I got an 52" tv for my birthday last year, but haven't had high-def movies to watch on it. My desktop's video card was happy enough to connect to it, so I got to play Civ 4 and Dragonage on a big screen, but videos have until now been pretty low-quality. Prices for Blu-Ray drives have dropped, though, so I went ahead and got one to replace the dvd reader in the PC. I tried it out on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the results were quite amazing... the HD movie was quite exciting to watch, and when I played the same movie on DVD for comparison, it turned grainy and bleak. The feeling of immersion was all gone.

There are a few problems though... Cindy's dad (we were in Maryland for the past few weeks) routes all his input devices through a pretty recently made AV receiver. I connected my PC to the receiver through HDMI, and likewise the receiver to the TV. Everything went fine until I started the movie: apparently, the setup wasn't DRM-compliant: the PC, software, and TV were all good, but the receiver didn't know about DRM... So I had to connect directly to the TV instead. Now, the drive came with Cyberlink's PowerDVD 8 HD, which seems to work well. However, the forums say it only provides 2-channel audio, especially if you update it (apparently, some unupdated versions have full 7.1 audio). Upgrading to the full PowerDVD 9 Ultra costs around $50.