4k standalone Blu-Ray player or HTPC?

[Tama-Chan]

Hi all,

I built a silent HTPC with a Blu-Ray drive (not sure which one, a few years old), a Core i5 4570 (so Haswell), an MSI H87-G43 motherboard, PowerDVD (v15 I believe) for Blu-Ray playback, Windows 10, and XBMC, housed in a Lian-Li PC-C60B. The idea was to have XBMC be the front-end for most everything (rips playback, DVD playback, music, etc), and to switch to PowerDVD for Blu-Ray playback. PowerDVD use was supposed to be occasional, since I plan on ripping all the DVDs / Blu-Rays I own.

Interface-wise, I wanted to have the HTPC boot directly into XBMC and to have everything 10-feet-user-friendly, but never quite got to it (it should be trivial to have XBMC launch on startup ; however, the small mouse cursors and relatively small buttons and UI of PowerDVD are a bit annoying when sitting on the couch, and not sure how easy it is to solve). Also, I was using a wireless mini keyboard + touchpad, which allows full usage of the HTPC, but isn't always the most convenient (can be hard to move the cursor precisely, for instance).

Fast forward a few years, and I've found that a few things have changed:

■ I've built a proper NAS with tons of storage
■ I'm planning on having multiple clients (1 TV and 1 projector inside the house ; laptops and mobile phones inside or outside the house), possibly simultaneous, with as little client-side setup required as possible, and with syncing between them
■ I would like to support ripping and playback of 4K UHD Blu-Rays

I've set up Plex on my NAS, as it made more sense for 2) than multiple XBMC instances with a shared MySQL, and with the configuration tweaking required on each client.

However, for 3), my understanding is that I would have to changed pretty much everything to support 4K UHD Blu-Ray playback on my HTPC : the CPU, the motherboard, the drive, the version of PowerDVD. I'm probably looking at $300-400 worth of hardware and software licenses, I think.

OTOH IUUC, I don't need all of this crap to rip 4K Blu-Rays - I just need a UHD-friendly drive that can read them (with a firmware that doesn't block UHD playback), and the right software (MakeMKV, and perhaps AnyDVD HD).

Is that all correct so far?


If so, I'm wondering if I should just take a completely different approach:

• 
  ■ A dedicated 4K Blu-Ray player for the occasional playback - should be much less expensive than upgrading everything (around $100-200 ?)
  ■ I could at least house the HTPC into a smaller enclosure, since I don't need to include the 5.25" Blu-Ray drive. But even better, I should be able to replace it with a streaming player such as a Roku Premiere, an NVidia Shield, a Vero 4K+, ... which would mean faster boot times, user interface that's better suited to the 10-feet scenario, less friction (booting directly into what's relevant for the user, ...), smaller form factor, remote control / app to pilot the UI that's easier to use than the wireless keyboard, etc. And I think I would be able to get 4k streams from Netflix (I wouldn't on my HTPC unless I invested in either a new CPU + mobo or an appropriate graphics card) ?

Sure, I'd still have friction when going from disc playback to rip playback / Netflix, since I'd have to switch HDMI inputs on the A/V receiver, but that doesn't sound more convoluted than having to switch apps on the HTPC (if anything, seems easier).

Opinions? Thanks in advance!

 

[jsmithepa]

I believe AnyDVD no longer exists. The industry is been cramming down on discs ripping, after you have ripped things, PowerDVD has a ~2 year life span after which if u want it to play newer titles you have to re-purchase$ the dang thing, this info is 18 months old so I dunno what's latest. Anywhoo is seems to me Stand-alone BR player cheaper and more reliable for occasional BR playback.

 

[Tama-Chan]

I believe AnyDVD no longer exists. The industry is been cramming down on discs ripping, after you have ripped things, PowerDVD has a ~2 year life span after which if u want it to play newer titles you have to re-purchase$ the dang thing, this info is 18 months old so I dunno what's latest. Anywhoo is seems to me Stand-alone BR player cheaper and more reliable for occasional BR playback.

Looks like AnyDVD still exists, although I think they moved their website and their offices? https://www.redfox.bz/en/anydvdhd.html

But yeah, I've already had to update PowerDVD once, would need to update it again for 4k Blu-Ray playback, and I'm getting tired of paying for upgrades. I imagine standalone players do not get obsolete?

 

[jsmithepa]

Am not sure about stand-alone never get obsolete, but for sure if u have a plain BR, that won't work for the new BR-UHD

Another thing I remember about AnyDVD/PowerDVD was, it did't bypass the Cinavia block so no uncompress surround audio.

If u don't need ripped to ISO and main movie is good enough, there is Makemkv.

 

[failboat]

nvidia shield is a great frontend.
I've stopped using the HTPC ones.

on the backend I run everything on a low power xeon e3 using proxmox.

 

[jsmithepa]

Looks like AnyDVD still exists, although I think they moved their website and their offices? https://www.redfox.bz/en/anydvdhd.html

Wow 109EU for license. Trial doesn't work, says expired 2016.

 

[g-unit1111]

The difference is that you're talking about an appliance (the blu ray player) vs an actual fully functioning PC. The appliance is just plug and play. If you're serious about getting your HTPC to work on a television that's a whole different ball game we're talking about here. The HTPC would require specialized HDMI cables and even then you're still not guaranteed that it would work properly. The appliance is always cheaper, and the HTPC would take a bit more planning to get going but it's definitely worth it in the long run if that is the route you decide to go.

 

[Tama-Chan]

The difference is that you're talking about an appliance (the blu ray player) vs an actual fully functioning PC. The appliance is just plug and play. If you're serious about getting your HTPC to work on a television that's a whole different ball game we're talking about here. The HTPC would require specialized HDMI cables and even then you're still not guaranteed that it would work properly. The appliance is always cheaper, and the HTPC would take a bit more planning to get going but it's definitely worth it in the long run if that is the route you decide to go.

I think you've said too much or not enough

On the Blu-Ray side of things, I'd love to include playback functionality in the HTPC, but I feel that:

• 
  ■ The hardware requirements are sooo restrictive - it's a pain in the ***
  ■ On the software side, it pretty much boils down to PowerDVD, which is expensive, bloated, and not that great as a 10-foot user interface last I tried. Plus, the switching apps between Kodi and PowerDVD introduces friction in what should be a seamless experience.

But for everything else (rips, Netflix, ...), I could be talked into keeping the HTPC vs a dedicated appliance. This would make supporting codecs such as Dolby Vision much easier (from what I can tell, today, this means just Xbox One as far as appliances go), since it could always be done in software. And presumably you'd have both more control over playback quality (that's what the whole madVR is about?), and more headroom to fine tune it since you don't have hardware that's "just good enough to run whatever it was designed to run".

Although, from a HTPC perspective, I think a dedicated OS such as OpenELEC would make more sense (and be cheaper) than Windows 10, which doesn't provide that great a 10-foot user experience. But that would mean e.g. losing 4K and HDR on Netflix, which is annoying.

So I guess I could just slap Kodi on Windows 10 and auto-run it, but if I need to get out of Kodi (e.g. Netflix), then there will again be some friction.

Opinions welcome

 

[g-unit1111]

On the Blu-Ray side of things, I'd love to include playback functionality in the HTPC, but I feel that:

• 
  ■ The hardware requirements are sooo restrictive - it's a pain in the ***
  ■ On the software side, it pretty much boils down to PowerDVD, which is expensive, bloated, and not that great as a 10-foot user interface last I tried. Plus, the switching apps between Kodi and PowerDVD introduces friction in what should be a seamless experience.

Yeah the hardware and software requirements alone are enough to turn one off of building an HTPC. But the payoff is much better than if you just went with a standalone BD-R player. I use mine for more than just BD-Rs, I use it for streaming, music, and so on. If you want to use it for that purpose then I'd go with the HTPC.

 

[Tama-Chan]

On the Blu-Ray side of things, I'd love to include playback functionality in the HTPC, but I feel that:

• 
  ■ The hardware requirements are sooo restrictive - it's a pain in the ***
  ■ On the software side, it pretty much boils down to PowerDVD, which is expensive, bloated, and not that great as a 10-foot user interface last I tried. Plus, the switching apps between Kodi and PowerDVD introduces friction in what should be a seamless experience.

Yeah the hardware and software requirements alone are enough to turn one off of building an HTPC. But the payoff is much better than if you just went with a standalone BD-R player. I use mine for more than just BD-Rs, I use it for streaming, music, and so on. If you want to use it for that purpose then I'd go with the HTPC.

Right. So keep in mind that I'm using Plex on my NAS to centralize all the music, videos, etc. So if I have a standalone Blu-Ray player for the occasional Blu-Ray, all I need from my HTPC is to be as good a Plex client as it can be (possibly with Kodi in front of it, but talking to Plex under the covers). And conversely, any Plex client connected to my NAS will get access to all the music, the videos, etc (that's part of the appeal - clients can be lean, and I have very little configuration to perform on each client).

I'm assuming that then the only reason to go with an HTPC rather than a dedicated streaming client (e.g. Roku Premiere, NVidia Shield, etc) is the ability to support more codecs (in particular Dolby Vision) and to be able to fine tune rendering, in particular upscaling. Let me know if I'm missing some other key points here!

 

[failboat]

The shield has a large support for codecs. If your plex server has enough power to transcode it will play on any plex client, but it's better to have the support.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shield-tv/

it's worth noting that the shield gets amazon due to having a remote. other google cast devices don't have the amazon app.

 

[g-unit1111]

Right. So keep in mind that I'm using Plex on my NAS to centralize all the music, videos, etc. So if I have a standalone Blu-Ray player for the occasional Blu-Ray, all I need from my HTPC is to be as good a Plex client as it can be (possibly with Kodi in front of it, but talking to Plex under the covers). And conversely, any Plex client connected to my NAS will get access to all the music, the videos, etc (that's part of the appeal - clients can be lean, and I have very little configuration to perform on each client).

I'm assuming that then the only reason to go with an HTPC rather than a dedicated streaming client (e.g. Roku Premiere, NVidia Shield, etc) is the ability to support more codecs (in particular Dolby Vision) and to be able to fine tune rendering, in particular upscaling. Let me know if I'm missing some other key points here!

Yes that's exactly what I would do in that situation. Get your NAS setup and have all of your music and movies running off it, then use the BD-R in case of the need to watch a movie off that.

 

[jsmithepa]

A side issue, what u guys using for DVR functionality?

I can change everything but DVR on MCE been working great for me, easy to setup, easy to program, even remotely.

 

[failboat]

plex added it for subs. I haven't tried it, but it looks good. you can run the server off the shield with hdhomerun. which looks good on paper paired with a low end NAS. if your NAS can handle the transcoding it's going to be better than doing it from the shield.

https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/shield-plex-livetv-hdhomerun-setup

 

[failboat]

one other client that might be worth mentioning is game consoles. they are going to check off the blu ray player and plex client. I'm not sure about their sound quality or codec support compared to the shield.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/frequently-asked-questions/faq-plex-for-xbox-one/

 

[Tama-Chan]

A side issue, what u guys using for DVR functionality?

I can change everything but DVR on MCE been working great for me, easy to setup, easy to program, even remotely.

Planning on using Plex, which also has DVR functionality I added a tuner card to the NAS, and I'm just going to run the coax cable to it. Then any client can watch TV!

 

[Tama-Chan]

one other client that might be worth mentioning is game consoles. they are going to check off the blu ray player and plex client. I'm not sure about their sound quality or codec support compared to the shield.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/frequently-asked-questions/faq-plex-for-xbox-one/

Interesting. Given what I want, that essentially means an XBox One S/X at the moment. I'm a bit afraid though that the interface is going to be a bit too hairy to navigate, which will detract from the "just relax and enjoy the movie" experience. But worth thinking about.