Playing Blu-ray on my computer

[nickelzy]

I'm sure this is a very easy question to answer but one that I don't know. Therefore, I would greatly appreciate your help! First of all, I am very new to Blu-ray. I have a couple of HDTV's at home and a monitor that supports HD. I also just bought a PS3 but have yet to play a blu-ray movie.

What I've been doing for the last few years (thanks to this forum) is backing my movies up through a simple process of using anydvd and DVD shrink. This has worked very well, however, due to the fact that I now have two HDTV's, a monitor that supports HD and a PS3, I'm thinking now is the time I start going with blu-ray movies. However, I also want to be able to back them up as I've done with my DVD's. That being the case, I have a few questions:

1. If I follow the method as described in "GUIDE: How to Decrypt/store/playback HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Discs", will I be able to play from my computer (again, my monitor is HD but my computer doesn't have any special graphics card).

2. If I play from my computer, after ripping it to my harddrive, will the quality be the same as what it would be if watching from the blu-ray disc? If the quality is not the same, then why would be people want to back these discs up instead of just doing the same with a traditional DVD?

What I'm basically trying to figure out is if I can figure out how to rip a blu-ray disc to my computer (which I believe I can due to the help on this forum), will there be any benefit to doing this as opposed to the DVD method I use now? The whole reason I would want to back up a blu-ray disc is to experience the improved image quality.

[Baldrick]

PLEASE change the subject.

[Baldrick]

1. Give us some information about your computer. Can you play 1080p h264 clips without problems?

2. Yes, it will be blu-ray quality.

[nickelzy]

I appreciate your feedback (at least the second post). As for my computer, I really have no idea whether it can play 1080p h264 clips without any problems because I've never tried doing so. What kind of problems might I encounter? My computer is about two years old and has a standard graphics card installed.

Based on your response to question 2, then I assume that as long as my computer can handle the task, I would be able to play blu-ray quality movies from my pc. That being stated, is there something that I specifically should be looking for to make sure my computer can handle blue-ray movies?

If my pc has any issues, would my PS3 be any alternative?

[filmboss80]

When Baldrick said, "change the subject," he meant your subject heading for the forum. "VERY Basic and Easy Question" is way too vague for forum readers who select topics by the header questions. I suggest something like "How can I play blu-ray clips on my PC?" As mentioned also, it would help to know more about the computer you are using.

[nickelzy]

When Baldrick said, "change the subject," he meant your subject heading for the forum. "VERY Basic and Easy Question" is way too vague for forum readers who select topics by the header questions. I suggest something like "How can I play blu-ray clips on my PC?" As mentioned also, it would help to know more about the computer you are using.

Aaah ha... I had no idea what he was referring to by "change the subject". Thanks for the clarification and suggestion; I went ahead and changed the subject a few moments ago. As for the question concerning my computer, what info would be useful to know?

The basics:

It's a couple years old - Compaq Presario
1 GB Memory
180GB HD
Display Adapter: ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Series
Running windows XP

[The-One]

I'm also having trouble playing bluray from my PC. I can play HD clips and can even play the video streams from the bluray disc by opening them with MPC but if I mount the ISO and try to play it I get error 80040216 with PowerDVD. The video also doesn't play smoothly with MPC.

The movie I'm having problems with is Batman The dark Knight.

My system:
CPU Core 2 Duo E6600 OCed to 3.2ghz
GPU Geforce 8500 GT
RAM 4gb OCZ DDR2 800mhz
HDD 1.5TB SATA
OS Win Vista Ultimate 32 bit
PowerDVD 8.0.2217

[poisondeathray]

Certain versions of PowerDVD have issues with virtual drives (e.g. Daemon Tools)

Try MPCHC, it will use DXVA acceleration if enabled and the media type is compliant (So the video card will help playback)

options=>internal filters=>transform filters=>h264 (double click)=> enable dxva

If Dark Knight is VC-1, you can do the same thing with the transform filter for VC-1 sources

[The-One]

Just checked and all transform filters are enabled

[FulciLives]

Here is a 1080p sample. It is a M2TS file. The video is H.264 DXVA compliant at a resolution of 1920x1080 and a FPS of 23.976fps. The audio is 640kbps 5.1 AC-3 audio.

Link ---> http://www.mediafire.com/file/0x3k3qi3fin/Hulk2008sample.m2ts

Here is another 1080p sample. It is a MP4 file. The video is H.264 DXVA compliant at a resolution of 1920x1080 and a FPS of 23.976fps. The audio is 256kbps 2.0 AAC-LC audio.

Link ---> http://rapidshare.com/files/160906892/hulk1080p.mp4

These are provided as a means of testing your computer for proper 1080p playback.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
The first clip is from the 2008 film THE INCREDIBLE HULK whereas the second clip is from the 2003 film THE HULK.
The first is from a Blu-Ray rip the second is from a HD-DVD rip. Both were re-encoded using lower than normal bitrates than the originals but both still have very high bitrates. Basically what you would probably end up doing yourself when making a back-up of a Blu-Ray / HD-DVD source.

[The-One]

I found a program that IMO works better than PowerDVD and WinDVD.

ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre
http://www.arcsoft.com/products/totalmediatheatre/

The latest versions of PowerDVD have introduced many problems, it's refreshing to find a program that just works without having to try regedits and updating to no avail. With TotalMedia Theatre you don't need to mount the image on a virtual drive either, it will play the Blu-Ray video from a HDD folder.