Blogs Is it time to bin your optical drive?

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2013/02/08/it-s-time-to-bin-your-optical-drive/

 

Unless you can download music and video in its uncompressed format legally through Steam, Amazon and the like, my optical drive is staying.

Buying VBR MP3s which haven't even been normalized is something of a fools errand, especially if you want to get the best out of your speaker or headphone setup.

 

Yeah i was all for killing the optical drive, until i started reading EULAS and the other agreements about the stuff i bought online, and i realised that i was paying the same for the stuff i had when i bought the optical cds, and the agreements stated in a lot websites, that i didn't own them, that just pissed me off.
The other thing the removal of opticals is creating is the fact that we users buy games/dvds/music and we cant re-sell them anymore for cash.

I think with steam we can sell used games (but its just not the same).

I am subscriber to spotify also, but in the days when i used to buy a cd, i used to cherish that cd, check the lyrics, the artwork in the cds, etc. with spotify not all, music just became a commodity and got myself paying less attention to the music i was listening. Now i just use spotify to discover music, but i go (used to go) to hmv to get a cd and rip a copy with the best quality.

I am all for removing the optical drives, but i am not for a future were we pay the same for the products but we dont own them.

 

No, I still watch the odd film and all my cds would be useless without it (I do have spotify but they don't have def leppard, pink floyd and Led Zepplin). I also still have loads of old games on disc. But I am getting to a point were a external optical drive is easily enough for me. I just find it convenient having a optical drive.

 

I don't think I will ever get rid of my optical drive anytime soon. I use it too much to remove it.

 

Whilst ripping music to a hard drive is quite handy, the idea that I would then throw out my ODD does rather hinge on the idea that I would be stopping buying CDs at this point, which is really not going to happen any time soon.

 

The end of physical media would be terrible .

For starters, next gen games are likely to be Blu-ray only and the drives are rumoured to be quad layer capable, in order to be 4k compatible i.e. BDXL128GB , gonna DL that on Steam or Netflix?

Second, the quality of 1080p streamed movies is nowhere near as good as high bitrate 1080p blu-ray . Quite why anyone would buy hi-end AV equipment only to watch streamed movies is beyond me. The hi compression does the higher res no favours at all.

Of course, USB or some new tech would be better, but the price of 50GB -100GB of standalone content on USB isn't going to be practical any time soon .

 

^This.

 

I don't know why but I always prefer to have a physical backup of any media I purchase. I've had as few occasions when I've had internet connection issues and it would annoy me not to be able watch or install something.

 

I think the comments here nail it pretty hard as to why optical media should stay

 

The reason my optical drive stays is thus. I shall even use a current example!

SimCity: Limited Edition from Origin - £44.99
SimCity: Limited Edition from Amazon on disc, saving me hours of getting annoyed at slow interwebs - £34.99

Now factor in that the Special Editions of things usually cost the same money as the downloadable once but rather having bloody digital art-books have actual real can-sniff-those-lovely-pages pages!

You can stay cheap little black rectangle, forever and ever!

 

Are you sure what you'r getting is 1080p in full quality? I blow mine up onto a 3m screen, compression IS an issue

Also, most "unlimited" broadband offers are capped, how many movies can you watch a month before you hit this limit?

I have a fairly standard internetconnection (6000 DSL), and I have trouble getting 480p (which is considered "HD" by streaming companies)
480P streams tend to stutter (Youtube, Lovefilm, Maxdome)

The average datarate of a Bluray in the mail (Lovefilm, as mentioned) isn't to be underrated.

 

What I hate more than anything is laptop drives in laptops! Why oh why are they still in there?! Trying to find a decent 15" laptop that isn't over bulked by the Optical drive is so hard - so far I only think apple have properly achieved it with the retina 15....

 

A few months ago I installed Windows 8 from an USB3.0 16gb stick on a fresh system build on a Samsung SDD. It took less then two minutes from first powerup to install and got to desktop and browse the internet for some newer drivers.

I think that says it all.

 

I have a huge pile of old games and movies on disc, and there is no way (if they are even available in the first place) to buy the same thing again just cause I wanna junk a very cheap piece of hardware.

 

My pc doesn't even have an optical drive. Never really missed it.

 

If all the music you enjoy is available on spotify and itunes, good for you. I'm still backing up my Brainfreeze, Product Placement and Rare Equations CDs though!

 

We might be willing to make the move, but the infrastructure isn't quite there yet.

When broadband caps are finally abolished I may consider it. Otherwise, there will be times where I'll have to wait until midnight to do a Steam install for fear of being hit with excess bandwidth charges - not exactly the immediacy you'd expect in the digital age, when I load a game off a disc in a few minutes. I'd hate to think how much worse it would be if I fancied downloading a BluRay quality movie.

In other words, it's nowhere near time to give up on the optical drive.

 

How long did it take to prepare the usb stick as well though? I'd be happier to just put the disc in.

My win8 installation onto a fresh ssd from a bluray drive took well under 10 mins. The longest bit was waiting for it to apply the settings and you get the screen that constantly changes colour and I don't think that is affected by how you've installed.

 

I haven't used my ODD since July last year (more can't but thats another tale) and I haven't missed it for a second. We're on 100Mbps internet, so 20GB is less than an hour away. And this is the future, faster, more stable internet connections. So why would I bother paying for the bus into town to by a game or movie (movies are the worst), when Steam will give me the game in less time and buying a movie is hugely costly when compared to Lovefilm/Netflix. I really hated using ODD's and I wont regret never using one again!