Do I need a Blu-Ray player to watch ripped Blu-Ray movies from disk?

[vartakavi]

Through his hostel mates, my son has collected a good number of movies on his hard disk - some of them have been ripped from Blu-Ray discs, and some from DVDs. He is coming home for summer holidays and wants to watch these movies on our Samsung LCD TV (C-530).

Our old DVD player is giving problems and I am planning to buy a new DVD or a Blu-Ray player to connect to this TV. I do not have an AVR, but I do have an Amp and a pair of bookshelves. I have a few DVDs, a lot of movies on VCDs and no Blu-Ray discs at present. The only reason to look at a Blu-Player is to future proof the investment for say 3 years or so, given that DVDs will probably give way to BDs in that time period.

The Philips DVP3588 is retailing for Rs.4,500. In this forum, I saw a dealer selling the Pioneer DV-2011-K for Rs.2,500. The Sony BDP S370 is selling for Rs.9,500. Budget is not a constraint, but I do not want to waste money on features that we may not use.

I understand that all three players have USB ports and can play music from a Pen Drive (not sure about Ipod connectivity - but that is important to me and I have to check that out).

Also, all three players will recognise only FAT-32, and hence it is not possible to play movies stored on a hard disk that is formatted in NTFS. My son suggests that we copy whichever movie we want to watch from the Hard Disk to the Pen Drive.

My question is: Will there be any difference in the audio or video quality while playing a movie ripped from a Blu-Ray disk via USB through a DVD player vs. a Blu-Ray player like Sony S370?

Also - any views on the quality of audio CDs played through these players? Is the audio output of the Sony BDP likely to be any better?

Thanks in advance for your advise.

 

[jbgude]

A Blu Ray player is redundant as the movies your son has are not burnt on a Disc, and no it will not improve the quality of the rips.
If you buy a BD player your existing DVDs will certainly look better( if the player has upscaling facilities) and probably your CDs will sound clearer- though perhaps not as much.
If you shop around, there are Blu Ray players available for around 6K. The Sony BD370, is an verstile machine with good upscaling...but remember the BD code is locked to Region C if bought in India.

 

[stillsearching..]

Hi, i would suggest you to rather go in for a media player, lots of them around now. like the western digital live hub, Iomega or seagate. not only do you get to play your ripped files , u can also store most of your audio/video ,jpeg files on them.

 

[spirovious]

A media player OR HTPC can do the job.

 

[ukjeyaraj]

Assuming the movies are stored in external HDD, get Asus O Play Mini which can play the movies. It retails at around Rs.3600/-

 

[venkatcr]

Vartakavi, please be aware that no optical player (DVD or Blu-Ray) can, as yet, play all media formats. When you collect moves, you will have many different formats. If you have movies ripped from Blu-Ray, they will be anywhere from 4 to 20GB in size.

What you need is a media player, and that one that can play Blu-Ray rips. And one that can understand and read NTFS file system.

Cheers

 

[wlg]

Hi
I dont know too much but my friend has a media player which is connected to a dock (Rs.2500) into which you insert your internal HDD on which you have ripped your blue ray, each blue ray movie is approx 20GB and cannot be copied on disks, dock takes upto 2TB HDD, you get docks holding one or two HDD (at Abg Sim Lim Towers Lamington road Mumbai). The picture is perfect Blue Ray quality. (2TB HDD WD approx Rs4400/-)
good luck

 

[deba]

I find connecting my VAIO Laptop HDMI output to my TV/ Projector HDMI In and using VLC Player to paly the HD Files quiet convienient. As you can adjust the A/V setting a lot to suit your likings and there is no problem with the aspect ratio.