Bandwidth Place 2

I would still have to put that hi-def on a blu-ray disk in order to watch it on my TV. So, having a blu-ray burner IMO is still needed.

You could use an Atom with ION or PCI 8400 GS as an HTPC to stream those videos directly at the TV. Depending on the actual level of use though, burning BD could still be better (you know, for low quantity).

A 2TB hard drive formatted is 1907 GB and some spare change.

We will be generous and say a full 1080p blu-ray rip is 25GB (even though many many blu-rays are bigger).

So for $100 the 2TB hard drive holds 76 blu-ray movies.

You can get blu-ray blanks on newegg for $1.16 each (on average) right now. They were a dollar just a week ago

That comes out to 86 movies (100 if they were still a dollar) if you burn on a BD-R.

In this case your investing $100 on a drive and in the HDD case your investing a good bit more into a HTPC


Blu-Ray wins in my book especially for ease of portability

Sure lol, for like 1 or 2 computers/players maybe.

Ease of portability to me means that I can watch it on any device capable of streaming 1080p, which I think is a more valid definition of portable than yours. To fulfill my definition using Blu-ray disks would mean to either get a BD drive for each computer, or have one through USB. For the former, you'd need to install a BD drive in each computer and go to get the disk you want. For the latter, you'd need to bring a BD drive and connect the USB and power in addition to getting the disk you want. Clunky, slow.

Bah, Humbug!

How many htpc cpus can stream 1080p stuff?
My opty 165 @ 2.4ghz could almost do it stuttered at times

A $20 video card can decode 1080p h264. Geforce 8 and beyond, any Radeon HD (hence the name), integrated or discrete, and even the integrated Intel X4500 HD (hence the name again XD) and beyond have that capability. They have been around since 2006, 2006, and 2008 respectively. Atom certainly can't handle 1080p which is why my post for it said to have it with ION (9400) or a PCI 8400.

As for CPU based decoding I find that you would need at least a Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz or Athlon 64 X2 2.6GHz to pull off smooth decode even in high action scenes. Neither of which are hard to come by in a modern PC...

It's very easy to make a computer 1080p capable. There's even a standalone Broadcom chip designed to do nothing but accelerate HD videos, and it's selling very well.

Be that as it may you still need to consider the fact that unless you already have invested money into these systems then there is no meirt in them versus a blu-ray burner.

A capable HTPC can easily run $200 or more and thats not including the cost of 2TB hard drives to go with it.

I'm hesitant on adding the cost of the HTPC into consideration because it should be replacing the blu-ray player - you're spending money on a machine either way. The player nowadays is cheaper than the HTPC, but the HTPC is still a full computer that can do beyond what a blu-ray player can do. Besides, the cheaper player loses some of its cost effectiveness when adding the cost of a BD burner.

So anyway, the deal would be cost of HDD and ethernet vs. cost of BD media. Right now as you've shown, they're about tied. I think you hit on a window of opportunity. Not too long ago it would have been a clear HDD victory, and in the near future once BD prices lower more, it will be a BD victory. But after that window of opportunity, like the cost of DVD media, BD is going to hit a price wall while HDD will continue to increase its GB per dollar ratio. In the more distant future HDD will become the better choice once again.

It's obvious that the right choice would depend greatly on the household, whether or not a PS3 or a need to play console games is in the picture and stuff like that. For example, I may have a PS3 but it comes with me to college. The family still needs something. I also was going to buy my multiple 2TB drives whether I wanted to store BD RAWs (I won't) or not. For me at least, they have purpose beyond BD yet have the ability to replace BD anyway.

<gets realistic>
BTW, I'm wondering just how many BD movies you're actually planning on having? 70.. 50.. hell even 40 sounds like a lot to me.

BD RAW vs h264 mkv. The typical sizes of mkv copies are far more economical and would blow the BD path out of the water. The question is, how much quality gets sacrificed? I see my 1080p mkvs hit over 30mbit/s during action scenes or scenes that would require such a BD-level bit rate. At that point they should be very close to the quality level of BD. Now consider that BD can't magically increase their bit rate level from the 30's due to the physical speed of BD 1x (36mbit/s), all that extra GB in a BD is, what I'd consider, wasted on mellow scenes where such a bit rate wasn't really necessary anyway. In other words, BD encoders use up 25GB+ because they can, not because they need to. Such things considered, I doubt BD has a quantifiable quality benefit over mkvs. Especially not enough to justify over twice the storage requirement.
</gets realistic>

Well honestly I would switch entirely to BD movies vs DVD's as I absolutely LOVE 1080p material and despise non HD video.

I have been working on making BD backups and it's so far an immature and unrefined process. Having said that I have had success in ripping a physical BD and resizing the extras so that it would fit onto a 25GB BD-R.

Now consider this. My parents have nothing to play HD footage with and the cheapest option is a Blu-Ray stand alone player. My girlfriend has a new 52" 1080p television and a blu-ray player. Two other of my friends have 1080p sets and blu-ray players.

As far as I am concerned I can stream from PC to PS3 and have no issues. Most BDs can be converted into H264 mkv's and save lots of space.

So yeah the MKV's may be more economical if you consider only either situations in which having the movies transportable and/or situations in which HTPC's are available.

Ah you're there (go to sleep!), I shouldn't have posted and then done post edits then.

So, how many 1080p movies do you plan on having?

I plan on everything new I get to be in 1080p... anything less is the stone age to me and honestly it's like going from 56k to 30Mbit cable... you will NEVER want to go back

I agree, I fail to understand friends of mine that still download SD (you can't even call internet's non-HD as SD, its worse) versions because.. they're smaller? I don't know - like I said I don't understand them.

For older shows that I doubt have much of an HD quality to them, I still download the 720p version just because those "700MB" (for movies) copies have absolutely terrible blocking during any sort of activity on the screen. Xvid is partially to blame for that, not just the limited-to-CD file size.

I agree entirely. I really wish it would be the norm for all television to be broadcasted in HD even if its just 720p for now. I really find myself limiting what I watch to the HD channels (or HD video content) because I really really can't stand SD stuff.

I don't know... some people might think thats crazy but it's like being served a fine fine glass of wine and then being offered one of those $5 boxes of wine.

"Once you go ____, you never go back."

I have the same impression with png over jpg and high quality audio over normal. (Windows 7 over XP lul)