Hi All,

I (will) have all these stuffs:

- Samsung HPS4273 42" plasma coming in next week
- PC with Panasonic Blu-ray burner/player, ATI X1950Pro (HDCP compliant, no HDMI)
- Older Yamaha receiver HTR-5560 connected to 5.1 Polk, Pioneer DV-565A DVD player (standard def, no HDMI).

So basically HD stuffs I own is only the Plasma and the PC. Buying the plasma was a big step for me so I can consider upgrading my DVD or other components later on but I want to utilize my current setup first. :)

The question is, given my above systems, what is the better way to connect my PC to the Plasma so I can watch blu-ray movies (or DVD movies) with good audio and video quality? I assume that if I connect them correctly I can even watch DVD movies better via PC compared with the Pioneer DVD player?

I was thinking about this:
- buy a DVI to HDMI cable. I need 35 feet, found at monoprice. Would the length be OK?
- Connect the DVI to HDMI cable: PC DVI to Plasma HDMI and I will get only Video.
- For Audio, connect optical out from PC to HTR-5560 so I can get 5.1 Audio from the home theater.
- Still not sure how to connect audio to the plasma, maybe from the HTR-5560.

I'm very new to this, so I would appreciate if experts here can shed some lights... thanks! :)

what kind of video card and cpu processor do you have? those are veryyyy important!

Sorry for the incomplete specs. I understand that at least Core2Duo 2Ghz is needed. Cyberlink BD/HD Advisor shows all green except Display (thus what this Samsung plasma for).

CPU: Core2Duo E6400 @ 3.2Ghz
RAM: 2GB
Video Card: ATI X1950Pro 256mb HDCP
Software: PowerDVD Ultra v7.3 (HD-DVD/Blu-ray version)

Thanks for any suggestions.

i tried doing a similar thing.

i have a 7600 gs video card, and i connected my PC with an hd dvd drive to my tv using both a vga output and a dvi(pc has dvi out) to hdmi cable. i found that the performance was much better using the vga output. i realize that there may be issues with not using an hdcp compliant device, but if you purchase any dvd hd, that program should remedy that. that was just my experience though.

sounds like you have a powerful computer, i would suggest getting an xbox 360 hd dvd drive and connect it to your pc. microsoft windows xp has drivers that will automatically recognize the drive and you can watch hd dvd's on your pc

Thanks for the respond nickelplayer6, but what I want to know is how to connect my blu-ray burner from PC to plasma. I don't have and maybe will not spend HD DVD or xbox 360 hd drive at the moment.

I guess I have to tried it myself but wondering if someone has done similar tests...

the blu-ray burner wont directly connect to your plasma. you probably already know this, but you just need to connect your video card to the plasma.

if your plasma has vga(pc) inputs, i would try that connection first, as your video card will allow you to set your resolution to match the native resolution of your plasma. im sure your video card has dvi out, which you could also connect via a dvi-hdmi cable. i was able to do that with my setup, but for some reason the resolution was messed up and not as accurate as vga