Brian Cryer wrote:
> Background: I have a shuttle pc at home, few years old, I forget the speed
> but it supports hyperthreading so probably about 3.0GHz. It has an IDE
> interface and does not support SATA. Since I currently use this to record
> tv, it would be convenient to fit a blu-ray player into it. I've ruled out
> the possibility of replacing the dvd player because of the cost (SATA
> blu-ray drives are affordable but IDE ones aren't). I recently saw a USB
> blu-ray player (on ebay) which I could afford - but ...
>
> In order to be able to sensibly watch blu-ray films, what processor or
> graphics requirements would I need to meet? Is my old shuttle likely to be
> up to the job or would I be better off waiting a year for prices to drop and
> either buying a dedicated blu-ray player or replacing my shuttle with a
> better box?
>
> Also, is a usb blu-ray player really only adequate for reading blu-ray
> recorded data disks or is it suitable as a movie player?
>
> TIA.
There is an article here, that compares acceleration capability of
the midrange cards from both camps. Perhaps with the right ATI
video card in the machine, it'll work.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3047
If your machine has an AGP slot, you might have a wait on your hands.
I don't know if those cards will see an AGP version or not. While it is
pretty easy to slap a bridge chip on the video card, it is the driver
side of things that ups the cost for the primary developer.
You can get some bitrate numbers from the Anandtech article, and compare
that to the 30MB/sec that might easily be achieve across USB2. While USB2
is supposed to theoretically approach 57MB/sec, external enclosures typically
don't do that. The implication is there are overheads that limit performance
to some lower number. Using 30MB/sec is probably safe for estimation
purposes (i.e. as a limit at the USB level itself).
I guess you need to find a review, where they use a USB2 Blueray player.
Perhaps a product review for the product you have your eye on, is in
order.
Paul