DVD/Blu-Ray drives-Are they dead

killroy67

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 16, 2006
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So are these going the way of the 3.5 floppy, I had one in my computer and decided to disconnect it, I never use the darn thing. Im always streaming movies these days. Eventually I want to totally remove it if I can ever find the faceplate.
 
Mostly, yes.

But I'm one of those weird old guys who still buys CDs and movies and rips them. My original Blu-Ray drive died last month and I replaced it.

I kinda hate that all the good cases anymore don't have a 5.25" bay, but I get it. Next system I'll have to get a USB enclosure for the drive.
 
Mostly, yes.

But I'm one of those weird old guys who still buys CDs and movies and rips them. My original Blu-Ray drive died last month and I replaced it.

I kinda hate that all the good cases anymore don't have a 5.25" bay, but I get it. Next system I'll have to get a USB enclosure for the drive.
I just took mine out today, I haven't used it in at least several years, I don't even listen to my CD's anymore, I boxed them up. Now I just listen to Spotify and stream everything else like movies.
 
I use my dvd drive often enough that I keep one in my PC. I specifically bought my horrible ( but I like it ) $21 Rosewill case for the external 5.25 bay. But really I could take it out.

My plex server has a burner which I rip my dvd's with for plex
 
I use an external drive to rip audio CDs. External CD/DVD drives are great because they don't take up precious interior space and are light and portable. My old surround sound system has a CD/DVD player built into the receiver, but I don't use that. I don't think it will be too long before I sell or give away all my discs.
 
I don't think it will be too long before I sell or give away all my discs.
All my CD's, DVD's, Blu-Ray's are all packed up in a bin........now I just stream movies from wherever, and stream or download my music from Spotify.
 
I own physical disk therefore I own the content for life as long as I've the physical disk. Inconvenient? Yes. I can rip the movie and play on any of the media that I own for personal use. Hence I still need a dvd/blu-ray drive to do that. At least no one can take away my movies other than sticking a ??? to my head ;)

Off topic: However I'm still open to the option of buying movies online without any ongoing subscription. Just paying a one time charge like buying a CD/DVD/blu-ray. Is that possible? I'm not talking about peer-to-peer sharing which is illegal.
 
I own physical disk therefore I own the content for life as long as I've the physical disk. Inconvenient? Yes. I can rip the movie and play on any of the media that I own for personal use. Hence I still need a dvd/blu-ray drive to do that. At least no one can take away my movies other than sticking a ??? to my head ;)

Off topic: However I'm still open to the option of buying movies online without any ongoing subscription. Just paying a one time charge like buying a CD/DVD/blu-ray. Is that possible? I'm not talking about peer-to-peer sharing which is illegal.

Redbox allows you to purchase streaming movies. I actually like their services. However, you can generally purchase the used rental discs at a physical box location as well fairly inexpensive. You need to purchase the disc online and then go to the box to pick it up from the machine.
 
I own physical disk therefore I own the content for life as long as I've the physical disk. Inconvenient? Yes. I can rip the movie and play on any of the media that I own for personal use. Hence I still need a dvd/blu-ray drive to do that. At least no one can take away my movies other than sticking a ??? to my head ;)

Off topic: However I'm still open to the option of buying movies online without any ongoing subscription. Just paying a one time charge like buying a CD/DVD/blu-ray. Is that possible? I'm not talking about peer-to-peer sharing which is illegal.

Yes, actually...

Or, at least you used to be able to do that. I have bought digital movies on GOG.com. They don;t have very many, but I bought "The Gamers" series (Dorkness Rising FTW!!) of films there, and they are still available for me to download should I need to (already archived and on my Plex).
 
There is no better audio and video experience available than a 4k Blu ray in a home theater setup. Streaming and the compression involved to deliver it is simply 2nd best. Why pay for a quality TV, AVR and speaker system to stream content and get less quality from what you paid for. If it's on its way out it shouldn't be. Convenience is not an acceptable alternative IMHO. Not everything is done well on a PC watching movies is one of them. My library of 4k disc is growing and I encourage everyone to experience the difference. You won't go back to streaming the latest and greatest, rather you'll be waiting for that next big movie to come out on disc.
 
There is no better audio and video experience available than a 4k Blu ray in a home theater setup. Streaming and the compression involved to deliver it is simply 2nd best. Why pay for a quality TV, AVR and speaker system to stream content and get less quality from what you paid for. If it's on its way out it shouldn't be. Convenience is not an acceptable alternative IMHO. Not everything is done well on a PC watching movies is one of them. My library of 4k disc is growing and I encourage everyone to experience the difference. You won't go back to streaming the latest and greatest, rather you'll be waiting for that next big movie to come out on disc.
This. Even regular Blu ray has better audio and arguably video quality. Plus you own it, they can't remove it or ever go away on you. I will continue buying 4k Blu and normal Blu sometimes, until the day they become unavailable. Hopefully that's not anytime soon.
 
There is no better audio and video experience available than a 4k Blu ray in a home theater setup.
Truthfully if disc-quality releases were available officially, like CD quality audio (eg: FLAC) is available online for music releases, it wouldn't matter the medium. Games are already there with equivalently-sized installs (50-100GB is now common) so it's not like there isn't precedent but outside of highly locked-down devices like Kaleidescape I doubt we'll see widespread disc-quality downloads any time soon so physical media it is!
 
Off topic: However I'm still open to the option of buying movies online without any ongoing subscription. Just paying a one time charge like buying a CD/DVD/blu-ray. Is that possible? I'm not talking about peer-to-peer sharing which is illegal.
Itunes was common for a while for that:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/genre/movies/id33

With the usual canvas that like for Itunes music I am not sure about the level of lifelong guaranty here.

Truthfully if disc-quality releases were available officially, like CD quality audio (eg: FLAC) is available online for music releases, it wouldn't matter the medium.
For the moment video files start so big, it is 500gig and hour for uncompressed without sound for 24fps 1080p 8 bit that non-looseless compression is here to stay for a while would it be disk, would it be streaming, one big advantage of streaming is the possibility to have more up to date codec and assume more power do decompress I would imagine than the regular BR-dvd format or at least check if it is available and use them.

Back in the old days 1080p ishh movie files used in theater were what 200-300gig ? And it was to see them without temporal compression I think, 500mbits connexion was not good enough for high quality cinema 1080p, I wonder what it would require for 4K and that an issue focusing on resolution instead of less compression seem completely ridiculous at least at home.
 
Generally these days if you really need a DVD drive the recommendation is just to get a USB external version. I was connecting a PCI-E SATA card to add some additional disks anyways so I decided to use one of the ports for a DVD drive. I actually used it for the first time in a year last month to copy data from some old DVDs. If it weren't for the PCI-E card I wouldn't have bothered installing the internal drive - it's staying installed though as it's more effort to disconnect it/remove the SATA cable then just leaving it in.
 
For the moment video files start so big, it is 500gig and hour for uncompressed without sound for 24fps 1080p 8 bit that non-looseless compression is here to stay for a while would it be disk, would it be streaming, one big advantage of streaming is the possibility to have more up to date codec and assume more power do decompress I would imagine than the regular BR-dvd format or at least check if it is available and use them.

Back in the old days 1080p ishh movie files used in theater were what 200-300gig ? And it was to see them without temporal compression I think, 500mbits connexion was not good enough for high quality cinema 1080p, I wonder what it would require for 4K and that an issue focusing on resolution instead of less compression seem completely ridiculous at least at home.
By the FLAC comparison I meant that for music at least we have identical quality to the physical media (once the only avenue for this) that is purchasable online, rather than a comment about lossless vs lossy. The identical quality to Ultra HD discs would be lossy HEVC but just at disc-level encoding settings rather than streaming quality encodings.

The Kaleidescape service that I mentioned for example does offer disc-quality downloads of Ultra HD (4K) films, usually prior to the release of the disc versions (sometimes years prior) but it requires spending tens of thousands of dollars on their physical hardware for the DRM, so it's very niche. Sometimes the size of the films exceeds the size that ends up on eventual disc releases.

The incentive for developing the HEVC/h.265 codec (used for Ultra HD Blu-Ray) was commercial so it seemed worth it for them. Open source alternatives like VP8/9 and now AV1 have shown there are now viable alternatives though I think that's largely due to backing by large companies such as Google, rather than just typical open source grass roots efforts, since they needed some leverage in the early scenario where HEVC was asking for licensing fees for a broader range of uses (including browsers) and it was in the interest of a range of companies and groups to have something freer in both respects (see the members of Alliance for Open Media). HEVC ended up allowing non-physical licensing to be free as a result but thanks to this need we have some great open source alternatives.
 
Just moved so I have a new library to rip Blu rays from. I live out in the country so data is limited.n

I wanted to eventually rip 4k blu-ray, but for the most part, that format is dead I am going to stick with regular Bluray.

Anyone know of a a good AI upscaler from SD to HD and HD to 4K? Would AI upscaled Bluray rips still be better than streamed 4k?
 
Stream [H]ard. With nearly one quarter of American housholds still having no internet access at all, optical media is not going away any time soon.
 
They're definitely still a thing for legacy media (DVD and normal Blu-Ray), but it's a major, major challenge to play a 4K Blu-Ray on a PC. There are only a handful of physical drives that work, you need to be using very specific Intel graphics processors, and there's only one media player that works. Newer Intel stuff doesn't work anymore and no AMD setup ever did. The fact that the 4K Blu-Ray standard is so locked down tells you all you need to know. Plus, you can find illegal rips of basically anything, so clearly it didn't help their cause.

I still have a drive that I'll occasionally use for older movie disks or even to install Windows, but if I ever buy a new case I'll probably get one sans an optical drive enclosure.
 
it's a major, major challenge to play a 4K Blu-Ray on a PC
It's true, though the reasons you list are mostly for licensed playback. I think back to when Apple decided against paying a license for regular Blu-Ray on their desktops and Windows never bothered, too, so Blu-Ray on PC was never really a thing either. It's the standalone players and console support that make up most of the market.

Anyone wanting to play BD or UHD on PC would be best suited ripping it tbh, though granted with UHD supported drives in both an official capacity (if wanting to play with licensed software and supported CPUs) and unofficial drives (bypassing need to play with licensed software and open to any CPU) are a smaller subset. MakeMKV's LibreDrive feature has helped in that regard though.

The fact that the 4K Blu-Ray standard is so locked down tells you all you need to know.
For DRM sure but it's kind of ironic since with UHD it brought region-free discs to the entire format for the first time, which opened up where things could be bought and without idiotic region locking.
 
Just moved so I have a new library to rip Blu rays from. I live out in the country so data is limited.n

I wanted to eventually rip 4k blu-ray, but for the most part, that format is dead I am going to stick with regular Bluray.

Anyone know of a a good AI upscaler from SD to HD and HD to 4K? Would AI upscaled Bluray rips still be better than streamed 4k?

That depends on the bitrate of the streamed 4k content you're comparing it too.
Surely you must realize there is more than one service for streaming movies.
 
That depends on the bitrate of the streamed 4k content you're comparing it too.
Surely you must realize there is more than one service for streaming movies.
And the compression algorithm used, there is at least 2 variable, a bluray can have an higher bitrate but if it try to work in a 2011 not upgraded device could end up lower quality.

Anyone know of a a good AI upscaler from SD to HD and HD to 4K? Would AI upscaled Bluray rips still be better than streamed 4k?
4K bluray are not always better in everyway than 4k streaming (say if one offer Dolby Vision and not on the other, that can make the higher compression blocking issues worth it on some title):
 
I still have an external blu-ray mainly for ripping audio CD's to MP3 i can't get anywhere else except in that media. (Just got an old soundtrack on CD i couldn't get any other way)
Does still have it's uses on occasion. (y)
 
I just used my external Blu-ray drive(1st time its been touched in years) to install Rome Total War for some good old fashioned world conquerin!
I got the bug pretty bad after seeing the remastered version of RTW on steam. They wanted $30 for it?!? The reviews didn't sound very promising. Pfft, why the hell should I buy it again?! I've already got the original! Easy peasy, I'll install it with the discs and be on my merry way in no time...BUT(the infamous but) little did i know that steam doesn't support the og 2004 3 disc version anymore AND OF COURSE win10 being win10, it wouldn't run on it. I tried all the updates, nocd cracks, every trick and guide on the web.
Big
Fat
Nada
Man on a mission time.
It took an entire afternoon and mucho cursing but i finally got it 😂 Fortunately I found an intact win7 install on an old SSD with RTW on it. I was able to steal the required files, folders and exe that are needed to get it running! HA! Go to hell steam! Die windows!

And right on cue, I fell asleep.
 
So are these going the way of the 3.5 floppy, I had one in my computer and decided to disconnect it, I never use the darn thing. Im always streaming movies these days. Eventually I want to totally remove it if I can ever find the faceplate.
If they all die, we might not even be able to steal rips... because, how could they?
 
If they all die, we might not even be able to steal rips... because, how could they?

The term will still be used to describe online streams that have had the DRM "ripped" out. There are Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon, etc. films called "rips" that have never been on physical media.
 
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But I'm one of those weird old guys who still buys CDs and movies and rips them. My original Blu-Ray drive died last month and I replaced it.
Glad I'm not the only one! I have an LG WH16NS40 that I flashed to RIP UHD/4K movies as the hardware is gimped to sell the UHD ready version!
I love physical media as it can not suffer from the "Cancel Culture" that we live in now, just sucks now like you said buying a new case as most of them better ones (EX: not the cheap crap paper thin steel) have no Half Height 5.25" bays anymore!
 
Just moved so I have a new library to rip Blu rays from. I live out in the country so data is limited.n

I wanted to eventually rip 4k blu-ray, but for the most part, that format is dead I am going to stick with regular Bluray.

Anyone know of a a good AI upscaler from SD to HD and HD to 4K? Would AI upscaled Bluray rips still be better than streamed 4k?
The installation is beyond me but check out Tecogan.
 

Optical Discs Aren't Dead, as Pioneer's New Drive Doubles BD Write Speeds

It should also be noted this drive can burn 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs at 6x speeds.
1646187465198.png

thats a hell of a disk support list. it doesnt come with UHD playback software though and digging/translating a bit i found a link to a cyberlink UHD advisor tool which lead me to sys reqs...
https://www.cyberlink.com/prog/support/cs/faq-content.do?id=19144&isDraft=1
pretty limited still which is really annoying....
 
The ridiculous UHD requirements for PC have ensured that format is toast. The only chipsets that can actually legitimately play UHD disks aren't even being made anymore. Many of them never actually had the horsepower to do it in the first place, too. I'm actually surprised Cyberlink hasn't tried to push Microsoft for some way around it.
 
The ridiculous UHD requirements for PC have ensured that format is toast. The only chipsets that can actually legitimately play UHD disks aren't even being made anymore. Many of them never actually had the horsepower to do it in the first place, too. I'm actually surprised Cyberlink hasn't tried to push Microsoft for some way around it.
i dont get why they cant figure it out. i can play UHD files, YUGE files, without issue on my rig, its got the protection and all that. why cant they get drive playback sorted?!
 
There is no better audio and video experience available than a 4k Blu ray in a home theater setup. Streaming and the compression involved to deliver it is simply 2nd best. Why pay for a quality TV, AVR and speaker system to stream content and get less quality from what you paid for. If it's on its way out it shouldn't be. Convenience is not an acceptable alternative IMHO. Not everything is done well on a PC watching movies is one of them. My library of 4k disc is growing and I encourage everyone to experience the difference. You won't go back to streaming the latest and greatest, rather you'll be waiting for that next big movie to come out on disc.
I use BR-Audio for my music. Fleetwood Mac at 240,000 kbps 28 bit audio or GTFO.

Seriously though, it's a shame that BR and especially 4k BR were such a failure compared to DVD. I believe cost and compatibility of a usable storage disk hurt more than widespread streaming. Transferring and archiving by disk is much more secure than USB (where governments won't allow their use.).

I sincerelyvl believe physical media would be doing much better had HDDVD won the format war.
 
Yeah but HDDVD was not a good format for longevity. I worked in a video store that carried them, and when we got rid of them when bluray finally won, the discs were already starting to bitrot. Most of the discs we sold came back as defective with the inner layers going bad. You could see the inner layer changing color and falling apart.
 
Yeah but HDDVD was not a good format for longevity. I worked in a video store that carried them, and when we got rid of them when bluray finally won, the discs were already starting to bitrot. Most of the discs we sold came back as defective with the inner layers going bad. You could see the inner layer changing color and falling apart.

The problem wasn't with the format, it was with some of the disc pressing plants - primarily those used by Warner Brothers. All of my Paramount and Universal HD-DVDs are still good to this day. My Warner Brothers disks however, particularly the "flippy" disks that were DVD one one side and HD-DVD on the other, are almost all bad. Warner Brothers disks were the absolute worst with this and the problem wasn't just with their HD-DVD lines. Many of their DVD releases in this era suffered as well.

About that Warner Brothers thing: When I was ripping and encoding my Babylon 5 DVD disks for my Kodi and Plex server, I had to borrow sets from 2 different friends AND rent a couple of disks from Netflix DVD to get the whole series done. The bit rot on those disks was unbelievably awful to the point where I was ripping the individual VOBs off multiple copies of the same disk to get a single working copy of the data. All of my HD-DVD Matrix and Harry Potter disks were bad as well as a bunch of others (mostly Kubrick films). I asked Warner Brothers for replacements for these, and they told me that as a courtesy, they would replace ONE AND ONLY ONE product SKU just this once with the equivalent BluRay release. Since The Matrix collection was the only set I had as a complete boxed set (everything else was piecemeal), The Matrix collection was what got replaced.
 
That was surely a strong selling point against HDDVD. Many had bad memories of DVD skipping and the anti scratch coating of Blu ray really helped the format.
 
That was surely a strong selling point against HDDVD. Many had bad memories of DVD skipping and the anti scratch coating of Blu ray really helped the format.
Yeah, I have yet to ruin a bluray by mishandling -I scratched DVDs all the time

I like having physical discs to rip for my video/music library (or alternately, high-quality DRM-free mp3 from sites like Amazon or bandcamp)
 
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i dont get why they cant figure it out. i can play UHD files, YUGE files, without issue on my rig, its got the protection and all that. why cant they get drive playback sorted?!

Per some back and forth on the Cyberlink site a few years ago, apparently it's on Microsoft. I guess there's nothing preventing disk playback on a variety of hardware types. Microsoft just rolled with the Intel SGX extensions requirement within Windows out of convenience...or licensing money. Nvidia even touted support back in the 10xx days. At this point I think MS probably just considers both the disk format and SGX to be a thing of the past. They don't care enough to do anything about it. Even if you have the right hardware, apparently SGX is no longer part of Intel's drivers and can be a hassle to install manually.
Only a few users actually care about the format and Cyberlink is busy pushing PowerDVD as a video file player rather than a disk player. Hopefully someday in the future they'll treat the format like they did with DVD's. Just let anyone that still has an appropriate optical drive play it. After all, those people at least have a disk!
People with certain drives, certain firmware, and software can bypass the requirements even now. It's why there are UHD blu-ray rips around.
 
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After losing my google play music library i paid for, I no longer personally support digital copies of music. I listen to crappy free streaming and if i like something I buy the cd now. So for me optical drives will always be in my pc if i can.
 
After losing my google play music library i paid for, I no longer personally support digital copies of music. I listen to crappy free streaming and if i like something I buy the cd now. So for me optical drives will always be in my pc if i can.
This is about the only "real" way to protect yourself and "prove" right to use. Of course, doesn't prevent fire, destruction, theft, etc.... but still, better than other methods out there.

Even when the producer, owner, etc. of the music on the media sells off, merges, changes direction, or dies, etc.... your media continues to work.

One of the reasons we that also dabble in the risky business of things like bandcamp (for example) are a bit concerned over Epic's recent acquisition of them (just make sure to download and preserve your content).
 
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