Blue Ray for a PC

[CoryJamaul]

Hey, I've got a question for those who know how to turn their PC into a home theatre entertainment system...

I was thinking of doing the same, and have a powerful enough Monitor and GPU to support Blue Ray, and was wondering if I bought a blue ray drive, would it be wiser to buy an OEM drive and purchase software (and if so, what software is best?), or get the drive with the software included?

Any help you guys could give me would be very much appreciated.

 

[Rusting In Peace]

I picked up two blu ray drives for my main machine and my HTPC.

Immediately I encountered the need to update firmware had to use rubbish software like cyberlink to play the disc. For licencing reasons there are very few pieces of software that play blu ray discs. VLC can play blu ray streams but it don't expect it to play the disc like if you had put in a DVD. If you aren't using Windows you can pretty much forget about playing the disc back without workarounds.

My advice to you would avoid blu ray completely. Consider just getting your media from another source. I think Netflix and Lovefilm now offer high def streaming services.

If you are absolutely insistent on blu ray discs I'd seriously consider just picking up a standalone player or a PS3.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

I have a retail Liteon iHBS 212 and it runs flawless,but the software that comes with it is fair at best.You will have to purchase a retail version of playback software.

I own all three of these and i will rank them:

1- Nero Platinum HD < Also a burning suite
2-Corel WinDVD Pro
3-Cyberlink Power DVD Ultra

 

[CoryJamaul]

Thanks for the help guys, I don't think I can afford a PS3 if I'm just going to be using it for blue-ray; I have a fairly powerful computer and was looking for the cheapest way to do this. Regardless, @Rusting In Piece gave me some very good info, thank you.
I think I'll go with an OEM and then buy the software though.

Thanks again for all the help,
Cory Jamaul

 

[CoryJamaul]

Best answer selected by CoryJamaul.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr