LordOfLA

As some of you may know I've recently been investing in hardware and software to make my PC play back Blu-Ray and HD-DVD films.

So far I've spent ~£80 less than a PS3 costs in the UK.

Costs comprise of the following:

Quadcore upgrade to Q6600 + HSF(Core 2 Duo E6600 could not play back Blu-Ray or HD-DVD completely stutter free, even with an 8800GT hardware assist)

LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD reader/DVD/CD re-writer

License for AnyDVD HD so that I don't need to worry about the fact that my neither my TV or LCD monitor are HDCP compliant according to various applications that test for it.

License for PowerDVD 8 (Blu-Ray edition, doesn't do HD-DVD issues with some Blu-ray features, patches can sometimes remove features unannounced)

License for WinDVD 9 - plays both blu-ray and HD-DVD, scaling/aspect ratio issues on hd-dvd.

Shortly license for Arcsoft Total Media Extreme, plays Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, no issues so far.

Given that any films on HD-DVD that are not yet on blu-ray (Paramount stuff mostly) will be on blu-ray soon, and the hassles I've had. I would at this point recommend that those of you looking into Blu-Ray HiDef save the extra few pennies and get a playstation 3.

You will then have a fully upgradeable and future compatible blu-ray player that happens to play the odd game now and then when you want.

The drawback to that is that your TV may not support the HDCP copyprotection stuff to play back HiDef over HDMI/DVI and may result in degraded quality playback over Component.

I leave it to each of yoou to decide for yourselves which is the better investment for you.

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ElementalDragon

.... i haven't had any trouble with playing BluRay movies on my PC with my Lite-On BluRay drive and PowerDVD 8. And i don't see why they'd remove features with a patch. Hell, the latest patch added support for the 2.0 standard.

And i'm almost thinking there's something wrong with something else in your computer if a C2D E6600 and 8800GT couldn't play back BluRay or HD DVD stutter free, but my Athlon 64 X2 6000+ and 8800GTX could. Granted the 8800GTX could have something to do with it..... but who knows.

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LordOfLA

Do you have Resident Evil Extinction? Some of the very high quality movies with Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio need some serious processing power to playback. The PS3's Cell CPU provides 3 CISC general processing cores and 8 further number crunching cores. I'm sure thats more power than a core 2 duo and quadro

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ElementalDragon

yeah, i have Extinction. don't remember if i played it back with Dolby though. may need to hook my Z-5500's up to my Auzentech Prelude with the fiber optic cable for that....

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Dark Atheist

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=852601

LordOfLA

The whole point to the prelude is the awesome analogue output. If you use optical you may as well use a normal X-Fi..

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LordOfLA

Happens to cost more than a PS3, and can't play games...

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ElementalDragon

seriously. when the hell are prices gonna drop on this sh*t? BluRay has long since been crowned the winner of the format war...... but BluRay movies still cost like $29+.... standalone players are still expensive as hell......

And i don't think the Prelude supports the higher Dolby audio formats using analog connections.

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LordOfLA

The z-5500 only does Dolby Digital, not TrueHD. My copy of RE:E only has Dolby TrueHD for the main soundtrack. I still have to downmix to 5.1 though. So combine downmixing uncompressed audio fro 7.1 to 5.1, very high bitrate video, puts some major loading on the old CPU

Oh and us folk over here in the UK can get Blu-Ray/HD-DVD for the same price as DVD's at play.com

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Dark Atheist

the pound to the dollar atm is 1.8 so you would get a good deal on that player - i got 500£ of traveller cheques the other day $950

LordOfLA

import costs make it not worth it

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movvadinesh

I think future of cds/dvds will be dominated by blu-ray disks

binoyxj

Thats for sure...once its cost comes down its gonna dominate..

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Bigstie

Blu-rays will become mainstream for physical movie distribution, not a doubt about this.
Imho in the not so far future the cloud storage will grow bigger - iTunes Movie Rentals makes me say that and also there is the SkyDrive from Microsoft, Gmail space is continuously growing, flowers bloom...

ElementalDragon

yeah.... BluRay will become mainstream for movie distribution (and HOPEFULLY the prices of said movies will drop really freakin quick).... but CD's i feel will be around for quite some time yet. Music hasn't really been put on DVD. There are some DVD-Audio discs... but few and far between. You'd also need a stereo that plays them, and Car stereo's don't typically do so.

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