CLIENT has to support/understand the data stream inside the container (the container is mostly irrelevant).