I’m not a computer expert by any definition other than I own a few. Five to be approximate. I still use them all for one thing or another. When I recently bought a Blu-Ray HD recorder/player for my primary editing PC, I needed it for recording for clients only. But last night, I got the wild urge to see what Blu-Ray looks like on my Viewsonic VP191 PC screen and the Sharp Aquos HD monitor connected to the system.
Maybe it’s because I’m in this business but I noticed a tremendous difference between a regular DVD and the Blu-Ray on the PC, not so much the HD monitor. Of course, you have to sit closer to the screen than you would a 32″ flat panel so you should see more detail (and more junk). But overall, I was impressed.
What I had a problem with was the Cyberlink PowerDVD software. I don’t play a lot of DVDs on my computers so I haven’t used it much though it came loaded upon delivery. When I bought the LG Blu-Ray burner, I got an upgrade to Cyberlink PowerDVD. But when I finally tried to play a Blu-Ray, it required me to download the latest version (I only bought the thing two months ago). After doing that, it then told me my graphics driver was outdated. So I went to NVDIA’s site and downloaded that. Then I got an error message saying that my card, the GTX 8800, was incompatible with Blu-Ray. So I checked on Cyberlink’s site and it said that, in fact, the GTX 8800 was one of the RECOMMENDED graphics cards. Oh, man.
So I Googled the problem and found thousands of others had it too. The forums, which were tremendously useful and time-saving as usual (not being sarcastic), said to uninstall all your old graphics drivers, download the new one, delete the old folder, and reboot BEFORE installing the new drivers. Sheesh. So I did that. And sure enough, it worked. I had to remember to use the keyboard for some of the transport controls instead of the mouse. Other than that, it was incredibly easy. I watched “X2: X-Men United.” Wow.
So now, I can play Blu-Rays out of my PC to an HD or the computer screen. Necessary, no. Over-the-top fun, yes. It’s moments like this that I think back to when I was a kid dreaming of being in TV and thinking it will never get better than that. Talk about thinking like a child. I saw Steve Jobs was named CEO of the Decade by Fortune Magazine for “changing our world.” It wasn’t Jobs who changed things. It was all those engineers, designers and dreamers who really made this stuff happen and changed the world.
