Best set-up for picture quality

[Sarah_UK]

I'm planning to buy Blu-ray discs and then copy them to HDDs. The eventual plan is to play them using an HTPC. I was wondering how the results would compare to a high-end Blu-ray player. Better? Worse? I'm mostly interested in the picture quality and load times.

The way I see it, there must be only two factors - the playback device and the software used for displaying the movie.

As I will copy the movies to my HDD, I don't know how important the BD-ROM on my PC is. Do BD-ROM drives read with errors? If so, then I will need a better one for making the initial transfer to HDD.

Regarding the software, I noticed a very interesting sticky here, comparing different media players, so I'm off to read that now!

Thanks a lot for any advice you can offer.


Sarah

[bobbydrugar]

As an FYI this forum does not allow discussion of ripping blu-rays as it is not legal in the U.S.

That said if you are going to use your computer and a Blu-ray drive to play your films on your primary display then as with all playback systems it will always come down to a player and and a display. For Blu-Ray/DVD Playback the drive is important but not as important as the software suite you use. Once you select a software suite you will then need to look into a video calibration software or blu-ray disk so that you can properly calibrate your computer and Display. I use PowerDVD 12 and it works well for me.

Thanks,
T

[Sarah_UK]

Sorry, I didn't know it was illegal to rip Blu-rays! As far as I know, it's legal in the UK to make copies of your discs, but I shall check up on that too of course.

Regarding the display....Of course this will have a huge impact on the final picture quality, but for now I am not too worried about that. I can always change the display later.

How about the BD-ROM? If I play a Blu-ray on my PC, will a more expensive drive produce a better picture? I have trouble understanding the technology, because the information is digital. So in my mind, that means the computer either reads the file information or not.

Shouldn't any correctly working BD-ROM send identical data to the media playing software?

Thanks for the recommendation of PowerDVD 12. I am still unsure which software I will choose.


Sarah

[bobbydrugar]

From the 4 bd-roms I have owned in different systems they all performed about the same as far as image quality once properly calibrated. I have not done any extinsive testing as far as CRC data correction or data loss but I have not seen it.

Thanks,
T