Laptop as Blu Iso player. Any concerns?

[gadgtfreek]

I have a Dune, but got bored yesterday and started reading on HTPC's. I then realized my new Dell XPS 15z laptop has all the power for Blu-ray Iso playback and was wondering if there are any negatives (other than the obvious like ease of start and controlling it) to using it as an option.

I did some testing yesterday, my Nvidia GT 525M is plenty capable of 1080p/24 playback out of the HDMI port, and passes DTSHD and TrueHD bitstream to my AVR. Once I got everything configured between the Nvidia Control Panel and Power DVD Ultra (playing mounted Iso), set it to 1080p/24, bitstream and ycbcr 444, I thought it looked pretty awesome.

With Ultra I have the iphone remote app, and I can pause/stop/play and all that good stuff from my phone. other than the Dune being easier to startup and play, I cant see any reason why the laptop is not an option as well. Id have to do some back and forth, but I almost thought the laptop image was a little more clean.

 

[dangue]

I have a Dune, but got bored yesterday and started reading on HTPC's. I then realized my new Dell XPS 15z laptop has all the power for Blu-ray Iso playback and was wondering if there are any negatives (other than the obvious like ease of start and controlling it) to using it as an option.

I did some testing yesterday, my Nvidia GT 525M is plenty capable of 1080p/24 playback out of the HDMI port, and passes DTSHD and TrueHD bitstream to my AVR. Once I got everything configured between the Nvidia Control Panel and Power DVD Ultra (playing mounted Iso), set it to 1080p/24, bitstream and ycbcr 444, I thought it looked pretty awesome.

With Ultra I have the iphone remote app, and I can pause/stop/play and all that good stuff from my phone. other than the Dune being easier to startup and play, I cant see any reason why the laptop is not an option as well. Id have to do some back and forth, but I almost thought the laptop image was a little more clean.

I would say fan noise creates the biggest barrier. My laptop works fine as a player, but during the course of the movie, the fan kicks on and gets highly distracting.

 

[gadgtfreek]

After some more reading a concern is how playback/features can be broken with a FW update, where as a media player just plays movies. Then setting up color space can be tricky between movies and desktop.

By what accounts I can read, the Dune players with Sigma chip have very good PQ from Blu rips, so I may be best to leave well enough alone