CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

AFryia · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 2:13 am Post subject: Blu-Ray Drive Choices ?

I see that the Blu-Ray player/ DVD burners have come down quite a bit.

I have an office PC whose DVD quit so I'm thinking of moving my HTPC DVD to it and getting a Blu-ray for the HTPC.

What are currently the leading drives? What hardware requirements are there to run these latest Blu-ray drives?

greg_mitch · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 5320

I picked up a first gen Sony from Buy.com for $69 with software included.

Works perfectly and great to add BR for less than $100!

I think this is the one...not on sale right now..

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=206612988&listingid=34843613&dcaid=17902

MikeEby · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5237 Location: Osceola, Indiana

I've had great luck with my LG combo drive, going on 1-1/2 years with no issues.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136133

You will need a video card that has HDCP if you want to play Blu-rays without ripping to the hardrive first. I'm also a big fan of Vista or Windows 7 for blu-ray playback but other have had good luck with XP. 2 GB ram minimum and at least 3.0 GHz Dual Core Pentium or 2.4 GHz Core 2 Dual. I also have an AMD Athlon 64's that work fine too with integrated graphics controller.

Mike

greg_mitch · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 5320

not if you invested in anydvdhd...

AFryia · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 12:52 am Post subject:

greg_mitch · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 5320

I dont know if that vid card will support BR or HDDVD playback?!

But yes...the anydvd HD takes away the copy protection...and allows you to rip.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 3:28 am Post subject:

If you have XP and an older video card that doesn't have HDCP then it should display over VGA.

AFryia · Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:00 am Post subject:

Mark_A_W · Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 2:00 am Post subject:

If you have an old video card, it won't have hardware acceleration for Bluray codecs.

If you have an old video card, you have an old computer. It will not be fast enough to play Bluray without hardware acceleration.

You need new mobo, processor, video card and ram.

You need a a Core2Duo running over 3ghz to be safe in software, an ATi card is best if using hardware accel, but you will not get Gamma unless you use MPC-HC.

greg_mitch · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 5320

To clarify...you don't need 3ghz if you get a vid card with HW acceleration.

If you want to get a card without (hard to nowadays) you would need some pretty high clock speeds.

AFryia · Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 12:04 am Post subject:

I running a P4 3.0Ghz 800Mhz FSB. If I get the right video card will that do? I really don't want another motherboard sitting around collecting dust.

Is there a minimum graphic memory a video card should have for Bluray and hardware acceleration?

Mark_A_W · Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 12:58 am Post subject:

It is theoretically true that an ATi HD2600 Pro AGP will give you hardware acceleration, but in practice the old AGP cards were a disaster.

You need a new PC. You really need a PCI-Express video card.

Mark_A_W · Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 1:16 am Post subject:

Oh, FWIW...

I just built a small HTPC for our TV room.

- A$75 Gigabyte G31 mobo
- A$105 E5200 processor
- A$40 2x 1GB ram (2 sticks for dual channel).

Overclocked to 3.3ghz, this plays all my Bluray rips, including the IMAX scenes on The Dark Knight, using the onboard Intel G3100 graphics, no hardware accel needed.

It's running XBMC. It just works (well, the SVN build running without the fullscreen switch).

It doesn't have to be an expensive PC these days.

MikeEby · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5237 Location: Osceola, Indiana

I have to agree with Mark...It doesn't make a lot of sense to do it 1/2 way. The P4 would be really marginal. Download Windows 7 RC for the OS. I've been running 1600X900@72 Hz... It looks great and is sharp as a tack. It's purely subjective but Windows 7 Scaling 1080p to 900p looks incredible.

Mike

Mark_A_W · Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 2:11 am Post subject:

Windows 7 scaling?

How is Windows 7 scaling?

It's either the playback software or the graphics drivers.

MikeEby · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5237 Location: Osceola, Indiana

Mark_A_W · Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 3:21 am Post subject:

Actually the video renderer does the scaling. So if they have changed EVR, then yes, it could look better.

I'm going to go to Windows7, but I'll buy it when it's released, I'm not installing a version with a timebomb.

Elaine Benes · Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Posts: 1416

I too had an old P4 machine that it kinda bothered me I couldn't use for BD playback, what I did was sell the old mobo and ram and bought one of these mobo's : http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=017227&cid=MB.575
It uses the dirt cheap DDR2 memory, and has a PCI-E x16 slot. I added this video card: http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=020767&cid=999.243.272 and I got 2GB of memory in a dual channel kit for $15. on sale, so with an investment of about $120. I was able to utilize my old P4 3.4Ghz processor that was otherwise going to be obsolete.

I used this drive for BD playback and dvd burning:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=260395029918

But I'd likely buy this drive today if I was building the same box:
http://www.centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=6789

I added a bunch of older IDE drives, put them in "spanned" mode so I could store a bunch of BD rips on them as if they were one big drive, and it seems to work great, so far. Runs VISTA without any issues, and *seems* to be really nimble/quick...

But, its not my main box, just a hobby build, so it doesn't get a lot of use...

greg_mitch · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 5320

Keep an eye on this drive....

http://www.buy.com/prod/sony-sata-blu-ray-bd-rom-drive-bdu-x10sr-factory-refurbished/q/loc/101/210756030.html

I picked it up for around $70 with free software. Works great and doesn't include the hidden cost of the software...which isn't cheap.

Mark_A_W · Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 9:01 am Post subject:

Anydvd HD is the only software worth purchasing.

Powerdvd and Arcsoft are CRAP.

Good luck getting a gamma adjustment with them, and they downrez the audio.

It's much better to remux Blurays to MKV files. They just work, and you can use Zoomplayer (hard) or MPC-HC (easy), or even XBMC (sweet).

Oh, and I added an A$50 Nvidia 8500GT to my TV room HTPC, and the CPU load dropped dramatically (even though I'm not using hardware acceleration). Now it easily plays BD rips with the E5200 at stock 2.5ghz, with about 20% and 50% usage per core.