Hardware required to play BluRay at 1080p

[ashland_thunder]

Hello,

My wife got me an LG BluRay drive for my media pc that we have hooked to our TV. It is just a cheap eMachines with a single core Athlon at 2.4 Ghz and 1MB L2 cache. 2GB memory and the GeForce 8200 gpu running Vista Business.
The TV is brand new, a Sharp Aquos LED 1080p.
The BluRay player came with PowerDVD software. I can't seem to get it to play the movies at 1080p. If I lower my screen resolution to 720p then it works fine. PowerDVD comes up with a driver error when I try to run at 1080p. According to nVidia's site it looks like this combination should work. I just wondered if anyone had a workaround.
right now I'm thinking I may have to find a low profile card to put in it that is a bit more powerful

[powerarmour]

It 'should' be ok just as long as you've updated everything, but it wouldn't hurt getting a cheap card just to test etc.

For pure video decoding performance, those new low end GeForce 210/220's use the new 'VP4' decoding engine, so you shouldn't have any issues with those whatsoever.

[ashland_thunder]

Actually I found quite a bit of info online that says 8200 chipsets cannot reliably play back 1080p. So from this point on I'm not sure what I plan to do. Is there a huge difference between BluRay on 720p vs. 1080p?

[Gilly]

Depending on the screen size and distance you sit from the screen, yes, there may/ may not be much difference.
Sorry for the vague answer but a 32" viewed from 3m away will not show it anywhere near as much as a 50" from 3 meters away.

[powerarmour]

Agreed with really, depends on the size/distance, closer up/bigger screen 1080p is obviously better, but on anything <42" and 8 feet away you'd be hard pushed to tell.

[ashland_thunder]

46" Sharp Aquos with LED, sitting about 7' away. thanks for all the input

[impar]

Greetings!

Related to the distance to screen:
http://www.carltonbale.com/wp-content/u ... _chart.png
http://www.dtvcity.com/lcdtv/lcdscreensize.html