RobertBruce

Is there really any reason to choose a standalone player, performance-wise?
My computer is just a few feet away, already has internet access, which I would have to split to a standalone player anyway (or buy an expensive wireless add-on)

BlueMak

If you are going to use the same monitor/tv, then I guess not much point to buy a seperate one, unless the PC makes a lot of noise which you might not enjoy while watching a movie.
A silent PC, or headphones changes this.
I was between the same things as you, and what I did was buy a PS3 slim. I got the seperate player, it already has wi-fi built in, and it is a gaming console in addition to the rest, and it looks way better to my eyes than most blu ray players out there.

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

comp_ali

I'd go with Bluemak advice , PS3 is considered on of the cheapest Blu ray drives and yet solid performance.
And you can game nicely as well.

MIG-31

I have an LG Blu-Ray drive in my pc..The quality of the movies are good.. But there is a huge downfall with my 22" Samsung Syncmaster 2232bw.

Even though Blu-Ray movies still have borders i loose around a third of the screen size of the film.

I feel there is no comparison to my stand alone Blue-Ray player on My 37" Panasonic Viera TV downstairs..

I would opt for either a Stand alone Player or go with a ps3 like Bluemak has suggested..

__________________

Judas

Personally the Standalone Players are more compatible then the PS3 player.. i mean the PS3 player does exceptionally well, however i've never gotten it to be able to properly output or "recode" digital audio for a wackload of amplifiers, the result ends up being matrixed stereo which is utterly garbage in comparison.

The standalone blue ray players (provided you don't get a terrible cheap one) have features that just make things work well reguardless of the speaker/tv system you've got, but the audio recode options are bloody handy. Recoding HD-AUDIO into a format that is capatible with your stereo system is nice. Plenty of surround sound systems can do DTS/Dolby 5.1 or 6.1 or even 7.1, however they do not understand the Master audio or HD DTS/Dolby.

Personally i've been running a Blue-Ray/HD-DVD with cd/dvd burning capabilities (Drive is listed in my specs to the left) for a few years now, since the HD-DVD first came out. And i can say that i haven't updated it's firmware ONCE.

Now the drive retails for about $120 bucks. The Additional purchase is Software that can do a damn good job of playing it back and after having them all, PowerDVD 9's Deluxe or Ultimate is the way to go.

The downfall of using the computer is that well with ATI's Display adapters, i cannot for the life of me get HDMI output to work through a plethora of various brands of HDTV's, i get crap picture quality or no picture at all, which is unfortunate for some of the good HDTV's that are 120hz or better with Image Interpolation which makes one hell of a difference (120hz without interpolation produces very little difference, so while many tvs are 120hz, it's a bit of a marketing joke without interpolation)

So in the end, what would i take?

Well without a HDTV that can do the Image Interpolation, i have no problems AT ALL using my computer for Blue Ray, works great, excellent picture, and if you get a cheap projector that can manage a good image, it's still great.

I'd only go to a standalone player if i ever get another Real TV with image interpolation.

__________________

Lowfat

My vote goes for a PS3. And this is coming from someone who has 4 HDDVD/BD drives in my PC's. Software is pretty poor for BD playback. There are times where I would have to wait months for PowerDVD to release updated keys so I could play the movie. I finally got fed up w/ it and just started ripping all my movies to remove all the copy protection and be able to use whatever software I wanted.

A PS3 can decode all the HD audio formats and output them as 7.1 LPCM over HDMI as well.

__________________

Judas

Wow you have had problems playing blue-ray dvds with powerdvd?

I've yet to receive a single Blue-ray DVD that i couldn't play and my collection gets a bump in both older and newer releases quite freqently.

__________________

Lowfat

The keys weren't updated often enough. I had to wait months before I could play X-Men or X2. It would just load to a black screen.

__________________