PC Player

[BrianOD]

I am looking at two home theater locations. One will have a standalone BD player, the other COULD utilize a current PC. I'd like to find out the pros and cons of having a BD player in my PC - would it be able to output to a Panasonic Projector? Would the quality of upscaling a DVD to HD be the same as a standalone?
Any recommendations?
Thanks
Brian

[MrBoylan]

I am looking at two home theater locations. One will have a standalone BD player, the other COULD utilize a current PC. I'd like to find out the pros and cons of having a BD player in my PC - would it be able to output to a Panasonic Projector? Would the quality of upscaling a DVD to HD be the same as a standalone?
Any recommendations?
Thanks
Brian

Hi,

PCs don't tend to have the best upconversion processors, but if you output DVDs at 480i, then you can let your projector upconvert the signal to its native resolution (720p or 1080p). So if the projector's upscaler/deinterlace processor is good then you should get acceptable results.

There's no reason you couldn't hook your PC up to a Panasonic projector, either via VGA or HDMI (or DVI-D to HDMI). You'll probably get better results from HDMI because it's a pure digital signal from Blu-ray to the projector and this may be the only way you can output the native 1920x1080 pixel resolution (some projectors and HDTVs limit the resolution via analog VGA inputs).

B&H tends to have pretty good deals on the Panasonic projectors. Take a look here:

Home Theater Projectors | B&H Photo Video

Good luck!

-Chris