All this recent 1080p stuff going on in the world and i would like to know if computers are capable of playing HD/blu-ray quality videos on computers. What makes the super crazy picture on lcd tv and plasma displays is the 780,1080p technology. are computer lcd's capable of doing it? how can i check to see if my Dell monitor 20 widesceen monitor is capable? i think its a 2005w or something like that.

How would i know if my computer is capable?

are there blu ray/ HD dvd drives avail?

"dell 2005w" on google gives me: 20.1" Flat Panel LCD, 1680x1050 pixels and fast 12 ms response time

1080p = 1920x1080
720p = 1280x720

So your monitor technically has enough pixels to push BR/HD.

so i would need a HD dvd player to complete things right? how much of a difference is there b/w 720p and 1080p for a 20" monitor?

Well, you need to worry about connections. For true 1080p, you'll need an HDMI connection. You'll probably only get 1080i out of it with DVI (via an HDMI-DVI cable), but that should be good enough. Unless you're talking about a PC HD and/or BR drive, then any video card you have should work (because your monitor doesn't support HDCP for 1080p anyway).

I don't think it'll make much difference between 720 and 1080 at that size. But if you give it 720, it'll upscale it to near-1050 (the size of your display). If you give it 1080, it'll squish it just a bit. Typically it's better to decrease resolution (1080 down to 1050) than to increase (720 up to 1050), but let your eyes tell you for sure.

I plan on the computer route.

I have a MacPro which does not come with a display. I use my 27inch HDTV as it's monitor. I also have a DVD upconverter attached by HDMI cable. If I wanted to use my computer as an HD player I would need an HD drive installed.

Note that wide PC monitors usually have a 16:10 ratio. For instance, the Dell 24" (and others like it) is actually 1920x1200 instead of the TV ratio of 1920x1080. So if you use one for 1080 HDTV signals, there should be some extra black bars.

I was going to say that, but it looks like he's going to be using the computer itself to play the discs rather than connecting a standalone player to it. The software player will display the movie at the correct aspect ratio.

If not, yeah, you'll want to see if the monitor has a setting to correct for the aspect ratio so you don't get a stretched image.

BTW, I don't think there's such a thing as a monitor having HDCP for one resolution but not another. If it doesn't support HDCP, he won't be able to use a digital connection at all for HDM. On mine, I can get 1080p from the PS3 using an HDMI -> DVI cable, but it's stretched so I rarely use it.