Dabbling in home theater PC lite

With my latest set up, I've had some time now to fiddle around with the LG Blu Ray/HD DVD combo drive. Like most current GPU cards, the GTX260 has dual DVI out so I am using a DVI-HDMI adapter to video feed Blu Ray & HD DVD from the LG to the Panasonic plasma. For sound I am using the onboard motherboard solution feeding into a really old Technics Dolby surround receiver and old Sony tower speakers. Far from audiophile quality but it works and it is still better than TV speakers alone. Because the primary application for my PC is gaming, I did not install Windows Media Center or install a TV tuner card / PVR software or do I have any kind of remote control solution. So yah, fairly bare bones and crude. But my intent all along was just to be able to watch Blu Ray & HD DVD on the plasma at the lowest cost.

For the most part the LG with Cyberlinks works as advertised but with a few quirks. Sometimes I get HDCP compliance issues even though both my Panasonic and my GPU are HDCP compliant. But I've figured out a workaround but it adds an extra manual step.

When there is a new Blu Ray released, sometimes I'll have to update Cyberlinks or else the disc won't play (but to be fair, standalone Blu Ray players + PS3 can also have playback issues that require FW updates).

I had thought my GPU card could allow simultaneous output to two displays at different resolutions but it turns out that in my case when I want to watch HD media content on the Panasonic, I have to manually switch video output from the Dell to the Panasonic via the Nvidia control panel.

Ok, enough of the rants. A positive and very important one to me - without having performed any calibration or adjustments on either the Panasonic or on my PC, the picture quality is actually very good. Deep blacks, color is vivid and overall picture is very sharp.

After experimenting with the LG, I don't know if I'd ever want to build a "real" HTPC. Maybe the Media Center OS would streamline operations but I think the boot up time alone would be a deal breaker for me. I think I am just more of a fan of standalone components when it comes to home theater. But of course if you gave me something like a Niveus media server with capability to distribute A/V to the entire household I could easily change my tune ;-)