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Hardware Do we need Blu-ray drives?

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by brumgrunt, 28 Feb 2012.

  1. brumgrunt

    brumgrunt What's a Dremel?

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  2. mpr

    mpr What's a Dremel?

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    I love my Asus BluRay drives in both my PCs, yes maily for movies but also for backing up my Steam folder and other high storage items. The two things that kill it for me is the price of Cyberlink (we have 3 copies) and the lack of games coming on the discs. I think that if Sony put a 3 year hold on royalty requirements for PC software it could have a huge boost in the market. There are plenty of quality drives available at an affordable price, there's just no reason for gamers or non-HTPC users to jump in.
     
  3. Centy-face

    Centy-face Caw?

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    I had a cheap combi Bluray/HDDVD drive a while back but I never once used it for playing either, in fact after a year of having it I noticed it still had the windows disc inside from when I first built the thing, so I took it out and have been without an optical drive for the last year or so. I haven't missed it once.
     
  4. julianmartin

    julianmartin resident cyborg.

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    it'll take the pc games market to jump ship to really move it i think. which won't happen anytime soon if ever because everyone buys off steam anyway.....!
     
  5. V3ctor

    V3ctor Tech addict...

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    I don't even use my DVD drive... It's there for "just in case"... Bluray is too expensive comparing to other solutions, the price of USB sticks are really down and I guess Bluray will only be a "hard format", if they discontinue DVD's
     
  6. badders

    badders Neuken in de Keuken

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    I have Blu-Ray drives in both my HTPC (since christmas 2009) and Main PC.
    The HTPC has a copy of PowerDVD 8 that came with the drive, but the PC upstairs runs a trial version of DVDFab Passkey, which unlocks the Discs for Playing on MPC-HC. With writers down to ~£54, even those are starting to be at the price point where I bought my first DVD writer.

    The software is what is stalling adoption of PC Blu-Ray readers, as many people are not aware of the free options out there, and indeed these were not available until relatively recently.

    I also have a PS3, although this rarely gets used for Blu-Ray Playback, as I already had the drive in the HTPC beforehand, so it just seems easier to wake the machine up and stick the disc in!
     
  7. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    The only thing I use my DVD drive for is for games as I prefer to own a hard copy.

    I don't even use it for saving/moving data, I have 16Gb USB sticks for that.

    BR Drives I can see being useful in HTPCs but I have little use for a DVD let alone a BR drive in my PC. Having a PS3 that works as a BR drive is all the BR capability I need personally.
     
  8. Lenderz

    Lenderz Minimodder

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    Quite happy with my Blu-Ray drive I acquired a few years ago when doing a new build for around £25 or something. It came with some pretty decent complementary playback software too, I can't remember the last time I installed software off a shiny round disk (other than Battlefield 3 as it was like £20 cheaper on Amazon at pre-release, but future installs will be done via origin), but its good for playback of my blu-ray movie/tv show collection.
     
  9. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    last time i used my DVD drive was when BF3 was released, only because i want to play it at that moment. otherwise i've not used the DVD drive at all since.

    for new builds, i would say ditch the blu-ray drive, would even ditch the DVD drive if it's more expensive than £10. disks are behind us, just like IDE, PS/2 keyboard and floppy disks.


    (although no doubt i agree blu-ray have a place in TV connected computers)
     
  10. Ghast

    Ghast uh...

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    Blu-ray will be completely skipped over in the PC Gaming market as they switch to cloud computing and storage. The same can be said for everything, physical media will still be around for a long time, but I wager that cloud services will be the norm in 5-10 years and the only thing physical media will be used for is hard back up purposes.
     
  11. Madness_3d

    Madness_3d Bit-Tech/Asus OC Winner

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    Do we need Blu-Ray Drives...

    Yes.

    */mod edit* - but I won't explain why
     
    Last edited by a moderator: 28 Feb 2012
  12. |V| 4 L k i 3 R

    |V| 4 L k i 3 R Minimodder

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    I have a blu-ray drive in my HTPC and my desktop. The HTPC is pretty obvious, immediately playing a disc before ripping (say if a friend brings over one). On the desktop, I use it to rip blu-rays to my NAS for HTPC playback later.
     
  13. Mentai

    Mentai What's a Dremel?

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    I'm extremely particular about video quality, and since HD rip/streaming content does not look as good as footage off a BD I will use one... in the PS3. I really don't see the need for bluray in anything not attached to a large television. I haven't used my DVD drive since I installed Windows over a year ago, and I can easily make a USB boot of that. I don't think my next build will bother with any optical drive, it would be more useful to have another row of USB ports.
     
  14. r3loaded

    r3loaded Minimodder

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    The only computer in my house that even has an optical drive of any description is the old Dell desktop, which is fancy because it had a DVD writer drive back in 2002. It's still there just in case, but I've not needed to use it once in the past 3-4 years.

    Between my multi-terabyte server, 30Mbit internet and a 32GB USB drive, there's never been any need for it

    Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
     
  15. Krikkit

    Krikkit All glory to the hypnotoad! Super Moderator

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    You guys are all far too disk-free for my liking. :p

    I'm a regular BVD/DVD/CD buyer because I enjoy having a physical collection to browse, and because it works on all the systems I enjoy them on. Home cinema system? Check. HiFi? Check. PC? Check.

    It all gets ripped (save for the BVD's... for now) and stored on PC, but I'd much rather have a real disk than a solely digital collection.
     
  16. Deders

    Deders Modder

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    When prices come down it would be handy for backup
     
  17. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    No we don't.

    /article page 2.

    I own ONE DVD drive just in case, but I haven't used it since I played Dirt3 last summer. I have NEVER owned a Blu-ray and never used one personally (on the job I did HDHQV tests)
     
  18. Jqim

    Jqim What's a Dremel?

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    I want BR quality videos but without the clutter of an optical drive. As for backups, if it was somthing mission critical like my work i will be paying for propper cloud storage/backup. BR feels too throw away
     
  19. Dave Lister

    Dave Lister Minimodder

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    I paid £130 for a blu-ray/hd-dvd drive back when £180 was a more normal price. The cyberlink software it came with wouldn't even let me get 5.1 surround sound, instead I've been stuck with 2.1. So I will never buy another bluray drive. It put me off so much that I stopped buying bluray movies. Now I just download the films I want to watch. I've only got a collection of about 20 bluray films but if anyone can advise on a free video player that can playback these discs that would be appreciated, (the article mentions vlc so I will try that tonight) but any other suggestions are welcome.
     
  20. law99

    law99 Custom User Title

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    The only thing that kills it for me is the dogs dinner of software available.

    That is the only issue. The drives aren't even that expensive.

    If windows movie player or vlc could play the straight off the bat, adoption would be huge.

    As for screens are to small... When has that stopped people wanting quality? Why else do people buy into 1080p screens?
     
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