[kwlug-disc] BD net-capable players?

[unsolicited]

Sanity check please.

Was by Costco tonight, and saw at least 3 Blu-Ray players, an HP (I 
think, now) and a couple LG. With ethernet ports. And HDMI out, 1080p 
upscaling, etc., etc. Ranging, I think, from $160 - $180.

They have an ability to play YouTube videos and play content from USB 
ports.

 From a media center perspective ... why would I not buy one?

- I'm presuming if it has an ethernet port, I can read from a local 
(Samba) file share.
- I'll break a media center PC down to 3 areas of functionality for 
this message's purpose: (a) content capture, (b) content storage, (c) 
content playing.

(a) is problematic under any scenario (hardware/pc wise) for taking 
HDMI in. Else, most any hardware will do. e.g. I have a USB Hauppauge 
PVR2, so computer horsepower becomes almost irrelevant.

(b) well, is (b).

(c) is problematic on a PC in the sense of needing a certain amount of 
horsepower for HD. e.g. The only way I'm going to get decent HD 
performance off my computer to my HDTV is to upgrade my motherboard - 
it seems until you get to a PCIe video card it's the video horsepower 
that will prevent you from decent performance. And my motherboard has 
no PCIe slots.

One of these units just takes (c) out of the picture making it 
irrelevant. Much like a Popcorn Hour, LMCE, or Linksys MCE, type device.

(Note - I have yet to have a need to play a BD disk. Nor do I really 
anticipate any immediate need to be able to play one. It's the net & 
HDMI out ability that matters here.)

Am I thinking correctly here / what am I missing, as to "Why would I 
not buy one?" (I suppose the other way is to replace my monitor and 
poor HDTV with a single VERY LARGE monitor. For lots more $. The TV 
will do 1080p, but there's no way I'm reading desktop icon labels on 
it. Ick. Thus the monitor is still connected.)