HTPC Tip Of The Day: Playing Back High Definition DVDs
Rather then buy multiple stand alone boxes, an HTPC can be a more modular setup. If you are only interested in TV add in a couple of tuner cards, or if you want to watch high def discs throw in a multi-format high-def drive.
The basics of adding Blu-ray or HD DVD to your HTPC can be found in our guide here.
PowerDVD was the first out of the gate with HD optical disc support. As such, from my limited experience, I feel it is a bit more polished. Especially with their latest release that fixes BD+ disc problems. However, they have no integration with Media Center except support for basic support of the Media Center remote. A community member did release a plugin which makes life quite a bit easier and can be found here.
If you are brave you can wade through this 5000+ post thread at AVSforum about PowerDVD Ultra. It talks a lot about using PowerDVD to play disc images (ISO) from your hard drive.
There is a certain build of PowerDVD that plays back the disc images from the hard drive, however you lose features of the newer updates. It looks like if you want a high def disc media server, you are going to be waiting for awhile.
The audio front is a little confusing and may need correction from Matt or our great community. Here is what I know:
- Passing the raw bit-stream of high resolution audio codecs is not possible currently.
- Multi-channel LPCM audio is possible with Intel G35 motherboards that have HDMI integrated, all other chipsets (ie: ATI or NVIDIA) just pass S/PDIF across the HDMI port, so no high resolution audio.
- Latest PowerDVD appears to fix previous downsampling issues
- I am not entirely sure if it decodes new lossless formats properly.
I have had no trouble playing back the HD DVDs I own :). Which is only four. Matt is doing more thorough testing and I will be too as time progresses.
AVS thread about PowerDVD Audio
ArcSoft has recently released their high def optical disc playback software. Right out of the "box" I was very impressed with VMC integration. It is not true integration but it is nearly seemless and fully supports the MCE remote. I have had some issues with playback that I am trying to resolve with ArcSoft. I really think they are on the right track and am looking forward to future releases.
Matt has had better luck and will be providing his evaluation pretty soon.
Just like CableCards, High def disc playback is in its infancy. With the latest version of Cyberlink and ArcSoft you should be able to play the majority of collection flawlessly (noting the audio issues above). It certainly isn’t an audiophile’s dream yet but I would think by summer time a lot of this issues should be taken care of. As always, hang in there :). If you have any other good HTPC high def resources or comments, please let us know.