Kyros on 01 September 2008
Blu-Ray drive for PC is actually $120. To get that without changing the price too much, we can swap out the current 640G hard drive, and switch to a more PS3-like 40G hard drive, and ditch the current optical storage for the BRD.
Yeah 40Gb are pretty fun with Windows installed. But just for fun lets do the math:
40Gb HD instead of 640Gb : (To be honest I didn't find a 40Gb HD but lets say it cost 15$) -70$
Internal BluRay drive: +140$ (newegg)
Optical drive: -30$
Result: 560$ + Software BluRay player 40$ (I am not aware of a free software due to licence fees)
---
600$
Now this costs 200$ more than a PS3 and is still pretty useless if you should happen to have a TV (which should be the main usecase for a BluRay player) because in this case you need a remote, MythTV or Windows MCE, a video cable switch, a decent audio card, ...
Let's just come to the conclusion that Gaming PCs and consoles have different usecases. I tried to use my PC as a media center but it failed miserably. The PS3 is just so much easier to setup and much better at it. But the biggest enemy of the gaming PC is the Notebook IMO. You can play a bit on your Notebook but decent performance is very expensive. So a Notebook for Surfing, work and a PS3 for gaming, media playback is a pretty unbeatable combination.
