Stand alone vs. HTPC blu-ray?

[simonizor]

I'm late to respond, but I definitely agree with this poster. You can get the Panasonic DMP-BD65 for under $120 off of Amazon and it supports the latest standards, has internet connectivity, and supports Viera Cast so you can do Netflix, Amazon VOD, etc.

Awesome, I'll definitely be purchasing that player. I have a Panasonic Plasma so this blu ray player will work nicely with it because of VIERA link.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Awesome, I'll definitely be purchasing that player. I have a Panasonic Plasma so this blu ray player will work nicely with it because of VIERA link.

Yeah, I just bought the 50" G25 as well as the blu ray player I mentioned, and Viera Link is sweet with it.

 

[coolVariable]

That and an integrated single device for netflix, Hulu, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, CD, internet radio/video, youtube, DVR/Live TV.

IF you can get it to work on a HTPC.
Let's see:
Netflix: silverlight lack support for DXVA, so slower HTPCs usually encounter stuttering. Furthermore, the plugin for MC is horribly written, so the menus are really sloooooooow compared to the menus on the PS3 or a blur-ray player.
Hulu: Big PRO! Do any TV connected devices support it otherwise? Sucks though that you are essentially hacking Hulu Desktop to run from MC. Why no nice integration?
DVD: if it works ... welcome to DRM hell. Had at least 5+ DVDs so far that I was only able to play after ripping them.
HD-DVD : no experience.
Blue-ray: does not work with MC and player software is supposed to suck big time!
CD : ok. Also in standalone players.
Internet radio/tv, youtube: most standalones support it better than MC on the HTPC.
DVR/Live TV: Hahaha. IF it works, it is pretty neat. "IF". Otherwise, it will be "Why the fuck is this not working?" or "Why the hell do you need to fix the TV AGAIN?"


Sadly, OP seems to have abandoned us.

 

[s44]

IF you can get it to work on a HTPC.
Hulu: Big PRO! Do any TV connected devices support it otherwise?

PS3 and the Samsung C6900 offer Hulu Plus directly from the source. You can also use PlayOn to stream Hulu from your desktop...

 

[coolVariable]

PS3 and the Samsung C6900 offer Hulu Plus directly from the source.

Very nice! I hope that it comes to Roku et all too!

 

[electroju]

HTPC have their area in the home theater, but not in playing back movies. A HTPC loses the movie experience. HTPC does great by adding a component to a home theater electronics to view web sites and casual setting for office tasks. A HTPC substitutes a PVR or DVR. I setup HTPC for ten years and they just do not work right to watch movies. Stand-alone players are better when trying to watch movies.

Don't get me wrong, I have a Powercolor HD 5750 (one of the passive cooled ones), and as much as it is a good card, the drivers simply suck. AMD has no clue how to write drivers. I would gladly take an Nvidia, even one with a fan, and not have to deal with AMD's crap drivers.

I feel your pain about ATI or AMD graphics. I had a lot of problems with ATI hardware. Most of the time it crashes my computer if I use their drivers or software. In Linux I use 3rd party drivers for ATI cards and it works as it should.

An after market heat sink can easily be used instead what came with the video card. There are some good passive cooled after market heat sinks for video cards, but they usually take up two slots.

Gamers here do not care for reliability and stability. They care more about for performance and price. Mainly gamers buy ATI or AMD graphics because they have better price to performance ratio compared to nVidia.

 

[coolVariable]

HTPC have their area in the home theater, but not in playing back movies. A HTPC loses the movie experience. HTPC does great by adding a component to a home theater electronics to view web sites and casual setting for office tasks. A HTPC substitutes a PVR or DVR. I setup HTPC for ten years and they just do not work right to watch movies. Stand-alone players are better when trying to watch movies.



I feel your pain about ATI or AMD graphics. I had a lot of problems with ATI hardware. Most of the time it crashes my computer if I use their drivers or software. In Linux I use 3rd party drivers for ATI cards and it works as it should.

An after market heat sink can easily be used instead what came with the video card. There are some good passive cooled after market heat sinks for video cards, but they usually take up two slots.

Gamers here do not care for reliability and stability. They care more about for performance and price. Mainly gamers buy ATI or AMD graphics because they have better price to performance ratio compared to nVidia.

I agree, don't buy AMD/ATI GPUs/IGPs for use in a HTPC, sadly ... nvidia cards/chipsets are not better, if not worse. this is off-topic of course.

 

[poofyhairguy]

HTPC have their area in the home theater, but not in playing back movies. A HTPC loses the movie experience.

I 100% disagree with that.

My ION HTPC (running XBMC Live) perfectly plays back my Blu Ray rips- 8 channel PCM audio over HDMI, 24p frame rate matching, VDPAU color correction and sharpening. Rips look just as good as playing the disks look with my nice Samsung Blu Ray player.

What I will agree with is that HTPC's are poor at playing movies on optical disks. Now I know for most of the population optical disks are the same as movies, but for the Anandtech crowd we can tell the distinction.

I wouldn't trade my Unraid NAS filled with my Blu Rays connected to my ION box for anything. In my small place all the Blu Rays (the physical disks and boxes) can go into storage while I can play any on demand.

Its the primitive disks that HD movies come on that cause the problem....

 

[coolVariable]

Its the primitive disks that HD movies come on that cause the problem....

It is nice to browse one's collection and simply press play ... without worrying about disks.

 

[jacktesterson]

I have a blu ray with no problems I just use my wireless mouse. I use power DVD 10. I bought off eBay for like 50 bucks no issues here.

 

[electroju]

I 100% disagree with that.

My ION HTPC (running XBMC Live) perfectly plays back my Blu Ray rips- 8 channel PCM audio over HDMI, 24p frame rate matching, VDPAU color correction and sharpening. Rips look just as good as playing the disks look with my nice Samsung Blu Ray player.

What I will agree with is that HTPC's are poor at playing movies on optical disks. Now I know for most of the population optical disks are the same as movies, but for the Anandtech crowd we can tell the distinction.

I wouldn't trade my Unraid NAS filled with my Blu Rays connected to my ION box for anything. In my small place all the Blu Rays (the physical disks and boxes) can go into storage while I can play any on demand.

Its the primitive disks that HD movies come on that cause the problem....

First you say you watch Blu-Ray movies, but only after ripping. Then you say watching movies from optical drives does not work. These two are the same and does not matter if you rip it first or play the movie directly from the optical drive. The reason why movies should not be played from a HTPC is it sacrifices the movie experience. This includes the 10-bit color or better color depth and sound quality.

VDPAU does not help with visual quality. It helps with decoding the video codecs. To get good color, Linux have to be calibrated and a certain color space have to be used. If applying color space the content have to include the color space information that is stored in it self or else the colors will be off. Sharpening adds distortions, so it does not improve the visual quality. There is no way to improve the visual quality unless doing a lot of post processing. Displaying 24 frames for movies is OK if the refresh rate of your monitor is divisible by 24. You will need to use a 3:2 pull-up to fix the frame rate to be compatible with computer monitor and TV. The pull-up brings the 24 frames to 30 frames fit with a 60 Hz or 60 frame refresh rate that a computer monitor or TV can handle. If a pull-up is not used, frames will literally be chopped or a tearing effect will occur.

 

[Aikouka]

I never had any issues with blu-ray in Windows 7 using PowerDVD or TMT with Windows Media Center. I even had this running on a XFX Radeon 5450 with 0 problems, so I'm yet again not sure what the complaints are about.

 

[poofyhairguy]

VDPAU does not help with visual quality.

Newer VDPAU does give you studio level color correction:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Videos_Settings#Playback

Displaying 24 frames for movies is OK if the refresh rate of your monitor is divisible by 24. You will need to use a 3:2 pull-up to fix the frame rate to be compatible with computer monitor and TV. The pull-up brings the 24 frames to 30 frames fit with a 60 Hz or 60 frame refresh rate that a computer monitor or TV can handle. If a pull-up is not used, frames will literally be chopped or a tearing effect will occur.

My TV accepts a 24p signal.

 

[coolVariable]

Using a HTPC is just a problem waiting to happen.
Some DVDs don't even play properly and even some of the proponents of HTPCs in this thread admit that they rip bluerays to play them properly.

 

[Nebor]

I'm an HTPC user, and I'd say that standalone blu-ray players can do all the important stuff an HTPC can these days....

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Using a HTPC is just a problem waiting to happen.
Some DVDs don't even play properly and even some of the proponents of HTPCs in this thread admit that they rip bluerays to play them properly.

An HTPC is not for someone without a decent amount of computer knowledge. However, for many in this forum an HTPC can be a great thing. I like having live TV, a DVR, Netflix, Hulu, Blu-ray, DVD player, and web content all in one compact box. Everything, except for web content, is controlled through a Harmony One and is accessed through 7MC. For web content I use a wireless IOGear keyboard that serves its purpose well. It took a short while to resolve a few niggling issues but it's solid now and everything just works.

btw, the only person in this thread claiming they are ripping their BD's is using Linux for an OS. Of course a BD is not going to play properly since Linux doesn't support DRM. Those using 7MC, and who know what they are doing, won't have that problem.

 

[coolVariable]

An HTPC is not for someone without a decent amount of computer knowledge. However, for many in this forum an HTPC can be a great thing. I like having live TV, a DVR, Netflix, Hulu, Blu-ray, DVD player, and web content all in one compact box. Everything, except for web content, is controlled through a Harmony One and is accessed through 7MC. For web content I use a wireless IOGear keyboard that serves its purpose well. It took a short while to resolve a few niggling issues but it's solid now and everything just works.

btw, the only person in this thread claiming they are ripping their BD's is using Linux for an OS. Of course a BD is not going to play properly since Linux doesn't support DRM. Those using 7MC, and who know what they are doing, won't have that problem.

BD in 7MC ... is not possible since 7MC doesn't support BD.
There are some other MC-like software solutions (mentioned in this thread) but a lot of people have problems with them ... just check out any HTPC related forum and you will see a ton of postings about all the issues people have.
As a HTPC owner I know what a pain in the ass DVD playback can be due to DVD DRM and I have had quite a few DVDs that would play fine in a stand-alone or as rips ... but refused to play or would hang in MC or WMP.

 

[Activate: AMD]

BD in 7MC ... is not possible since 7MC doesn't support BD.
There are some other MC-like software solutions (mentioned in this thread) but a lot of people have problems with them ... just check out any HTPC related forum and you will see a ton of postings about all the issues people have.
As a HTPC owner I know what a pain in the ass DVD playback can be due to DVD DRM and I have had quite a few DVDs that would play fine in a stand-alone or as rips ... but refused to play or would hang in MC or WMP.

Its not fair to say that BD in 7MC isnt possible. TMT3 and PDVD both integrate and launch from 7MC. Who cares that 7MC doesn't have the functionality built in if you can just add it in later? I'm pretty sure thats the whole point of an HTPC.

I never had trouble with DVD's, BD's (using external players), MKV's, TS's, AVI's.. etc. The list goes on. Follow one of the guides on AVSforum if you want an easier setup. Nobody would claim that an HTPC is the "easy" way out, or even the "cheap" way. HTPC's are definitely for someone who wants a hobby. If you want to mess around get an HTPC, if you want to plug in and go, get an standalone player.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

BD in 7MC ... is not possible since 7MC doesn't support BD.
There are some other MC-like software solutions (mentioned in this thread) but a lot of people have problems with them ... just check out any HTPC related forum and you will see a ton of postings about all the issues people have.
As a HTPC owner I know what a pain in the ass DVD playback can be due to DVD DRM and I have had quite a few DVDs that would play fine in a stand-alone or as rips ... but refused to play or would hang in MC or WMP.

I never claimed that 7MC, by itself, supports BD. That's where the "know what they are doing" part comes in.

And of course you are going to see issues about BD playback in HTPC forums. People rarely start threads to exclaim 'My BD player doesn't have any problems.' You are also going to see people having tons of issues in Samsung forums, Sony forums, Sharp forums, etc. concerning stand-alone BD players. Does that imply that stand-alone players are a pain in the ass as well? Using forum posts as a metric for that determination is a bit sketchy.

 

[Binky]

I'm not sure what some of you are doing wrong, but I have very few if any issues on two Windows 7 HTPC machines and multiple extenders with:

-AMD cards and drivers - no problems, perfect stability (can't stand CCC though)
-Blu-ray playback - zero DRM issues on two machines with PDVD-9
* Blu-ray playback on PDVD-8 resulted in some DRM issues
-Streaming live TV to multiple extenders - works great
-Recording up to 4 HD streams concurrently - works great
-TV episode download integration with Mediabrowser and Media Center Master (amazing!)

Back on topic for this thread, if you want a hobby, build an HTPC. If you want a device to just work, get a standalone. Hell, get both. I like the flexibility of the HTPC, but it took me a couple of years to really get good as smoothing out the wrinkles.