I've been enjoying BD and HD-DVD discs for a couple of years now on my b&w and color roundie collection. Like many of you, I faced a similar problem of how to play back multiple formats (DVD, HD-DVD, Blue ray, Video CD, etc) on these old TV's and also drive a modern 1080p display. I wanted to do it cheaply and reliably. Sounds like a dream come true?
Read on...
The solution is presented as two activities:
1) A device to read any media type (BD, HD-DVD, DVD, CD-ROM etc...)
2) A device to create video to drive any display type (monitor, TV, etc...)
It's important to remember that Blue ray, HD-DVD, DVD, etc are simply storage formats. They are the specification that puts the data on the disc. This is a completely separate problem from creating a video signal for driving a display device like a monitor or TV set.
BD (Blue ray) and HD-DVD .....up to 50GB double layer
DVD ..................................up to 4.7GB double layer
It's not just that high def may have more than 10X the data compared to a DVD, but the data rates for high definition are incredibly higher! Also remember, double layer is like a layer cake, or sandwitch, the laser optics in the player can focus on to extract informataion, one layer at a time, whilst the disc spins. It's a method that effectively doubles the amount of data, in this case video info, on a disc.
When you buy a high def player or DVD player and connect it to your TV you actually are implementing a series of integrated solutions that retrieves information from the disc and outputs it as a signal that can be displayed on the screen of your TV. I've found that the best solution is not to buy anything integrated but to build a system up using components.
Starting with step 1) a device to read any media format.
I've found that the LG Model GGW-H20L can playback all disc formats (except it cannot physically mount to playback Laser discs or CED discs). This disc drive unit also records double layer Blue ray, so you can copy high def movies too! All for $159 here's the link:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827136155
LG Black 6X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 6X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner 6X Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive Model GGW-H20L - OEM
This thing is incredible. Yes it even plays the now defunct HD-DVD dics that stores like Fry's are dumping for $1.99 but it also plays and records BD (Blue ray Discs) and just about ever other computer disc format ever invented.
Write Speed
BD-R 6X
BD-RE 2X
DVD+R 16X
DVD+RW 8X
DVD-R 16X
DVD-RW 6X
CD-R 40X
CD-RW 24X
BD-R DL 4X
BD-RE DL 2X
DVD+R DL 4X
DVD-R DL 4X
Read Speed
BD-ROM 6X
DVD-ROM 16X
CD-ROM 40X
The secret that makes the GGW-H20L work well is to install it on a good computer system with a graphics card that support HDCP.
This leads us to step 2) A device to create video that drives a monitor or TV
Once the info is recovered using the disc drive it's all converted to SATA interface standard that can be easily manipuilated by a computer. The computers graphics card is given the SATA information, which then formats it to the requirements of the display device, e.g. a computer monitor or TV. My preference has been to use the HIS 4670 graphics card (radeon based chip set) becuase it's cheap and has a very effective cooling system. However, NVIDIA type is also a good choice. It really depends on the motherboard chipset for best compatibilty. I run a pair of these graphics cards in non-SLI configuration and configure them to allow simultaneous video of NTSC and 1080p during playback. Although the above link is for Newegg I've found that Fry's is very competative too. Just shop around. Everything can be bought off the shelf to make a system from scratch.
I also have a computer system that uses a pair of GGW-H20L units so I can copy from any computer disc and record onto BD with a single mouse click. And the nice thing about using computers is that it makes it easy to tune into internet TV - which is the way of the future and may eventually make old fashion cable TV obsolete.
Keeping the old TV sets supplied with network quality video really will be a challenging endurance test for us old TV collectors. Using computers is an effective way to bridge the technology difference time has brought over the generations.