Hardware Do we need Blu-ray drives?

Just a quick note to the poster that wants to use flash drives. If you own a blu-ray burner you can download your movies onto a flash drive (HDD) and make a digital copy. So you are already have the technology that you are asking for, but you do need a blu-ray optical drive and you will have to buy a program to transfer your blu-ray movie to your HDD. Cnet lists many software packages that will do this. Some of them cost as little as $30.

 

I have blu ray drives in all my computers, so i think i still them.

 

A PS3 (for me) and a toshiba laptop (wife) are the only blu-ray players we have. So far each of us only bought 1 BD movie for the drives. I'm fine with that. On the software side, yes its ridiculously expansive, I end up just downloading the free software version and use it. When I need to use use the software again, uninstall, resinstall it again as it is rarely played on the pc and ps3.

Places/countries without good/fast internet will need physical media-no running from that fact. So driveless DVD/BD is only useful if you have good uncapped internet.

Most of the games I own are on disc, purely because Steam sells it more expansive than I can find it on ebay. Even some steam deals can't match what I got from ebay. Also after playing, I sell the disc back, so its not that I'm hoarding it just for collection purposes. Most of the BD disc formats I have are PS3 games which also cost cheaper than whatever sony is offering on their PSN store. That is until I want to play that DLC which I need to get a PScard which is downright annoying.

 

Yeah for me optical drives get little use for actual movie watching just because they are saddled with too much "mandatory" crap. With the occasional exception of wanting to watch the special features of something or want THE BEST quality possible, I don't pop the disk in. I've ripped all my DVDs and about 1/3rd of my Blu Rays. It would be 100%, but HDD prices are too high right now (I need a couple new disks to keep up with my balooning storage requirements as is) and I am stuck with an old Core 2 duo, so a BR rip downconvert to high bit rate 720p takes about 6-8hrs right now using high quality settings in handbrake.

I don't go the pirate route, I buy all my stuff and rip it.

That said, things like those FBI warnings, mandatory previews, etc piss me off. When I put the disk in I damn well want to be watching my movie/show in 60 seconds or less including boot time of the watching device. With my media player I can be in the subfolder that holds the video file in question and it'll have buffered the video in maybe all of 30-45 seconds if I am fast with the remote. BR player, depending on mandatory previews and what not, I am lucky if I am watching my movie in 2 minutes. With some disks and their mandatory crap, it might be 3-6 minutes.

I also refuse to be constrained on not being able to take the content I have paid for with me...which isn't an option with my ipad 2, or not being able to play it on the devices I want (itunes movie DRM not compatible with anything non-apple...which means not my media players). Streaming is all nice and fine, but not as high quality, and doesn't help me on the go (no cellular data plans and damned if I'd pay the price on download caps if I did have one just to stream a movie).

Now if I had decent HD H.264 DRM free purchase and then download options that were legal, I'd be more than willing to go that route. I am lucky to have a good high speed interent connection, so a 2-4GB movie file isn't that much of an impediment (30Mbps up and down for my connection).

However, such an option doesn't exist. So for the quality and utility I want, it means buying BR on an optical disk and ripping it to harddrive and converting it to high quality H.264 (720p).

 

Yeah. Those users are uncommon. They are made less common by the fact that you can just lend a frend a blu-ray. I'm guessing it would be illegal to lend my friend a rip of a movie I bought unless it was on storage I own. Or something similar from a technical standpoint.

I think you'll find a lot of games do use the extra space on Blu-ray for audio. Maybe for other things as well. Obviously exclusive PS3 games will use the space which sort of proves that devs will use what they are given. So if you agree with that statement you'll see that disc space was an issue, no matter how well disguised. (There used to be an argument about transfer speeds also, but as far as I am aware the speeds were only better on single layer DVD which I doubt happened very often Also, MS use a chunk of the DVD for their own garbage so devs don't even get a full 9gb) < This is all so old hat I can't remember hardly any of it.

Problem is, if you watch a lot of movies you hit your threshold for fair usage policy on most connections. Unless you are willing to go the route of other providers lik A&A

 

PC publishers will be conservative over the media they use and with good reason - when you choose a minority format, you reduce your potential market.

A similar situation existed with DVD - no-one released on DVD until several years after its release and the first example that I recall was Baldur's Gate, which offered a DVD-ROM option after its initial release on 5 CDs.

However BluRay doesn't provide the upgrade over DVD that DVD did over CD (you only need 4 DVDs for the same capacity as one BluRay-disk compared to 14 CDs for one DVD) so it could well happen that no-one uses it for software release until capacities increase further. Even the most recent games rarely need more than one DVD for now.

The initial format war with HD-DVD certainly hasn't helped either.

But will these work with existing BluRay drives? Almost certainly not, in which case you're effectively talking about another format with another upgrade cost. Added to that, even 100GB isn't much for full image backups - mine now exceed 400GB so an extra hard disk is the only feasible (and much faster) option.

Agreed - but data transfer rates are likely a bigger killer for most. A top-notch ADSL connection isn't going to allow more than 200KB/s upload (that's with Annex M - without this you'll get half that) compared to 120MB/s for a "typical" hard disk.

You do realise that bi-wiring does nothing for sound quality don't you? What it does to is provide a small increase in volume (due to lowering the resistance of the cable between your amp and your speaks) and small increases (1 dB or so) in volume are perceived as quality improvements ("sharper bass", "fulsome midrange", "sibilant treble").

I won't be touching BluRay with a bargepole myself due to its DRM issues (it's ridiculous to expect people to tolerate BluRay disk loading times in excess of a minute, only to then have to watch multiple non-skippable trailers and I don't care to invest in hardware that could be rendered useless due to HDCP key revocation) while I do have a large DVD collection, both games and films. Once a player arrives that is completely region-free (UK buyers are being shafted on region B BluRay prices, just as they are on region 2 DVDs - Dark City on BluRay costs £40 compared to just £10 for the US region A version) with the options to disable HDCP and skip trailers, then I'll reconsider.

 

For gaming? No. I'd be happy never to have to install a game via disk again.

But for actually watching Blu-Rays? Hell yeah.

My monitor wees all over my TV.

And having a Blu-Ray means my wife can watch Downton Abbey & ER on telly, while I can retire to my sanctuary and watch something worth watching.

 

When I bought a new laptop two years ago, I deliberately went for one with a 1080 screen and BluRay drive. I knew Blurays would be affordable over the life span of the laptop (4-5 years) and that I could plug it into a HDTV at home (when I bought one).
At the time BluRays were very expensive, now you can buy double/triple play boxes for not much extra cash over DVD's (except with new film releases, which are still expensive). In the last year HDTV and BluRay player prices have dropped a lot. I've now invested in them at home and started buying BluRays rather than DVD's. For me, BluRay players in PC's are now a must, and as prices drop I think other people will want them too.
However it's a different matter when it comes to BluRay burners. I have no need to burn data to optical disks anymore. I prefer external/networked HDD's etc. They are just overpriced and unnecessary.
I genuinly do think than in the next five years BluRays will overtake DVD's, but only if the price difference between formats continued to drop and if TV shows are released on BluRay too. At the moment many TV series are only available on DVD. On PC's newer systems easily have the power to run the software, so most peoples PC's will be up to the job in the next few years.

 

i have a sony bd0x10s, it doesn't even work with all discs! yes, i have upgraded the firmware that was available. plus the cyberlink software that came with it doesn't work with windows 7! huge fail. it would have been better if they had done nothing.

 

I have a drive but the software for watching films is soo buggy for me atm it is annoying. Will be getting a home cinema set up at some point and since it is back compatible I dont see why not going BluRay

 

Only reason i have ever used my optical drive is to install windows or boot stuff like memtest

 

Easy answer to this. If you want to watch BlueRays or rip them on your PC, then yes. And if you don't, then no.

 

Can you even rip a BluRay?

 

Of course.

 

I think that blu ray drives will eventually match the current price of a dvd drive and it will be just a natural choice to buy one as part of a new build. I burned something to disc yesterday (windows 8) and felt a little retro. I think it would be a welcome option to buy Windows on a USB stick in the future.

 

I bought a bluray drive for my pc and have an hdav soundcard, so was pretty setup for watching a bluray.

However it was a bit of a let down really, somehow running blurays on a pc monitor and using a pc, just doesent come close to using a proper tv and separate bluray player.

It is adequate and the drive was fairly cheap, so it is what it is.

 

I bought a blu-ray drive when i built my PC ... if i was doing it again, i'd spend more on the gfx card instead.

 

Yes, you can rip to an MKV file, and the MKV will be the same quality as the original Blu-ray, as MKV is just a container for the video.

I don't know the legality of doing this, but I assume it's more legal then downloading a rip off a torrent which will be inferior to Blu-ray quality.

 

I think people's arguments are lacking on one point. I made my PC's 7.1 surround sound "system" for under a $100. I used a cheap walmart 5.1 system and a 2.0 system. Only expensive parts were the $60 Bluray reader and $180 audio card. Still cheaper than a 7.1 system for a TV which is normally over $500. Plus gaming with full surround is amazing, I can hear everything behind me!

 

I think it falls under the "backup" part of copyright law. Just never get rid of the physical copy or share the file and you are completely legal.