Desktop Blu Ray Player

[Vladimir]

What's everyone using for their desktop blu ray software? I've had enough frustration with HP Mediasmart (yea, right) and just want to watch a movie.

[Lemur]

I've been resisting the siren song of Blu-ray, be curious to hear if anyone's really getting mileage out of it.

[naut]

My recycled DVD drive died when installing Win7, so currently I'm using an old CD drive... Blu-Ray would cost $60-$70 compared to $30 for a DVD drive. So, I'm also curious as to whether it is actually worth the outlay.

[Husar]

It depends, if you have a 24" display with 1920*1200 or 1920*1080 resolution or a TV with Full HD resolution then I'd go for it.
Ever since I got my PS3 it's only Blu-Ray for me. Some people tell me there is no difference to upscaled DVD but they got to be sitting too far away, I find the difference enormous, the detail amazing.
Of course I watch them on the 24" on my desk, so I'm relatively close.

Don't know about the software as I use my PS3 for it but during DVD times (I get everything on Blu-Ray now as DVDs can look really bad and blurry on that same monitor) WinDVD and PowerDVD were the best choices, they'll both cost you some money though. If you have a codec installed via this HP thing you might also want to try using Windows Media Center, I've obviously not tried it with Blu-Ray but it may work well.

[Vladimir]

I use a 20something imch TV for my monitor. Don't know if it's LED or LCD. Blu ray is definitely the way to go. Even the sound is crisper. Watching Dr. Who, the recently canceled SGU, or any show that goes to space is worth it. In one episode I was admiring the thread count on someone's uniform.

HP had me download Cyberlink which worked for a while. Then I foolishly bought Cyberlink 10 (sticking with the Dr. Who connection). Now both HP and Cyberlink Power DVD 10 say the disc is an unreadable format. It's 2010 and it can still be a pain to play a movie.

[Husar]

Have you tried reinstalling or looking for an update?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Worth it depends on your perspective. At any rate a blue ray drive will typically offer:

- Much better acoustics than your $30 DVD drive. (Better sound deadening/damping layers. It has to have those, because the thing spins much faster...)
I've actually got myself one of those $30 DVD drives when I built my PC and needed something to quickly get an OS on the hard drive. All I'll say is that my PC with its 4870HD makes *less* noise than the DVD drive once that gets going...
- Much better data transfer rates. (It has to, or it couldn't stream blue ray movies which require more data.) Burning a Linux ISO doesn't have to take like 30 minutes: 15 to burn and 15 to read back and verify. You can do it in about 10 as well (with a blue ray writer, that is).

So I'd argue it's not just the “blue ray” thing that makes a blue ray drive worth having. However if you do not intend to use discs all that often, you might be better off spending your extra $50 - $100 on something else.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I use a 20something imch TV for my monitor. Don't know if it's LED or LCD. Blu ray is definitely the way to go. Even the sound is crisper. Watching Dr. Who, the recently canceled SGU, or any show that goes to space is worth it. In one episode I was admiring the thread count on someone's uniform.

HP had me download Cyberlink which worked for a while. Then I foolishly bought Cyberlink 10 (sticking with the Dr. Who connection). Now both HP and Cyberlink Power DVD 10 say the disc is an unreadable format. It's 2010 and it can still be a pain to play a movie.

You could try VLC. It's had experimental support for blue ray for a while now, but the open sourcers have a bit more of a mission to be “compatible” with everything that's out there so you might find that it works where commercial apps fail.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I've been resisting the siren song of Blu-ray, be curious to hear if anyone's really getting mileage out of it.

I'm getting a HDTV and blu ray player soon. The player has an HDMI out, making me wonder if I'll be able to plug it into the HDMI port on my comp (Radeon HD 4870) and play it on my moniter (a 1920x1080). Though that will be pointless with the TV (which I'm looking forward too, as the last TV I bought was $5).

I've seen blu ray in action, and it is nice. Plus you can rent them on netflix.

CR

[Husar]

I'm getting a HDTV and blu ray player soon. The player has an HDMI out, making me wonder if I'll be able to plug it into the HDMI port on my comp (Radeon HD 4870) and play it on my moniter (a 1920x1080).

The port on your graphicscard should be an HDMI out, not in, I'm not 100% sure but I doubt it can receive any data. If your PC monitor has an HDMI input you can connect it to that, but would have to find a way to get sound as HDMI usually also transports the sound, no problem if your monitor has built in speakers that work with the HDMI input though.

[Vladimir]

Have you tried reinstalling or looking for an update?

Yes I have but selecting the update option doesn't update anything. It just checks for an update and nothing changes. Then it asks again if I want to update.

You could try VLC. It's had experimental support for blue ray for a while now, but the open sourcers have a bit more of a mission to be “compatible” with everything that's out there so you might find that it works where commercial apps fail.

I'll have to look for that. Can I find it with a Google search?

[Tellos Athenaios]

At: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[Crazed Rabbit]

I can now confirm with even more confidence that blu-ray is awesome. If you enjoy film it adds a lot to the experience.

CR

[Husar]

I can now confirm with even more confidence that blu-ray is awesome. If you enjoy film it adds a lot to the experience.

CR

Blu-Ray was what got me interested in buying discs with films on them in the first place, I quickly had more Blu-Rays than DVDs.

A DVD is like "ok, now I can watch it at home, too...", while Blu-Ray is more like "Woah, can't wait to watch this at home!!!" and I don't even have anywhere near an optimal setup.

And Vladimir, does VLC work, have you tried uninstalling, downloading the newest version from HP and then installing that?

[Vladimir]

Blu-Ray was what got me interested in buying discs with films on them in the first place, I quickly had more Blu-Rays than DVDs.

A DVD is like "ok, now I can watch it at home, too...", while Blu-Ray is more like "Woah, can't wait to watch this at home!!!" and I don't even have anywhere near an optimal setup.

And Vladimir, does VLC work, have you tried uninstalling, downloading the newest version from HP and then installing that?

I haven't tried it yet. I have looked into reinstalling the HP software. Others had similar problems but figuring out which drivers I need is a pain. The HP player itself doesn't find any upgrades.

I'll let you know about VLC.