Pioneer BDR-205 requires HD video card to work??

[lafjax]

Someone gave this customer review for this drive:

"You must have a HD Blu-Ray Video card in your PC before buying this product or it would not work properly."

Does anyone know if this is really true. I can understand if he is talking about have an HDMI out for TV display but not for the PC...
Any comments?

Thanks!!

[Baldrick]

I guess he just mean that if you want to play blu-ray video you need good video card.

[jman98]

Current BluRay software players do indeed require HDMI on video cards if you want to see the movie in 1080p. Theoretically this is not at this time a true requirement, but Hollywood got all of the software player companies to agree to not send out full 1080p unless it went over HDMI even though standalone BluRay players do not yet enforce this. Standalones will send 1080p over DVI at this time. So the post may simply mean that if your video card does not support HDMI, you get less than full HD resolution on playback. This is NOT an issue with the drive per se but a software playback thing. I know of no BluRay drives that can get around this.

[lafjax]

Got it!! Thanks for the update!!

[ocgw]

Current BluRay software players do indeed require HDMI on video cards if you want to see the movie in 1080p. Theoretically this is not at this time a true requirement, but Hollywood got all of the software player companies to agree to not send out full 1080p unless it went over HDMI even though standalone BluRay players do not yet enforce this. Standalones will send 1080p over DVI at this time. So the post may simply mean that if your video card does not support HDMI, you get less than full HD resolution on playback. This is NOT an issue with the drive per se but a software playback thing. I know of no BluRay drives that can get around this.

Sorry jman98 I am not saying you are wrong, but the way you are saying it may possibly be misleading, pls allow me to clarify

Blu Ray software has absolutely no idea what type of hardware connection you have to your monitor, what it does try to do is enforce hdcp (secure digital connection), there is no hardware limitation on playing 1080p video even thru vga output

Slysoft AnyDVD HD removes AACS and the need for hdcp compliancy

W/ AnyDVD runnning you can play blu rays in 1080p on ANY PC video connector that supports 1080p (DVI,vga, even component), you just can't get 1080p out of s-video or composite because they only support standard def video

Ironically it is the stand alone blu ray player that is more crippled by hdcp, because you won't get full res from a blu ray player thru component (analog) output

ocgw

peace