# blu ray?



## volcano1 (May 29, 2012)

my brother wants to know if he can use a blu ray burner on his computer

Inspiron 560 Slim-Tower
Intel Pentium dual-core E5700 3.0GHz
Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500 
320GB NCQ Serial ATA Hard Drive 
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English 

his computer supports 1080p. i have the program to play blu ray power dvd 8.3 that came with my laptop.


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## mrjack (May 30, 2012)

Apparently the Intel GMA X4500 isn't capable of decoding 1080p video, but the GMA X4500HD is. I'd suggest testing with some free 1080p material to see if the CPU could handle the decoding. There is an issue with testing 1080p videos available on the internet and that is the fact that the bitrate is lower than what is used on Blu-ray discs. So HD trailers and such won't be truly representative of what the computer would have to be able to handle in order to truly support Blu-ray playback.


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## volcano1 (May 30, 2012)

ok so where do i get a video card that will play blu ray in that computer and for how much. and he would also like to use two monitors as well. is he able to use dual monitors now?


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## DCIScouts (May 31, 2012)

You're going to run in to a few problems with that tower.  1.  It will only take "Low Profile" video cards which run more money that a comparable full size card.  2.  Dual monitor support is not easy to find in those size cards, and most of them are crap.  The best thing to do would be to find a decent Low Profile card and ditch the dual monitor idea. (Unless you want to sacrifice picture quality, then you could just hook up any old signal splitter and that would do the trick...


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## mrjack (May 31, 2012)

What connectors do the displays have? There are some cheap cards (like AMD Radeon HD5450, HD6450 and nVidia GeForce 8400GS, GeForce GT 430, GeForce GT 520) that are low-profile ready (make sure the low-profile bracket is included) and have DXVA support (which is needed for hardware decoding). Most of these have DVI, VGA and HDMI connectors. The VGA connector is usually sacrificed when using the low-profile bracket. You can still connect to a VGA monitor with a DVI to VGA adapter.


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## volcano1 (May 31, 2012)

his monitor has hdmi and vga ports. a graphics card that will allow blu ray and still has vga would be great. i am trying to get his setup to multi task between movies, internet, hulu and a playstation 3 connected to one of those ports. he is going to use his 19" tv as a second monitor and it only has one hdmi port. i would like to go vga from pc to monitor and hdmi to tv and then ps3 to hdmi on monitor.


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## Jamebonds1 (Jun 4, 2012)

volcano1 said:


> his monitor has hdmi and vga ports. a graphics card that will allow blu ray and still has vga would be great. i am trying to get his setup to multi task between movies, internet, hulu and a playstation 3 connected to one of those ports. he is going to use his 19" tv as a second monitor and it only has one hdmi port. i would like to go vga from pc to monitor and hdmi to tv and then ps3 to hdmi on monitor.



Blu ray movie don't work with VGA.  It would only work on DVI and HDMI.


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## MMM (Jun 5, 2012)

Jamebonds1 said:


> Blu ray movie don't work with VGA.  It would only work on DVI and HDMI.


It would work but not get the required screen resolution for picture quality.


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## Jamebonds1 (Jun 5, 2012)

MMM said:


> It would work but not get the required screen resolution for picture quality.



Like i tried to playing blu ray movie via VGA. It won't play except it would be only work on DVI, DisplayPort or HDMI.  Plus. My blu ray movie is pretty newest.  I have WinDVD 11 Pro.


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## mrjack (Jun 5, 2012)

Blu-ray would not work via VGA without somehow bypassing HDCP.


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## MMM (Jun 6, 2012)

My apologies here, I stand corrected that bluray will not play through VGA.
I was thinking of something else!


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