Need help playing blu-ray with Pentium4

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Hey whats up ppl, great show and forum I'm happy to join.

I need a little help. I have an older HTPC that I'm looking to upgrade to HD.

Specs:
Asus Pundit-R -- http://www.biline.ca/pundit-r.htm
Pentium 4 3ghz
2 gigs ram
Dual ATI Sapphire TheatriX tuners
DVD Drive

I want to replace the DVD drive with a Lite-On HOS104 Blu-ray and the SD tuner cards with HD tuners. I get HDTV over my cable with out a cable box so I think I need a HD tuner card that supports ATSC, am I right?

I'm having a hard time finding out what exactly I need to replace in my PC to add the ability to play Blu-ray disk.

Do I need a video card? If so this PC only has PCI slots what's a good PCI video card that will allow me to play Blu-ray.

Thanks for any help.

You would need a videocard, yes; however, you'd be very limited by two things:
1- the power supply.  That system (according to the page you linked to) came with but a 200W PSU.  A decent card will require a 300-400W (minimum) PSU.
2- the PCI bus.  Even a card built on a good chip (such as an HD4350, or a 9500GT) is so strangled by being on the PCI bus that it just can't do what you want.
Case in point:  ATI actually disables hardware acceleration (which you need for Bluray playback) on the HD4350-based PCI cards.  Reason:  the bus just can't handle the datarate required.

Tuners: 
Actually, you'd need a card that supports Clear-QAM.  ATSC is over-the-air digital, QAM is digital cable.
Also note that Media Center, prior to the TV Pack 2008 for Windows Vista, does not natively support Clear-QAM (TVP and Win7 do.)  For 'older' versions, you'll need to go with a tuner who's manufacturer has created a 'virtual-ATSC' driver (allows a QAM tuner to be seen as an ATSC tuner, allowing it to work.)  Avermedia, Hauppauge, and SiliconDust have done this.
Point #2:  if you're running Media Center 2002-2004, you don't even have ATSC support.  MC didn't get that until Rollup 1 (or, was it RU2?) for Media Center 2005.

If you were to upgrade the box:
$80 for an HD4350 PCI (which can't do Bluray, and will even struggle with HDTV playback), and you're getting a card that you cannot recycle into a newer PC;
$70 for a good PSU. 
That $150 is a good way toward building a new PC, that actually can do what you want.  I have a sample build on NewEgg, based on a Core i3, that's just under $500:
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=13696186
(note:  viewing wishlists on NewEgg requires logging in to the site.  If you don't have an account, you'll need to create one.)
$500 will get you a new machine that can do hi-def (and Bluray) playback, and is actually upgradable.
Just a thought....

Take Chris and my advice and spend the money on a HTPC. A modern motherboard with a cpu and graphics card will give you what you want.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121394 $99.99

Intel H55TC Micro-ATX motherboard. The motherboard will bitstream TrueHD and DTS-MA out of the box, and this is important for blu-ray if you want the full blu-ray experience. It's a great little motherboard with plenty of SATA ports, an intel nic among other features. Read about this motherboard and CPU combo at missing remote: http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4489&Itemid=1

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115222 $124.99

Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 73W Dual-Core CPU. This processor has the cpu and graphics chip on one die. You won't need a graphics card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227346

OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066  $77.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139081

Kingston SSD drive 40GB for the OS drive $129.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136490

Western Digital Green Drive 1TB $89.99. You can partition this 500gb for tv, and the other half for music and pics.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129046

Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case $89.99 and it comes with a 350watt power supply. You can get the all black version of the case, but it doesn't come with the power supply.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116752

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit $104.99

$716.94 not including a tuner depending on which one you want. You can go even lower then this by getting a regular OS drive, cheaper case etc and get it under $500 bucks. Just some food for thought.

 

 Thanks guys for the great info! Just what I was looking for and thanks for the suggestions on a new build.

 Now I need to decide what to do with these (Pundit) boxes. I have 3 of them built exactly alike:

(2) Tuners

Pentium4 3.0Ghz (one with a 2.8)

(2) gigs of RAM in each

XP MCE

500gig sata drive

 

Any suggestions?

 

I was thinking about hooking two of them up to one HDMI MUX and set up a quad PIP on one 55inch'er.