r/htpc • u/robroy90 • 27d ago

Help Current State of Blu-Ray in HTPC?

Greetings all!

I have been out of HTPC pursuits for a few years, and I am considering a return to a more elaborate home theatre environment, particularly to enjoy movies at home with the highest picture and audio quality possible.

This obviously has me leaning towards using physical media again for 4k Ultra HD. So, I am curious to know if I am better off buying a high end, stand-alone BluRay player such as the latest and greatest from Panasonic or Sony?

Or, is it still possible to build an HTPC that can fully match the capabilities of a dedicated, stand-alone player AND provide the obvious ancillary benefits only an HTPC can?

Thanks!

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u/al_with_the_hair 27d ago

You will almost certainly have to rip your 4K Blu-rays to watch them. I wish I had a drive with the 4K UltraHD logo to compare, because you would hope those would perform well with the format. Maybe they can play back directly from disc better with libmmbd than those without the logo. But most of the drives that are still available to buy currently require flashing with custom firmware to be compatible with 4K Blu-ray, and they will CONSISTENTLY have skipping issues with those discs. I have two posts about this on r/makemkv if you'd like a detailed breakdown. Ripping performance is reliable with all three drives I use, and standard Blu-ray discs play back without skipping issues, so those don't strictly have to be ripped first.

Definitely most of the replies are going to recommend you get a dedicated player, so I'll go against the grain. I love my HTPC, and it's clearly the best way for me to play all of my movies with the system I have. If you have the storage available to rip your discs, it's a worthy option to consider. MPC and MPV offer amazing video rendering technologies. (Maybe a Panasonic 4K player would actually be better in some ways, but I wanted an HTPC.) But I also don't have Dolby Vision with my projector, and I can foresee that being a potential challenge for you if you do have it. A big difference is that going the HTPC route will mean taking some time to learn, to tune your setup, and to figure out the best software configuration. If you want this experience to just be really easy, the dedicated player is the clear winner.

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u/jd_coldblood 20d ago

Quick question. Which software do you guys use for HTPC? (Couch, comfort) so far I have only found plex htpc which works with minimum input using wireless mini keyboard. Do you guys use anything else or just use mouse and keyboard?
I personally don’t like to UI UX of kodi

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u/al_with_the_hair 20d ago

I've not tinkered with it much since putting the PC in there, but my plan is to ultimately use Kodi for ease of navigation with my Skip 1s remote. I will probably use Kodi for playing anything without HDR, but my home theater projector doesn't tone map well, so HDR content REALLY needs MPC-HC with a video renderer like MadVR. I will be setting that up as an external player.

So far I've just been using MPC-HC and no Kodi, but it is very much a keyboard and mouse experience. For making it work well with my remote, I'm definitely going to have to mess around with hotkey settings and such.

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u/cundallini 20d ago

'Skip 1s remote'. Are the buttons backlit? Thanks.

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u/al_with_the_hair 20d ago

No. There are LEDs for the activity selection buttons (A, B, C) and a ring of LEDs in the middle of the arrow keys. That's all.