# How I Solved The Blu Ray Problem



## geishaslave (Feb 28, 2008)

System:

Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz 2MB L2 cache 800MHz FSB processor
4GB Corsair DDR ram
Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G rev4 motherboard
ATI Radeon HD4650 AGP video card
Asus VE205T monitor
Western Digital 500GB SATA hard drive
LG BH10LS30 SATA blu ray writer
Windows XP SP3 
Antec 650W PSU
Cyberlink PowerDVD8 (bundled with LG drive as BluRay Suite)

Cyberlink BD advisor passed everything but the CPU, however since the HD4650 card has a more than adequate GPU, much of the rendering load is handled by the ATI unit.

Anyway here is my gruesome tale. I am taking a digital film class. The student shoots are in AVCHD file format. I decided to upgrade my home system to deal with blu ray since BD is the best format to burn AVCHD video.

I thought it would simply be a matter of obtaining a blu ray burner. So I purchase then installed the LG model listed above, inserted a blu ray title and nothing happened.

I then learned that BD uses UDF 2.5 and 2.6, but Windows doesn't natively support 2.5 and above. Fortunately, the LG drive came with a suite of BD softwares including the requisite UDF reader.

After installing all the blu ray software, I decided to run the Cyberlink BD advisor where I learned that my video card was inadequate. So I bought the HD4650 and installed it, connecting the card to to my LG Flatron L1720P monitor via DVI to DVI.

So I insert a BD title and this time Windows recognized the disc and the contents can be seen in Windows Explorer. Next, I try to play the BD in PowerDVD8 but I get an error about HDCP, switch to an analog video connection. Well the HD4650 has only DVI, but I am sure it is HDCP compliant. After more research I learn that both the video card AND the monitor must be HDCP compliant. The L1720P is NOT HDCP compliant, even though it has a DVI connector. But an analog connection gets around the HDCP requirement!

You guessed it, I buy the Acer VE205T monitor which has DVI and is HDCP compliant.

And so at last I was able to play BD video on my home system.

The manual that came with the LG blu ray burner did not discuss any of this. As a matter of fact, the LG user guide gave very modest minimum requirements related to burning BD. Playback was not covered, only disc burning.

My point is that if not for HDCP, my system was well able to play a BD movie without the video and monitor upgrade. I do not think that HDCP is going to prevent anyone from duplicating commercial BD titles. 

Thanks for reading.


----------



## ebackhus (Apr 21, 2005)

There are other things in place that prevent it. I remember I was trying to capture video from PS2 games by going from my console to a camera that support S-Video input. All analog but it has signaling that told the camera to stop recording. DVDs also have that and it can be seen generally when trying to record to a VHS tape.


----------

