HD on computer question

[Beirut]

Okay, this may be the single stupidest question asked here, but...

If I get a Blu-Ray drive, a 560 video card, and a monitor that says it has full 1080HD and I put in a Floyd Blu-Ray disk, am I getting the same HD as I would get on a Hi-Def television?

Does Win7 handle all this or do I need more?

[Tellos Athenaios]

“HD” in terms of picture quality means little more than a resolution. So question: do you have at least 1080 horizontal lines on your monitor (i.e. a resolution of width x height = 1920x1080 or better?). This is stuff which can be put on a DVD at the cost of track length (just more data per frame). No problems there.

Additionally, depending on the blue ray disk in question, you may be saddled with HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection). This is DRM of the really nasty kind, because it means that your video card, your monitor, your choice of cable (e.g. need something like displayport or hdmi cable), your OS and your movie player must all support it. If any component fails or is otherwise not interoperable this scheme is supposed to downgrade the quality on the fly back to old DVD quality settings AFAIK. (Slightly better than PAL, so still a definite step up from what you were used to with NTSC.)

On the upshot: that same story holds for the telly version of the story. But there at least if you have a blueray player thing it ought to handle the first part (which your computer is) properly.

But here's the real question: what do you need blue ray quality for with Pink Floyd?

[Husar]

Well, I'd say the interoperability shouldn't be a problem, I think even my old 7950GT had HDCP (IIRC on DVI even), I bought my 24" three years a go a bit earlier than my PS3, which I connect to it via HDMI, works with Blu-Rays just fine.
Only problem is, Blu-Rays have 24 frames/sec, the monitor 60, so there is some stuttering that is noticeable in slow scenes and slow camera pans. Then again few TVs have a framerate that is a multiple of 24, like 120Hz, a few have special "algorithms" or whatever for Blu-Ray but I have no idea how well they work or how much stuttering is visible on such TVs, may heavily depend on the model.

To watch Bl-Rays I suppose you may want/have to buy a proper playback software like WinDVD, the Blu-Ray editions cost a bit more but I'm not sure whether Win 7 has a proper decoder preinstalled.

Even with the little stuttering(which really isn't always noticeable) I still prefer Blu-Ray over DVD by a whole lot, the quality, if properly done, is quite amazing.

[Beirut]

But here's the real question: what do you need blue ray quality for with Pink Floyd?

Thanks for the info. And thank you Husar.

What do I need Blu-Ray for with Floyd? 2011 is going to be a bonus year for us Floyd heads. Their entire collection is being remastered and some special edition Blu-Ray stuff will be released.

I'm going to build a shrine.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=6389
http://www.amazon.ca/Dark-Side-Moon-...5591223&sr=1-1

[Lemur]

If all else fails, it looks as though a combination of VLC and libbluray will work. Maybe.