Is LTC actually any different from BTC?
Considerably. LTC uses a different algorithm that's
very memory-heavy, so it's not well-suited toward purpose-specific hardware like FPGAs and ASICs. As such, it should be mineable with repurposed GPU-based BTC gear for at least the near term, while BTC's difficulty is already prohibitive for GPUs unless you have a lot of machines. That having been said, the increased global interest in Bitcoin is driving interest in Litecoin upward, so the gear requirement for entry into LTC mining is growing noticeably with each passing difficulty retarget.