just curious if anyone's running an internal Blu-Ray drive. if so, what video card and CPU are you running with it? do you have to run sound via the SATA cable, thru the motherboard to your sound card? they're pretty cheap these days ($100 and up). thanks

I have this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827136133 and it's plugged in with only sata cable and power connector. Look at mi sig to see vid card and cpu.

If you're getting a bluray drive I hope you have a good monitor to go with it.

thanks. thats the one i've been eyeing as well. this is what i have:

amd fx-53, 3GB OCZ mem, 500gb raid0, ati hd3850 512Mb, audigy 2zs, 20" widescreen (not purchased yet), 560w PS, sanyo plv-z4 720p projector.

Well the 20" screen is not good. Becasue blu-ray plays back at 1920x1080 and the res for a 20" is only 1680x1050 so the res isnt the best. I have a sony blu-ray drive running with a phenom 9950 and a 4870 and 4gb of DDR2-800 ram on an Acer 24" 1920x1200 screen. It plays great.

is blue ray really better than reg dvds? i've never been able to find a comparison of them side by side, and can't decide if it's worth the extra mulah

well i'd be using the projector to watch movies on and the monitor to play games on (unless my wife isn't home, then i'll use the projector for the games )

Blu-ray is higher resolution, and includes uncompressed audio, so both video and audio are higher quality than the standard definition DVD. However, you need the proper equipment (HDTV, blu-ray player) to run it, and for it to make a difference in your viewing. Another issue to consider is cost of a blu-ray player and that many manufacturers and content providers have mentioned their preference to stick with digital downloads and their belief that blu-ray will be very ephemeral at best.

To the OP - I built a system that runs a blu-ray burner, and it's equipped with an 8800GT and Q9450. However, this isn't an HTPC, it's for video editing, thus the higher end processor and video card. Yes, that's how the information gets passed through. You don't really need a sound card, as there are lots of great motherboards with pretty high quality integrated audio. Most high-end sound cards I've seen are used to take the load off the rest of the computer for high-performance gaming, though nowadays it doesn't seem to matter all that much. And for audio editing and music production, anybody who takes themselves seriously would get a real mixer you can connect through firewire.

The best solution is a cheapie low-power dual core, motherboard with good integrated audio, and a video card like a HD 3850 or a 8600/9500GT depending on vendor preference. But I see you already have most of your components.

I prefer the Apevia QPACK2 for a case, as I've used it extensively for many builds. It requires MicroATX, which is my recommendation for a HTPC anyways.

love some help if anyone can give me some. i have the bdc-2202 from pioneer and i hate it. it won't play audio cd's, it only plays some blu-rays, and i haven't been able to get it to play sound on my home theater setup. i can only get audio through the monitor speaker. help me out here. i have a 30" 2560x1600 monitor and i built this compter to be an all inclusive entertainment setup and it's failing miserably.

to be clear, it plays audio over the home theater setup great while i play fallout 3, but no go with blu-ray disks.