[dan25730]

Hi guys, I really need a simple answer to what I think should be a fairly simple question. My father in law has recently purchased himself a HDD Hi Def sony camcorder. He has tasked me with finding out what he needs to buy to be able to burn and then play the movies from his camera to watch them in Hi Def, I have no idea. Basically will he have to buy a Bluray player, a Bluray burner for the PC and blank blu ray disks?. I know you can plug the player straight into the telly etc.. but he really wants to store all his movies on disk.

[vib ribbon]

Ok, assuming its a AVCHD camcorder, the first thing you need is way to burn the AVCHD files (the film clips on your camcorder) onto a DVD or Blu ray disk - Pretty much everyone has a DVD burner now and its a much cheaper option than a blu ray burner. The only downside is that you can fit a lot more clips on a blu ray disk compared to a DVD disk.

Secondly, you will need a player capable of playing back the AVCHD files - most (if not all?) blu ray players are capable of this, so is the PS3.

[Mr Lazy]

He has a HD Ready (or Full HD 1080) TV, yes?

Option 1:
Buy a Blu-Ray burner for the PC (cheapest I've seen is £143) and a BD player (cheapest I've seen is £166) to plug into the TV

Option 2:
Use existing DVD burner in PC (assuming it has one) to burn AVCHD discs onto a standard DVD-R(sometimes called MiniBD discs). Buy a Playstation 3 (PS3) for playback. I say PS3 because it is not clear if all of the current BD players will play back this type of disc, you would need to check first with existing owners to make sure.

Either way, make sure he has more than one copy of each video. Either make two copies of each disc and/or invest in one or two external hard drives. Do not make the assumption that an optical disc or its contents will last forever.

[dan25730]

Thanks guys.

Yes the files are AVCHD. The PC has a standard DVD burner. The Sony software that came with the camera has allowed me to do 2 different tasks;

1. Back up the files. This copied all the files from the camera onto 3 DVD-R's that I can't play on my standard DVD player. It seems that they are basically a "back up" of the files that can only be read by the Sony software on the PC.

2. Convert the files to play on a DVD player. This did a rather long convert and burn onto a couple of blank DVD-R disks than I can play on a standard DVD player. Would these show in HD if I popped the disk in a Bluray player with a HD TV?.

and also as far as I can make out from your posts a bluray player can play HD from standard DVD-R?.

[Mr Lazy]

Originally Posted by dan25730

2. Convert the files to play on a DVD player. This did a rather long convert and burn onto a couple of blank DVD-R disks than I can play on a standard DVD player. Would these show in HD if I popped the disk in a Bluray player with a HD TV?.

No, it's a standard-def DVD.

[vib ribbon]

Originally Posted by dan25730

Thanks guys.

Yes the files are AVCHD. The PC has a standard DVD burner. The Sony software that came with the camera has allowed me to do 2 different tasks and also as far as I can make out from your posts a bluray player can play HD from standard DVD-R?.

The Sony PMB software should also have an option for 'making a AVCHD disk' - this is what i used to do when i had my HDR SR5. It basically copies the data onto a DVD disk ready for playback on a blu ray player (such as the PS3) - no picture conversion occurs (i think only the file extension changes) .

And yes, the PS3 (and probably all other blu ray players) can play back HD (AVCHD) files from a DVD. Remember, a DVD is just a means of storing data - and in this case, the data is high definition data which a blu ray player and PS3 can read - if you put a AVCHD disk (a DVD disk with HD AVCHD files on it) into a bog standard DVD player it wouldn't be able to read it.

Hope that helps.

[dan25730]

Brilliant. Thanks Guys I now understand. Will advise the father in law to purchase a decent Blu ray player and probably a bluray burner for his pc. He already has a sooper duper telly.

[vib ribbon]

For the money, I think the PS3 is a pretty darn Blu ray player - but blu ray player prices have started to drop quite a bit so its a good time to buy - I have just seen the decent Samsung BD-P1500 for a rather good £155!

[mircea]

Burning/authoring a BR disk is not a easy task and it can't be done in PMB, from what I know. It's also expensive, one BR writer, one BR player...

Much easier is to buy somethink like Popcornhour. You can put a 1TB HDD in it and copy from camera to HDD using remote from this device. Of course you can play in original HD quality either from internal HDD or from camera connected on USB. Or you can buy an external HDD and play from it... it's much easier and cheaper than BR discs...