I was thinking about buying a capacious 1 terabyte HDD for my HTPC and backing up blu-ray ISO's onto the hard drive and then watch them with PowerDVD but I have a couple of questions:
1: Will I be able to connect my HTPC to my PC via HDMI and have no problems with viewing the movie?
I've heard HDMI has DRM that isn't friendly to back ups so I thought my back ups might not work if theyr piped through HDMI to the HDTV.
2: Will I lose any functionality if I play the movies through my PC opposed to a PS3?
I'm just curious because looking at the specs for the blu-ray players when you take a look at audo coding for example the specs vary between on board to no.
I'm assuming if I had a sound card capable of decoding it all and a graphics card with HDMI v1.3 it wouldn't make a difference, blu-ray would take advantage of it just like a blu ray player or the PS3 would provided it was there.
I'd rather play the movies through my HTPC since I wouldn't need to buy expensive blu ray discs to back up each movie I could just put it on my HDD which can be reused at a later date.
I know I went on a little bit but I'm doing my last touch of homework before making a decision so I appreciate any help.
The main contentious problem with the HTPC or PC route is making sure you have a HDCP compliant graphics card since there is a "compliance handshake" that takes place between the graphics card and the HDTV and the connection must be digital (DVI or HDMI).
I believe there are some HDMI output Gtraphics cards that also allow an Audio connection to be made but I do not believe that there are any sound cards yet that can do Dolby True HD but there might be some motherbords.
My motherboard has a S/PDIF output and I can send the audio over a co-axial cable to my surround reciever to get DTS or Dolby 5.1.
I do not have a PS3 and do not know if it outputs HD audio formats and of cousre you would need a surround sound system that could match your sound output capabalities in either HTPC or PS3 routes.
So I should be fine with HDCP compliancy and it looks like it has sound support too. Curious question but could I use a DVI to HDMI converter and still be HDCP compliant?
I'm going to be using a Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 soundcard which can be seen below:
Funny thing is I've stumbled across something that may be of interest to you as well.
The Auzentech card I've picked conveniently has an add on card called "Auzentech HDMI X-Tension" which basically connects to the Auzentech card and gives you Dolby True HD.
DVI to HDMI cable is what I use.
As for HD audio, My surround system only does DTS, Dolby 5.1 and prologic II.
However, contrary to DVD, I can have DTS on every Bluray I watch which I have been quite satisfied with.
I can afford to wait to change my surround system and see what products develop for the PC.
So far I have enjoyed my Bluray experiance & I hope you do too but it is not the "Revolution" over DVD that the industry would have you believe.
