HD aka Blu-ray on a PC

When you want to watch HD content you have two options:
Live stream via cable/sat/Internet or out of a can.

This can is highly likely to have a blu-ray logo, since HD DVD is death as a stone now and DVD isn't in the HD league.

Since I am not a big fan of the streaming technique, besides the cost you always have some jerking, I went for blu ray. But this wasn't the easy way out...

First question: Standalone player or a drive for the PC?

I was very close to buy a standalone player, as usually I fancied something from Phillips: The sleek BDP7500BL looked fine to me.

But look at the accessories of that thing, even ethernet. And this was the odd thing: Samsung fits their players with WLAN nowadays, so you don't have to throw another cable through your living room... in the end I just went to a shop and saw a good Panasonic, but hadn't enough money with me.

Guess what, I never came back for that box. I had some more time and said to myself: Why buy another "PC" (this is pretty much you can call a blu-ray player today) when you have yours already connect to the TV successfully? Having bought myself a ATI 4850 HD this was a save and easy job, in particular via HDMI. Geforce seems to still have problems with that job, especially when it comes to HDCP and Audio over HDMI, which are two basics for good fun with your TV and the PC.
All that in mind, I ordered a nice Pioneer Blu-Ray drive: Pioneer BDR-205 That i now can burn BD as well, if I want to spent £6 on a medium.

A happy story? Not yet!

Yesterday the drive arrived, a good looking thing in black, but nothing special. Fitting it in the PC was the usual routine job, besides this is the first optical drive I have now with SATA connections, but since my mainboard has 10 (yes, ten) connectors, it was just a matter of plugging it in.

Pressing the start button - beep - a short look at the screen - black on white: There it is :D

Okay, now i reran the BD (Blu-ray) Advisor from Cyberlink and oops: Video Connection Type : Digital (without HDCP) No

Hmm what does that mean? Do the BD won't play? Time for some practice tests: I equipped myself with Band of Brothers, Inglorious Basterds and Caroline. I slip in the I.B. disc (funny, you can call a floppy a disc and a BD.. some things don't change ;-) ) and wait what happens...

At first the rotten Windows Media Player 12 that comes with Win7 gets a try at the disc... "Error, don't know what was used to encode bla bla" - well what was I expecting? Even Vista wasn't capable of proper DVD playback, now BD on Win7 with no extra progs? - Noooo

Okay then, next I tried the Media Player Classic, this comes with the K-Lite Codec Packs and is absolutely lovely, does the job for all my other video files and DVDs. But still no Luck. Args.

I just went to the Cyberlink Homepage again and checked their PowerDVD Versions needless to say I ended up wit the biggest "v10 ULTRA 3D" Version... Buy, download, enter the new serial and Yes some life from the BD!.


Well I run BD and just pressed play to check if the HDCP causes any problem - no, it doesn't!
I can easily move the window with the movie from my main DVI-Monitor to the HDMI-TV. Great, finally success ! And it pays off, especially the sound and the sharpness, really nice.

In the evening we unpacked Caroline, and found some 3D glasses in it... err what? Is this supposed to work with my TV? Well we tried it out and, yes it works with our standard Samsung! Some scence were a little overloaded and since we only have the cheap 3D version, no real pol-shutter glasses this hurt a little, but non the less, I am very impressed. 3D at home. I like my decision, and sorry, I have to stop here, the FSK18 Version of Band of Brothers with new BD Specials is waiting :D