Best way to get blu-ray: standalone player or BD-ROM drive?

[mtncrux]

I just ordered a 50" 1080p Panasonic plasma. When it arrives it will be connected to my SageTV HTPC through a DVI to HDMI cable.

I have bought an HDHomerun to start recording HD QAM content, but I do not have a blu-ray player yet.

Should I add a BD-ROM drive to my SageTV box (about $50) or buy a cheap stand-alone blu-ray player ($150)?


WAF is a major concern.

Here are my HTPC specs:
AMD Ahtlon X2 3400+ processor
3GB RAM
Geforce 8400GS video card
Windows XP SP3 (moving to Windows 7 soon)

I do not have any media extenders to worry about.

If I add a BD-ROM drive, will I have any issues playing blu-ray discs with this setup?

Does SageTV support blu-ray out of the box, or do I need to add an external player application (or do anything else to enable bluray playback)? Is there a how-to anywhere on how to set this up?


Does SageTV do a good job of upscaling DVD's? Are there any settings, or changes that I should make to my setup to maximize the quality of DVDs?

Would a stand-alone (cheap) blu-ray player do a better job of upscaling DVDs than the PC?


Thanks for your help!

[Merc1032]

Wondering the same. Looking to purchase my components today and Idk if I should buy a BD drive or just a normal DVD drive.

I plan to play, as well as rip to the server.

Do most normal BD drives also play DVD?

I cant rip BD discs using a DVD drive with special software, can i?

What method would be best to be able to view/store DVDs and BRD on my sage system?

Thanks!

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mtncrux

Should I add a BD-ROM drive to my SageTV box (about $50) or buy a cheap stand-alone blu-ray player ($150)?

How do you want to watch BDs? Do you just want to stick discs in and play them or do you want to build an "online" catalog of them?

If I add a BD-ROM drive, will I have any issues playing blu-ray discs with this setup?

Probably.

Does SageTV support blu-ray out of the box, or do I need to add an external player application (or do anything else to enable bluray playback)? Is there a how-to anywhere on how to set this up?

No it doesn't, probably never will with the way Blu-ray works (unfortunate). There is info on the forum on how to setup Sage to launch an external player if that's what you want to do though.

Does SageTV do a good job of upscaling DVD's? Are there any settings, or changes that I should make to my setup to maximize the quality of DVDs?

Would a stand-alone (cheap) blu-ray player do a better job of upscaling DVDs than the PC?

It's going to depend on your hardware and how much you want to work at it. When I used a PC as a client, I had an AMD 780G (ATI 3200 graphics) based system. It worked OK for DVDs but the Pioneer BDP-51FD I replaced it with is clearly superior. Of course that 780G is relatively low powered for video processing so it's not the best example.

If you've got time on your hands you can mess with ffdshow to do the scaling and processing in software (you'll need a somewhat beefy CPU though) and can probably match a standalone in one way or another.

IMO if you just want to be able to stick a disc in something and watch it, get a standalone, the state of Blu-ray playback on PCs is truly pathetic IMO.

Originally Posted by Merc1032

Wondering the same. Looking to purchase my components today and Idk if I should buy a BD drive or just a normal DVD drive.

I plan to play, as well as rip to the server.

Then get a BD drive, they're not that much more these days.

Do most normal BD drives also play DVD?

They all do AFAIK.

I cant rip BD discs using a DVD drive with special software, can i?

No BDs require a different (blue-violet) laser.

What method would be best to be able to view/store DVDs and BRD on my sage system?

I just rip them in their native format, usually movie only.

[Fuzzy]

You can have decent WAF either way, it's just up to you to decide how much tinkering you want to do to GET that WAF. I've done a lot of work to get seemless Blu-Ray playback on my setup, but it took quite a bit of tweaking. You have to choose a software (I use ArcSoft TMT3, as it also supports playing BD Rips from HDD). You have to have a way of controlling the Software (I use my remote to a USB-UIRT into Girder for controlling both Sage AND ArcSoft), and you have to have a convenient way of launching the BD Player (I added an option to the menues to launch TMT3 using Dynamic Menu's). I, at some point, intend to work towards getting an auto-insert sustem up and running, so that when a BDRom is inserted, it pops up a question regarding whether to rip it to the sage library, or to launch TMT3 to play from disc... haven't even started on that though.

I do have a plugin (check my profile) for the DefaultSTV that will launch an external player when selecting a BDMV rip from the sage library. It works great for me so far.

[Clift]

You'll probably want to step up to a more powerful GPU in order to play Blu-ray. From experience, a GeForce 8400GS is on the edge of being able to play a Blu-ray at 1080P. It can do it, but any little hiccup in your system and you're going to get dropped frames. Or worse, PowerDVD or ArcSoft may not want to use DXVA with that card at all. In which case they will resort to software rendering and your Athlon X2 3400+ does not have the horsepower to do 1080P AVC with high frame rates at the bit rate they would be encoded to in Blu-ray. Specifically, try the green goblin surfboard scene in Spiderman 3, or final fight in Iron Man. So for you I would recommend either a standalone or a more powerful GPU, like a GeForce 9 series or a Radeon 5xxx series. At that point maybe you're better off getting a standalone?