My Homemade Blu-ray/DVD/Media/Misc Flexible Player...(from mainly used/old components) PART 1

End of the quarter has just passed, that's why I didn't have any updates last month. Now as we are starting a new quarter I have a little time on my hands and it is starting to itch again. I recently visited Brunei a few times on business and stayed in Rizqun Hotel which is next to a mall. I found pirated Blu-rays at RM40 each and bought 2 pieces back home. I was playing it on a loaned Blu-ray player and the video was fantastic. So I thought about getting a blu-ray player myself, to my surprise it was still expensive and if you needed one with all the 'KAU' features you have to be prepared to pay more then RM1,200.00.

Digging around the internet I found articles on building your own media player and surprisingly you can have a Blu-ray drive and transform it to a Blu-ray player with all the features that you will need. So the adventure begins.

I had an old HTPC(home Theater PC) casing, dug it up and cleaned it...















Could only take a u-ATX board and a low profile video card. I happen to have an old ASUS M3A78-CM and AMD LE1600 - 2.2Ghz single core 45W CPU. So got it fitted...















So lucky I still have a low profile Cooler Master CPU heat sink. As you can see it is a pretty tight fit once the Blu-ray drive is installed with the rest of the items.















Now still waiting for my low profile video card to arrive. No doubt the Asus MB comes with a built in video GPU but it isn't powerful enough to support Blu-ray playback. Therefore I opted for a GT220 low profile card, most probably from ASUS to help with processing the HD streams from a Blu-ray. It should arrive shortly...

This project should be done within the week as I have everything up and running including the software (Windows 7 Ultimate and Cyberlink PowerDVD) also I am using the media center remote from my old HTPC. I recycled most of my components so total cost should be very low to me...:)

Cost analysis for this build :-

Recycle items
HTPC casing - Recycle (RM0), if new (RM200) Aopen G326 casing
Power Supply - Recycle (RM0), if new (RM100) Don't need anything fancy
Motherboard Asus M3A78 - Recycle (RM0), if new (RM150) ECS A740GM
DDR2 2G - Recycle (RM0), if new (RM140) Apacer DDR2-800
Processor AMD LE-1600 - Recycle (RM0) if new (RM110) AMD Sempron 140
HDD 160Gb - Recycle (RM0), if new (RM130) WD 160GB
Media Center Remote Control - Recycle (RM0), if new (RM75) 3rd party

New items
Blu-Ray Combo Drive - LiteON (RM360), if you opt for a normal drive it is around RM260
Low Profile GT220 Video Card - Asus (RM265)

Total cost to build this for myself (RM625)

Total cost to build this if you don't have any recycle components (RM1,530)

Yes it's expensive if you are starting out fresh but you get the flexibility to do anything with the HTPC with Blu-ray, even playing some normal games. If you are opting for the Aopen casing look for a better video card as you are not restricted by the size. This way you can have a HTPC and gaming rig all in one...

Tats all... next update when I get my video card...