Liteon BD-ROM Drive

So this came yesterday from scan.co.uk, which was unfortunately superficially damaged - a scratch on the front fascia, and there was a rattle coming from the drive when I moved it about.

Anyway, got it home and opened up the HTPC and replaced the existing DVD-RW drive, and found out the way the tray opens on the Liteon BD-ROM drive meant it would not work - the tray fascia was too large for the HTPC case's flip down opening... So I had to pull the drive back out and remove all the fascia on the drive - good it was damaged anyway. This now works, but the front button on the HTPC case does not reach the button for the tray eject. I might have to do something about this or just use the eject button on the remote only.

I tested the drive with a DVD; I have no Blu-ray disc to test the drive as my Amazon order has not come through. Looking forward to testing this out...

While I had the case opened, I took picture of the Zalman heat sink I had put on the GPU - replacing its fan:



This cost me £10 on eBay, so the running total so far is:

• Antec Veris Remote Max HTPC case @ £133
• Pinnacle 7010iX Dual Analog + DTT + Dsat tuner card @ £23
• 2 x 1 Gb PC2-4200 DDR2 RAM @ £20
• Pentium 4 CPU fan @ £15
• SATA DVD rewriter @ £15
  
• HD 2600 Pro GPU @ £23
• Zalman GPU heatsink @ £10
  
• Liteon BD-ROM @ 45
  

Total: £284

MediaPortal 1.0.2 and 1.1.0 Alpha

It looks like I'm going to be busy, not only with my Blu-ray movies, but also with installing the latest MediaPortal version running...

The 1.0.2 version has been out a while, but I had not time to install and use it, and now before I know it, an alpha release of 1.1 is released!

What this spot for updates on MP!

Also I've recently gotten a copy of Vista Ultimate, and would like to test the VMC out, so watch this space for this too!

Blu-ray!

Hello,

I'm back! Sorry about the break, but as I had nothing to report about my HTPC setup... Nothing had changed on the system, and I was using mainly for media playback, and not TV viewing or recording.

But I've decided to purchase a BD-ROM drive for Blu-ray movie playback. I had thought about doing this for a while and making this post asking for opinions to whether it was worth it, finally this convinced me to make the purchase.

The question was asked in the early days of this setup - whether I should include Blu-ray playback facilities or not - stood unanswered. The question in my mind nowadays is whether Blu-ray PQ was better than broadcast HD. There was an answer which convinced me to at least have a try... The Blu-ray experience is better overall than broadcast HD as it has a large pixel resolution and frame-rate, better sound, and if a good quality movie disc is purchase, then a better experience could be had over broadcast HD.

So I have ordered a Liteon HD-401S-06C BD-ROM internal SATA drive for £45 from scan.co.uk, and 3 Blu-ray movies from Amazon 3 for 2 offer: Bladerunner, 2001 and Amadeus. We will see how better the experience with Blu-ray over broadcast HD TV is, when the item arrive.

My spending on this HTPC project so far:

• Antec Veris Remote Max HTPC case @ £133
• Pinnacle 7010iX Dual Analog + DTT + Dsat tuner card @ £23
• 2 x 1 Gb PC2-4200 DDR2 RAM @ £20
• Pentium 4 CPU fan @ £15
• SATA DVD rewriter @ £15
  
• HD 2600 Pro GPU @ £23
• Liteon BD-ROM @ 45
  

Total: £274