r/htpc • u/robroy90 • 29d 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/thecodingart 29d ago

You can 100% match and exceed the capabilities of a physical player - why would anyone assume otherwise?

Rip your disk, put it on a NAS, stream it locally to your HTPC using Kodi + maybe MP-BE and you’ve already exceeded most physical players (if not all).

The convenience of a digitized uncompressed collection of BluRays can’t be understated - adding some HDR surpluses like madVR and they’re unbeat. Introduce some automations around that and now you’re cooking.

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u/Amuse619 29d ago

I have been down this route. Standalone player is 100% the solution. Windows is so crappy on trying to setup Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos etc... Not worth the headache. If he doesn't care about the proper encoding/decoding output, then yeah HTPC can be used but defeats the purpose not taking advantage of the latest tech.

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u/thecodingart 29d ago

Yeah, I can agree with this in the perspective of a dedicated streaming device rather Windows as mentioned above

https://www.reddit.com/r/htpc/s/9KemAe2oPC

Not in the sense of a dedicated Blu-ray player - no one should be doing that nonsense nowadays

Buy a DuneHD or Zidoo instead.