Blu-Ray quality

Hey guys,

I was just wondering that if I were to purchase a laptop with a Blu-Ray optical drive with an HDMI-out port on it would it generate the same quality on an external HDTV compared to a stand-alone Blu-Ray player such as a PS3 or something of the sort? The reason I am asking was because I heard that HDMI-out doesn't always look as good compared to a DVI port. I am interested in purchasing a new laptop so if I choose one with a Blu-Ray drive will it be sufficient enough to watch HD movies on my TV? Also, how much of an influence does the video card come into play when processing HD content on an optical drive. I have tried to search online for this many times but could not find anything. Thanks for the help!

 

HDMI 1080p should look the same quality as DVI 1080p. If it doesn't, chances are it's the cable that is made of poor quality, or one of the two ports that are connected is damaged.

Your laptop will be able to play HD quality movies on an external TV regardless of having a bluray drive or not. If you want to watch Bluray DVDs, however, you will need a bluray DVD drive.

Any graphics card nowadays is more than powerful enough to output HD quality through VGA, DVI, HDMI or Displayport. It is not an issue if all you want to do is play bluray DVDs.

 

Last I looked the laptop BR drives were more expensive that the PS3. I don't like the idea of tying up a laptop just to play movies on the big screen, so would vote on a second generation player and.. lower prices. What is the price with or with out BR, if only $150 I might byte.

 

BlueRay and HD-DVD is fine from a laptop, I play both of them from my Fujitsu thanks to an external X360 and external LG Combo drive (if you get it without burning capability it's cheaper than a PS3, and with burning ability it about the same price as a PS3).

Main thing you need is an HDCP compliant graphics card (although most discs currently have the flag turned off), and then you want at least an HD2600/GF8600 to allow for solid post processing options like HD noise reduction, AA, and solid decryption assistance (helps keep your CPU from running 100% especially with high bit rate titles).

Currently ATi/AMD has a slight HD solution advantage with AVIVO-HD & the HD2600 ( although make sure you get current drivers, very important for compatibility and not getting a ton of issues), but if nV ever get the GF9600 to laptops with it's PureVideoHD improvements that would likely take the top spot.

The HD2400 and GF8500 and less don't quite have enough juice to take advantages of all the features, especially @ 1080P.

The quality will be the same for video output (looks the same as my old Toshiba, the Samsung Combo then LG standalone player), the major differences are lack of HD audio support on laptop output over HDMI (even with realtek codec and audio over HDMI) you rely on SPIF connection which gives you only 3 options, down converted to DTS, or Dolby DD or 2Ch PCM currently no linear PCM support over SPDIF only HDMI for even multi-channel DTS you need an upgrade from the OEM version of PowerDVD Ultra, when PowerDVD8 come out they may offer better SPDIF support for at least compressed DolbyDigitayPlus and DTS-HD core. Conversly PC solutions get far quicker firware updates than standalone players (although Toshiba pushed a ton of them for HD-DVD, while LG still hasn't pushed one [despite new FW in Europe for Xmas], and Samsung took about 4 months to push their most recent one).

The advantage of both the PS3 and Laptops over current standalone players is that they will be upgradeable to BD 2.0, currently it's questionable whether many standalone players will be (major reason I switched from Samsung to LG was because of the option for more memory required by BD2.0).

Main thing is price, and often whether you want to burn BD discs (BD-RE / BD-R) which most player won't read except PC drives and the PS3 (after firmware update).

 

I think there is a missed point on where the BD drives are come into play in a PS3 vs a PC. BD-RW/BD-R drives for a PC are targeted more towards the data storage rather then watching BlueRay content.

 

I agree with both posters. If you plan to hook up to a TV, what's the better buy: the least expensive Playstation 3 at $399, or a Blu-Ray drive for your laptop, also at around 400 bucks? (for comparison, I used the ThinkPad R61's Blu-Ray drive)

You get more flexibility with a PS3, unless you have a real need to play Blu-Ray discs on-the-go. I think you get more for your money. I'd mention other Blu-Ray players, but the PS3 is fully Blu-Ray 2.0 compatible (most other players can't boast that) and other players start at the same $400, without providing video game capabilities, resale value (at least, for a time) or other options that the PS3 does. The PS3 can also act as a media extender, allowing it to stream DivX/Xvid files from a computer on your network and play them on your TV.

 

HDMI and DVI are the same quality. You will find adapters that allow hdmi to dvi and dvi to hdmi. The only difference is hdmi can carry digital audio along with video, and various copy protection implementations.

With the current HDMI spec I'm not aware of anything that passes greater than 2 channel audio over hdmi.

 

It's not the spec that's the limit, you were always able to do more than 2 channel it depended on the IHV though;
http://www.hdmi.org/learningcenter/kb.aspx#16

And actually the 2 channel LPCM limitation in the HD2600 is a DRM issue not HDMI, nor even the codec necessarily although they currently use primarily realtek codecs limited in such a way (no point if DRM holds you back I guess), they could provide multi-channel PCM like my stand alone player also offers as an option, but they would need the audio support. Auzentech has a PC card solution to help solve this problem for older hardware.

The HD2600 supports HDMI 1.2 via DVI, still haven't been given a clear answer on if it or it's succesors would support more with better audio hardware & software, I don't see why they wouldn't if it works primarily as a pass-through, although likely you'd need the direct HDMI connector then and not the DVI adapter option.

 

To the OP. on the quality question, yes and no.

If you research blu ray, you will find that even on the regular players, the picture quality varies. So yes the quality might be good, but it might not be the best.

I had a laptop with Blu ray, and i say stay away from it, unless you are not paying more for the drive itself. The problem is not really the hardware, but more like the software. The PC version will always have issues, because the PC version is the one that hacks stuff up to make illegal copies. So the BDA will cripple the software on computers.
So to recap, if you dont have to pay extra for it, go for it. If you have to pay extra for it, make sure at least is a BD burner, that's where the money with blu ray and computer are. Good luck.