Hi.

I've got a PC that I use for media activities- Freeview recording, DVD burning and music editing. It's an Athlon 2400XP CPU with 768MB DDR RAM (I have up to 1GB available to use instead) and at the moment, it has an AGP ATI 9600XT graphics card. I use this with a 720p HDTV connected using DVI.

I am considering adding a blu-ray drive but I need to check a couple of things.

1- I guess I am going to have to fit a different graphics card. I have an AGP GF6600GT that I can use and I've read on the 'net that this will do for HD playback. Can you confirm this, please?

2. Will the CPU be up to the job?

3. I have seen a suggestion, that if I get a new card, I am better off using DVI than HDMI to connect the TV. Thoughts, please.

Thanks in advance.

Blu-Ray generally requires a 2Ghz or better dual core processor and/or a graphics card with H.264 decoding built in. Which means a 9000 or later nVidia card or the newer Radeons. The 9600XT and the 6600GT won't be up to the job.

Your set-up is out on both counts.

You also need to use HDMI or a DVI connection with HDCP, you also need Vista or Windows 7 as they support HDCP (unless you use anydvd)

Yep, I forgot about the HDCP, although if he outputs over VGA, it should work, but DVI wouldn't work.

For the cost of a drive and even if just a GPU & OS upgrade would swing it, you may as well get a standalone player.

Your existing setup should be good enough to play 720p video. It's primarily the anti-piracy copy protection on Blu-ray that makes your hardware obsolete. However, since it's so trivial to remove you'll find all your favourite HD films available for free download on Pirate Bay and the 720p BR rips should play just fine.

Of course that would be illegal, so don't do it. As others have said above, you'll have to replace everything. At least your lucky your TV probably supports HDCP so you won't have to chuck that out too, unlike mine which pre-dates it's implementation.

Can you tell I'm not a fan of HDCP? All it does is prevent people from playing legal content on existing hardware...

Thanks for all your thoughts and advice. I'll give it a miss. I hadn't thought about the OS as well

I will be going all HD next year, I think, with a new TV, Blu-ray recorder, Freesat and so on (present to myself) but I started thinking about just adding a drive for now. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be that simple, and, unfortunately, I was right.