Watching HD movies through pc on HDTV set

[FatPaddy]

I hooked up my pc to my HD plasma. Used a DVI to HDMI cable and it works great. Games are awesome. Haven't tried BF2...hope that looks good cuz I play it the most.

My question is...what do I need to watch movies on HD disks? It doesn't seem like bluray or HD drives have really hit the market all that much but I keep reading about ppl who are watching this format on their pc's. What is needed? Do I need an DVD-HD rom drive or do I just need the right codecs and software? I've read how-to articles and there is no mention of the actual drive. Maybe its a given. Maybe this is a stupid question.

 

[ArizonaGeek]

In order to watch HD/Bluray disks you would need an HD or Bluray player. They are still up there in price, but I am betting they'll be dropping some more by the time the holidays get here.

There are downloads, most notable at Quicktime.com, where you can watch movie trailers in 1080i hi-def. If you had a hi-def video camera (I really like Sony's, except the $1,500 price tag) you could import the video as hi-def and play it on an HD TV or if you had a bluray or HD burner you could burn them to disk. There might be something like Netflix or iTunes where you can "rent" downloads of hi-def movies but I haven't heard of anyone really doing it yet.

Really that's about the own legal way of watching them.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[Nelviticus]

Just to clarify, you can get Blu-ray drives for PCs and I assume you can get HD-DVD drives as well. I believe that you will also need a high-def enabled version of your movie-playing software, such as Cyberlink PowerDVD. Some drives might come with the right software already.

Regards

Nelviticus