HD input device(s)

[Col_M]

At some point in the next few months I'm going to look into a modest home cinema setup.
So far I've settled on a Planar PD7010 projector, a Q Acoustics 1010 5.1 system (with the 1030 floorstanders for fronts) and will reuse my old Sherwood AV amp for the time being. I'm mainly interested in watching my old DVDs and HD movies from Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD.

What should I do for HD inputs, stick a Blu-Ray+HD-DVD drive in my computer or get a PS3 + a standalone HD-DVD player?

On the face of it the optical drive looks the better option as it'd allow me to use both formats, be cheaper and won't require me to find any extra space for AV equipment or a console. There could be drawbacks that I'm not aware of though and that's why I'm asking.

Cheers

 

[footman]

The BR/HD LG drive in your pc is great. You'll have to hack Powercolor8 Ultra to play both though and you wont get HD sound yet from your pc sound card AFAIK.
The PS3 is great for Blu-Ray.

 

[Col_M]

Ok, I've read about a few workarounds that need to be done as some player software completely dropped support for HD-DVD in newer versions.

I hear you on the HD audio, I'd need to wait for the Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 whenever that comes out.

Thanks

 

[footman]

with the ps3 you'll get hd sound over hdmi if your amp supports it.

 

[Saviola]

with the ps3 you'll get hd sound over hdmi if your amp supports it.

You Amp may not show it as HD Audio but only as LPCM, but it will be HD Audio if you set up the PS3 to output audio over HDMI and have updated its firmware recently.

 

[Col_M]

Unfortunately my old amp is quite old and therefore has no HDMI, it'll be the first thing that'll get upgraded come bonus time though so I'll put up with standard 5.1 for the time being.