Stepping Into Blue-Ray-Using a PC
So finally we have settled on Blue-Ray. While many are still stuck at the work blue some of us have alrady joined the techy wagon while others ponder on the shade of blue.
As a quick warning before you begin, this post will cover many aspects, some may be beyond you while other may find it is all common sense information. Feel free to skip the common sense sections, because of the lengh you may also want to bookmark the page and come back later.
Debrief
For those who are not already aware, blue ray is a new (ish) format that allows us to fit a high definition film onto a single disc. There was also a format named HD-DVD but this soon faded away after a prolonged fight.
Watching a high definition image requires you to have a screen that it rated for high definition resolution, most TV’s that you buy these days are, I still recommend you check before buying.
How does Blue-ray work?
Rather than using a red laser to read the disc a blue-ray must be read by a blue laser. Data on a CD is like a series of dots and dashes written to the disc. Because blue is a denser colour it allows there dots and dashes to be smaller and packed closer together. This makes it possible to physically fit more data onto a disc. Blue-ray discs come in two types, single and double layer. This speaks for itself, while a single layer can contain 25GB of data, dual layer can hold 50GB of data, neat huh?
I have finally taken the plunge into the world of Hi-Def Blue ray goodness and so want to run through the different aspects of adding blue ray to your HTPC or home theatre that you should consider. Some will seem to more important to different people depending on your use
Picture
As mentioned above, to take advantage of the stunning blue-ray image you will need a high resolution screen. There are currently two main types of blue ray which split down again into 4 types. There is a lower resolution of 720, and then 1080, these number represent the horizontal lines on a screen. So obviosly a 40 inch screen will look better in 1080 than 720 as a rule of thumb. Then you have the second part of the split, there is also “P” and “I”. These mean Progressive and Interlaced. Again as a general rule that P looks better than I. However, depending who you talk to some people believe that 720P looks better 1080I, but ill leave that decision up to you to make in the store.
Audio
Fantastic it looks good, but how does it sound? Half of the Blue-ray experiance is delivered through sound, how will you get HD audio from your computer to your AV setup? There are a few different, well I would say three. So guess what? Im going to talk about three different ways. Firstly, on board, if you are running a fairly modern computer you may have a high defintion output already on your motherboard. I would personally try that first and see what you think, maybe it could be better? Secondly you can buy an optial sound card, there are many different types of sound cards, make sure you buy the right connection for your motherboard and the piecec of kit at the other end of the cable. These can range froma s little as £20 all the way up to £170, Some cards will encode all the audio itself so that your CPU can breave a little bit and focus on the other important things. Last but not least, you cna use on board audio from a graphics card. ATI’s latest range of Graphics cards can push audio and video through HDMI up to 7.1 channels, while it sounds fantastic, make sure your computer is compatable with the connection to the graphics card.
Films…is that it?
The short answer to this one is NO, there are other uses, the long answer follows. While many people se Blue-ray for films only you can also use Blue-Ray discs for just about anything, providing that you buy a Blue-ray writer. When buying a writer check the formats that you can use, some drive can read a dual layer disc but not write onto one, this may end up with you paying again in the future for the functionalitiy. You can use you new shiny disc for backing up important data in case of data corruption, or maybe even share the contents across the network. If your friend has a drive you could give then a copy if you wanted, just remember stay legal 
.
So after a rather lenghy hopefully some of you will have a little about what you can do to make that Hi-Def step with your own setups
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