Widescreen Gaming Forum

For BD playback on my living room HTPC, I use AnyDVD HD to automatically decrypt the discs in the background and just click Play Disc from the main menu of XBMC to go straight to the movie. Works great.

I also have ArcSoft TMT, which is what I would recommend among the commercial/shareware offerings. Of course, since the discs are decrypted any player capable of reading the video files can play the movies. My favorite player is MPC-HC, which plays BD streams just fine.

A dedicated set top player would be cheaper, but having Blu-ray playback integrated into the HTPC is awesome. I consider my purchase of AnyDVD to be worth every penny.

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

I've got a Deepcool Beta 400 ST on my current board. http://www.deepcool-us.com/Product/BETA400_ST/ The depth of the board to the top of the fan is about 3.5". If that's too tall, I can get a low profile fan. I know there are many about.

If there's no good BD software, there is no need to get a BD drive. Almost 100% of games I buy are through Steam or GOG. No need for physical media. (I guess Steve Jobs and Apple were right...)

I 100% agree on the purchase of AnyDVD HD. That piece of software is the bomb-diggity. I use it on my "big rig" to decrypt and rip the kid movies we get on Blu-Ray, and put them on my media server (a Mac Mini that feeds our Apple TVs). Can use Handbrake on either Mac or PC, and MakeMKV is a great tool as well. Just no need for the adult movies that we rarely watch repeatedly/frequently.

I was wondering about using XMBC... But, I've about convinced myself to keep this a small disk-less system.

huh ? Why XBMC and Diskless ? XBMC supports about any network protocol aviable. I have no idea about BlueRay, but i was able to share my DVD drive on my computer and access it via XBMC over Network. (sadly the RaspberryPi doesn't support mpeg2 without license -.-)

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We gonna send it to outa space!

Well, I don't really need a disk drive to load or play games. Maybe instead of an HTPC I should have said "Steam Box". That's the real goal. I already have a setup of a Mac Mini and Apple TVs to stream media around the house.

Very Cool. I think you've hit on something that is becoming pretty popular. I probably would have done something similar to this if I didn't already have a bunch of spare parts around that wouldn't fit into an SFF rig. Instead I've decided to go with a Sugo SG07 Mini-ITX build which is quite a bit bigger than what you're looking for.

We'll have to see what happens with the "Official" Steam Box systems but for the time being I think this is a much better alternative to buying a half dozen different devices and cramming them all into your entertainment centre.