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Originally Posted by kevmac /forum/post/14249564
Thanks for the quick reply. This is good stuff. The parts I am concerned with are the sound through my Sound Blaster 5.1 Live to my Klipsch 5.1 pc speaker setup.
Best you can get is the same sound quality you got with DVD, essentially. You would not be able to take advantage of the new Blu-ray advanced audio codecs. And, on some titles you may be forced even to Dolby Pro-Logic if they do not have a DD5.1 or DTS5.1 track, but there are only a handful of those.
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Also the PowerDVD playability quality as well. It sounds like the main issue is software related.
Well its both really. The sound thing is mainly a hardware limitation is the PC market due to lack of HDMI 1.3 soundcard options. The deinterlacing issue is mainly a software issue, but finding a player that deinterlaces properly even in the standalone market is hard to come by; you can bet that any standalone under $500 probably will deinterlace wrong, too. PowerDVD just seems to be especially bad at it when paired with the 8800 series, at least in by experience - and I don't think WinDVD would be much better since it will use the same NV drivers.
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I heard that there is a Win(something) program that is supposed to be better than PowerDVD. But anyway, it sounds like this is just another glitch like when DL writers first came out.
Corel's WinDVD is less picky than PowerDVD with DRM issues such as HDCP, but on the other hand it has a LOT more bugs during standard Blu-ray playback. I'd definitely buy PowerDVD out of the two, but neither is ideal.
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A quick search at Newegg found the SAMSUNG Blu-ray Disc Player BD-P1400 for $260 + $16 s/h. Better than Magnavox?
No, the Samsung 1400 had a ton of issues including basic stability, I'm not sure how many were ever resolved. The new Samsung BD-P1500 seems good, though, if you can find that cheap - its a totally different platform than the older Samsungs. Sony BDP-S350 and Panasonic BD30 are also safe bets you can find in the $300-$400 range. IMO best bet these days looks to be the upcoming Pioneer BDP-51FD, but that will run you around $550 which is probably a lot more than you are willing to spend! The Magnavox player happens to be the cheapest one based on the budget Funai reference design which many different brands seem to have built players around. If you are willing to spend a bit more, you'd probably be best off with the Sony S350, which you can get on Sonystyle.com for $299 if you sign up for the Sony credit card (the card is billed $399 then credited $100 a month later).