First homebrew hybrid Blu-ray/HD DVD 'player'

by Matt Burns, posted Sep 10th 2006 at 11:27PM

We have a hard time calling this contraption a 'player' but by definition, it plays back both Blu-ray and HD DVD's and therefore, we digress; it is a player, just not a conventional set-top version. Basically, this computer is equipped with the NEC HD DVD drive from Toshiba's HD A1 set-top player (top drive) and the Sony internal PC Blu-ray drive (next one down) that made all those waves a few weeks back. Payback is made possible from the Japanese release of WinDVD 8 Platinum and is feed through Sapphire's HDCP-certified graphics card. Apparently everything runs smooth as silk (so says the owner) on the AMD 64 3200 powering the whole system dispite the fact that Cyberlink claims dual-core processors are necessary for any high-def media playback. In fact he claims the Blu-ray playback is better then the Samsung BD-P1000 set-top player. But here it is, the first hybrid Blu-ray/HD DVD player. Now, can someone please put the drives in a HTPC box so the whole thing doesn't look so nerdy.

[Thanks for the tip Tyler]

Filed under: DIY

Tags: blu-ray, combo, dtv, hd dvd, HdDvd, hdtv, hybrid, tv

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Andrew Pease @ Sep 11th 2006 1:13AM

The first stand-alone HD-DVD player was essentially a Pentium 4 with Red Hat linux installed on some flash memory, so that's probably not that far from production ;)

Neutral

Eric M @ Sep 11th 2006 7:39AM

Epic maneuver!

Neutral

Dave @ Sep 11th 2006 7:56AM

And why we need a 15GB HD DVD drive when the Blu-Ray writes to 50GB media???

Neutral

bryan @ Sep 11th 2006 7:58AM

WOW, someone actualy found a way to use all the drive bays, and they didnt do it. I agree. They could put this in a much better looking case, and impress people. That looks like crap.

Neutral

WASD John @ Sep 11th 2006 8:43AM

A nice HTPC case would really make going that route a viable solution to say no to all the standalone players that each have their own little nuances.

Neutral

plaque monster @ Sep 11th 2006 9:10AM

Good to hear theat the video quality on BD is better than the Samsung player. Techically, a BD or HD-DVD disc encoded the same (theyre coming out) should look exactly the same since the processing is identical.

Anyone want to guess how much this setup cost...or how much it will ocst 1 year from now?

Neutral

Gabe @ Sep 11th 2006 9:50AM

This is how I plan on having my BD and HDDVD. I am going to slap these drives in my Vista Media Center once the prices begin to come down.

Neutral

StevenA @ Sep 11th 2006 11:44AM

That's not what I would call a hybrid. It's just two players attached to one computer. To be a true hybrid, it should have a single drive bay, be able to recognize the format of the disk that's inserted, and use the appropriate electronics.

Neutral

Drew @ Sep 11th 2006 3:25PM

Hold on, am I missing something here? How can you have an athlon xp processor mated to a pci-e video card? I could be mistaken but I don't think this is possible. I did a few minutes of research to confirm this theory and found no socket a motherboards that are pci-e. I'm pretty sure all athlon xp's are socket a. I hope I'm wrong since i'm running an athlon xp.

Neutral

Drew @ Sep 11th 2006 3:42PM

never mind i figured it out. matt screwed up the post. he's using an athlon 64 3200.

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