Yeah, so I don't have a HDTV anywhere and won't be buying one anytime soon, so having my monitor on 1680 x 1050 is pretty much 1080i anyway.

As for the backing up thing, it's much easier and cheaper to replace a faulty blu-ray disc than to replace a faulty HDD. I have all my photos backed-up on DVD and on the web anyway and they'd easily all fit on a BR disc. Even though it may take longer than to burn a disc than to transfer to an external HDD, it's not as if my needs to be in use all the time so I never get chance to burn a disc for an hour or so is it?

It depends on how much your backing up, I have 400gb of data do that would be 8 discs = 8 hours!!

My monitors native res is 1680 x 1050 and believe me it looks ok but not great at 720p and it's not anywhere near 1080i (1920x1080) - basically if it's not at the monitors default res it wont look that great.

You can get a 500gb external drive for under £70 quid so it's not exactly expensive when you consider the outlay for a blueray player and some discs and lets face it how often do they fail when not under warranty; not had one go on me yet and I have 2 on 24/7.

Even better get an internal drive stick it in a caddy and do a ghost image of your system and then if your pc's drive fails just swap the drive - job done

a device is necessarily needed - you need an HD-capable set-top box to receive those broadcast HD channels (and an HD subscription to the provider)....

ah I thought everyone had a set top box in this day and age

Still 100x better than it would with a Blu-ray player plugged into my TV downstairs...

waste of money at the moment

Depends how much you value your backups when the USAF attack the world with their EMPs

most people do, but isn't there a difference between a set-top box and a set-top box that receives/outputs HD content?

No idea, my set top box receives HD content by default, can't speak for anyone else's though

as I understood it to receive HD content on either Sky or Virgin you had to have one of their HD boxes and an HD subscription - are you saying that that isn't the case?

I don't have Virgin nor Sky, so I can't check on my own TV....

I have a box that will play HDTV but I don't have a sub as I have no need of outputting it.