This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I recently bought a second PC Blu-ray writer just in case this would happen. Lucky me. I should be good for the next 10 years.
Looks like they're still available for now in the UK but at inflated prices sent from America
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B079LTC6ML
The above supports UHD and is easy to... adapt for legitimate ripping of your Blu-ray. For backup purposes of course.
I think Panasonic still make some too but I've used LG ones for years.
For internal desktop drives, I have the WH16NS40. After flashing some open firmware on it, it works perfectly for playing and ripping BRs. Looks like I'll be picking up a spare in case this one dies.
The MakeMKV forum has a lot of good tips and instructions on selecting and configuring BluRay drives.
I’m surprised that usb Blu-ray drives are as expensive as they are still, low supply and mostly only niche demand I guess? Was hoping to get one to make some copies of my physical media, but spending $100ish for a usb drive hurts haha
I guess now’s the time to pull the trigger
Get one that works with libredrive so you can rip at full quality and speed through Makemkv.
im torn. as someone with a massive personal library, bluray was a non-starter. they never fleshed it out to the storage densities i would have required for my library. solid state storage has come so far now, it just makes sense.
someday i'll just be able to hand a single drive with my 100tb of content to my kids. if youre concerned about 'owning' shit. start powning it.
Inb4 drive failure
3-2-1 backup rule
meh. i have triple redundancy including an offline set. cheap storage means cheap redundancy,
As much as I hate that this is happening, I think once you turn to digital media, it's incredibly difficult to go back. The convenience of having your stuff at a click of a button is just too good.
That said, if you're into movies specifically, i'd personally still go the route of buying a disk, and ripping it to your local storage, but that's both expensive, and inconvenient in terms of space
I'd have no issue with digital media if there was a way to actually own it. Everything is either streaming only or ridden with DRM that can only be played within their app. Blurays, assuming you can decrypt its DRM bs, are the last bastion of media ownership left.
You've essentially described exactly what the issue is. All these companies want you to continue subscribing, so you owning anything isn't in their interest
"If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing."
The convenience of having your stuff at a click of a button is just too good.
Except when you go to find your stuff, discover it's not there, and yearn to be able to just stuff a DVD in a player.
That's why I ripped my media onto my NAS. I have the physical media as a backup, but I don't have to actually deal with discs. No more scratched discs is amazing.
