HP dv6000 Blu Ray Capable?

[romphill]

I'm sorry if this, or a question similar to it, has been answered, but I'm currently stuck with miserably slow dial up internet and searching takes forever. I currently have a HP Pavilion dv6000 from about 2 years ago. It currently has a DVD-RW in it, but I'm possibly interested in upgrading to a BD drive if it will support it.

I'm not sure what specs are needed, but here's a general idea of the notebook.

Intel Core 2, T7200 at 2.00 ghz
1 gig RAM
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400

Also, I ran across someone talking about HDCP (I think that was the acronym) in another post, and it was talking about playing media on an external monitor. In the past I have had major issues getting my computer to run with my TV as the monitor via a VGA cable (only VGA and S Vid out on my notebook). On my last TV, it would not work at all, and on my current model, a Broksonic 32" 1080i, it will only work if I change from my native resolution of 1280x800 to 1024x768.

Now that I mention it I don't know if I have ever specifically tried it with my new tv and codecs, but in the past I had issues showing the video on the tv through the VGA cable. The rest of the screen would show up, but in place of the video, it would just have a black box. Any way to correct these issues? Also, what about running a projector? My room mate in college has a projector, and we were planning on having a cheap, college budget theater set up in our apartment. I'd like to have any issues resolved before I move in next month.

Thanks


Also, in playing videos in Windows Media Player 11 Beta 2, what resolution am I effectively sending to the TV through the vga cable? Would S-Vid garner a better image (or audio)?



*****
Edit: I hooked my tv up to my notebook and it is working fine now. However I'm leaving the above section in the posting because if anyone can think of any issues that would arise by playing avi files through my notebook and projector, I'd appreciate warnings and advice about how to fix them.

Thanks again

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by romphill

I'm sorry if this, or a question similar to it, has been answered, but I'm currently stuck with miserably slow dial up internet and searching takes forever. I currently have a HP Pavilion dv6000 from about 2 years ago. It currently has a DVD-RW in it, but I'm possibly interested in upgrading to a BD drive if it will support it.

I'm not sure what specs are needed, but here's a general idea of the notebook.

Intel Core 2, T7200 at 2.00 ghz
1 gig RAM
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400

Processor is ok. RAM is ok. Graphics card is a problem... the Go 7400 doesn't accelerate anything, except maybe MPEG-2 decoding. If you use the Arcsoft program it will at least attempt to decode using the processor... not sure how WinDVD or PowerDVD would do, or if they would even work at all. Expect some issues with high-bitrate AVC material maxing out your processor and dropping frames as the GPU can't offload any of the decoding work.

Originally Posted by romphill

Also, I ran across someone talking about HDCP (I think that was the acronym) in another post, and it was talking about playing media on an external monitor. In the past I have had major issues getting my computer to run with my TV as the monitor via a VGA cable (only VGA and S Vid out on my notebook). On my last TV, it would not work at all, and on my current model, a Broksonic 32" 1080i, it will only work if I change from my native resolution of 1280x800 to 1024x768.

Now that I mention it I don't know if I have ever specifically tried it with my new tv and codecs, but in the past I had issues showing the video on the tv through the VGA cable. The rest of the screen would show up, but in place of the video, it would just have a black box. Any way to correct these issues? Also, what about running a projector? My room mate in college has a projector, and we were planning on having a cheap, college budget theater set up in our apartment. I'd like to have any issues resolved before I move in next month.

HDCP is only for digital connections (HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort). Your notebook doesn't have any of those ports so it doesn't matter that your notebook doesn't support HDCP. To use your notebook with an HDTV, you really should get a 7-pin component breakout cable. (Your S-Video port isn't a "normal" S-Video port... it has extra pins that are used to send a component signal through the breakout cable... and can send a 720p or 1080i signal to your TV. Much better than trying to use VGA at non-standard resolutions. Depending on your projector model, unless it's 1080p and you want to mess around with VGA timings to get that going, just use component.

You can get the cable at most any computer store, but PowerColor has them at: http://www.powercolor.com/eng/support_store.asp . Scroll down to HDTV video cable 7-pin. That's what you want.

Originally Posted by romphill

Also, in playing videos in Windows Media Player 11 Beta 2, what resolution am I effectively sending to the TV through the vga cable? Would S-Vid garner a better image (or audio)?

Whatever resolution you have setup as the output. Again, go component and send the 1080i signal for best results if that's what your TV is natively. Don't use S-Video... it's SD only.