Blu-ray: Ready to Give Up On Them

[Goofy4TheWorld]

I am growing increasingly frustrated by the fact that Disney Blu-rays (specifically Pirates) use BD-J (which I understand to be different than standard BD) and therefore do not use many of the standard features of a DVD player such as "Menu" and "Resume" where I can stop the Blu-ray and pick back up exactly where I left off without delay.

I have had so much bad luck that I have switched back to buying DVDs instead and using a cheap $30 DVD player to watch most movies (the cheap players easily allow me to skip to the menu and resume playback).

Am I just buying poor Blu-ray players or is the specific problem of inability to press Stop without having to start all over just unique to Disney or Pirates or just certain players?

Anyone else as frustrated as I am? Anyone got a player that works perfect with Disney Blu-ray?

[DizneyRox]

I rip movie only off any blurays I buy and stick the file on my HTPC. I do the same thing with DVDs.

I haven't seen a DVD/Bluray intro/commercial/advertisment in ages, and I do exactly what I want with it. My home theater PC allows me to resume the movie from where I left off anytime and anywhere in the house.

[Zippy 1]

Our blue ray player lets us stop and then pick up where we left off. I do not know much about these things so I can not give any real specifics

[Epc0tphr34k]

I use my PS3 and have had no issue with resuming or getting to the menus on any of my blu rays

[Goofy4TheWorld]

I rip movie only off any blurays I buy and stick the file on my HTPC. I do the same thing with DVDs.

I haven't seen a DVD/Bluray intro/commercial/advertisment in ages, and I do exactly what I want with it. My home theater PC allows me to resume the movie from where I left off anytime and anywhere in the house.

I would love to know exactly what you have for your setup. It seems that you can use your regular PC or have a dedicated PC, and I would never use my regular PC for entertainment (well, except for Intercot).

Did you buy a dedicated PC? Is it built for TV or did you tinker with a regular PC to make it work? What size hard drive(s)? What software packages(s) do you use? Anything you can share I would love to hear!

[DizneyRox]

I'm not sure I can go into that much depth here, not enough room... But basically, I tend to use low power PCs. When looking for a HTPC setup, you build them 180° differently than you would a desktop PC. A HTPC should be dedicated to just TV "stuff". So, as long as you can play a HD movie (1080p is the highest right now), you're good! In today's world, your video card can/should do all the work, so even a lowly Celeron based CPU can be used and still get you 1080p 3D movies with HD audio to a 85" TV.

I started with an ATOM/ION based PC(1.6G dual core processor) and still love how it works. It's very low power (25 watts watching a HD movie, 16 watts idle) and never a problem with what I need. It can't however do 3D movies and doesn't support bitstreaming audio (probably not a big deal for most).

Right now, I have a full blown PC in a slim case. I'm doing other things on that box that choked an ATOM/ION based PC. This PC is around 110 watts while watching a movie, 63 watts idle and 1.5 watts in sleep mode).

The ATOM/ION PCs are on other TVs in the house.

Depending on your needs, I can suggest a direction. You can get away with about $200 for a ATOM/ION based NetTop running off a USB thumbdrive or about $600 for a full blown PC build that will rival many desktop computers. The cost starts going up when you bring Windows into the mix (Windows 7 is required for GPU acceleration, Hulu and NetFlix) and other needs (capture devices, etc)

You can certainly use older PC equipment and repurpose it (I know some people are using Pentium 3 CPUs on very old motherboards for standard defintion content), but my problem with that is power consumption.

I have a file server in my house that I store EVERYTHING on. All of our documents (My Documents, My Picturess, etc) point to the file server, all my media is there (movies, audio, etc) and a few other things. It holds about 3 terrabytes, so the hard drives in my PCs are relatively small. The largest hard drive I have is 60 gigs with one of my HTPCs booting off of a 1 gig USB thumbdrive. You can go anywhere in between, wherever you are comfortable. HD movies can take anywhere from about 4 gigs to 20+ gigs. Depending on the size of your library, plan accordingly.

You can rip your DVDs to movie only or full meus, etc. For example, most of my DVDs I just care about movie only (english audio track) and they are about 3 gigs or so. I have a large collection of the Disney Treasures that I store the full disks at about 9 gigs each. I want/need the menus for those, but don't care about the menus on most movies. Tuck the disks away in a safe location and never have to worry about scratches.

For software, I am partial to XBMC for playback. It handles everything I have thrown at it, from low res Internet downloads from youtube and whatnot to DVD ISO images with full menus, to bluray ripped movies at 1080p. I've even done some HD 3D SBS (side by side) movies with success. The interface is outstanding and highly customizable.

You can also do Live TV (via cable or OTA) but that's a little bit of work. I have cut the cord, got a big fat Internet pipe coming into the house and no cable TV. Saved over $100 a month on useless TV charges and don't miss it at all! Most cable networks make their shows available on the net and this setup plays everything I need.

So, while a lot of popele balk at a $600 build cost, this can easily pay for itself in less than a year. If you're willing to adjust your TV viewing habbits. We found that we watched only about 2% of our TV live. The rest is timeshifted, so what difference does it make if I watch it off "Tivo" or by download.