New computers - old blu-ray

[Jimmy Higgins]

It seems someone got wise about something and laptops don't seem to come with blu-ray drives anymore. Which sucks because I love ripping my legally obtained (and kept) blu-rays in to MP4s for my digital collection. Now days new laptops only have a DVD drive... if a drive at all!

One of the points of getting a new laptop (likely instead of desktop), would be faster processing. But if I can't rip a blu-ray because... no blu-ray drive... that is one huge reason not to get one. And I don't feel like decoding on one machine and transferring to another as that is just dumb.

So the question is, how hard is it to (and what are the warranty concerns) switch out. It appears that it is possible, assuming the sizes of the new optical drive are the same. But I still wasn't certain if there were certain tricks the industry was using that'd make using a blu-ray impossible in new machines due to piracy concerns (that aren't solved by these methods).

 

[phands]

Why bother? Buy a USB Blu-Ray/DVD/CD player, and just plug into a USB socket on your laptop. They're comparatively cheap....

https://www.amazon.com/Lvaen-Extern...id=1531153949&sr=1-23&keywords=Blu+ray+reader

There are many programs that will rip the physical disk to a file on the PC. If you are enlightened enough to use Linux, there's a superb ripping tool called K3B which also understands how to defeat encryption, and writes the file without it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Why would I buy something I already have? Also, that is USB 2.0. I’m trying to speed things up.

 

[phands]

Why would I buy something I already have? Also, that is USB 2.0. I’m trying to speed things up.

Any decent machine will come with USB3.1/USB C, which is much faster. But because the external 3.0/C drives are newer, they're more expensive....https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-BDR-...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=Q1Z3FXP6MM6MJSM91BFQ

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It seems someone got wise about something and laptops don't seem to come with blu-ray drives anymore. Which sucks because I love ripping my legally obtained (and kept) blu-rays in to MP4s for my digital collection. Now days new laptops only have a DVD drive... if a drive at all!

One of the points of getting a new laptop (likely instead of desktop), would be faster processing. But if I can't rip a blu-ray because... no blu-ray drive... that is one huge reason not to get one. And I don't feel like decoding on one machine and transferring to another as that is just dumb.

So the question is, how hard is it to (and what are the warranty concerns) switch out. It appears that it is possible, assuming the sizes of the new optical drive are the same. But I still wasn't certain if there were certain tricks the industry was using that'd make using a blu-ray impossible in new machines due to piracy concerns (that aren't solved by these methods).

More expensive laptops often have blu-ray as an option.

AFIAK swapping an optical drive on a laptop is just routine, although there's much more disassembly work than with a desktop. I've done it ages ago, took a while due to the pain of working on a laptop but otherwise routine.

 

[Underseer]

Why would I buy something I already have? Also, that is USB 2.0. I’m trying to speed things up.

Any decent machine will come with USB3.1/USB C, which is much faster. But because the external 3.0/C drives are newer, they're more expensive....https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-BDR-...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=Q1Z3FXP6MM6MJSM91BFQ

Is an optical drive even capable of filling the bandwidth pipe of USB 3.0?

Are the 3.0 drives actually faster for ripping?

 

[phands]

[
Is an optical drive even capable of filling the bandwidth pipe of USB 3.0?

Are the 3.0 drives actually faster for ripping?

Excellent questions, and the answer is no. Optical drives have a maximum data transfer rate for reading which can 6 or 8 or more times faster than the rate required for real-time playback, but are ultimately limited by by how fast the disc can be rotated and still read (and write!) accurately at the much faster-moving outer tracks - especially as the laser pits on Blu-Ray are much smaller. Theory posits about 400MBpS for 12x read at 10,000RPM, but the current Blu-Ray specs are looking at plans for only 8x at 288MBpS so they have a way to go to get to 14x or 16x speeds..

By contrast, USB 3.1 can sustain 10GigaBpS, so a Blu-Ray won't even make it sweat, even at 8x speeds.

For a comparison, my new Macbook Pro comes with 4 USB C ports, and is currently driving 2 external 4k monitors at 60Hz, the internal retina display, an external HD webcam and a 1G ethernet connection simultaneously. Reading or writing an optical disk is hardly noticeable.

 

[Underseer]

[
Is an optical drive even capable of filling the bandwidth pipe of USB 3.0?

Are the 3.0 drives actually faster for ripping?

Excellent questions, and the answer is no. Optical drives have a maximum data transfer rate for reading which can 6 or 8 or more times faster than the rate required for real-time playback, but are ultimately limited by by how fast the disc can be rotated and still read (and write!) accurately at the much faster-moving outer tracks - especially as the laser pits on Blu-Ray are much smaller. Theory posits about 400MBpS for 12x read at 10,000RPM, but the current Blu-Ray specs are looking at plans for only 8x at 288MBpS so they have a way to go to get to 14x or 16x speeds..

By contrast, USB 3.1 can sustain 10GigaBpS, so a Blu-Ray won't even make it sweat, even at 8x speeds.

For a comparison, my new Macbook Pro comes with 4 USB C ports, and is currently driving 2 external 4k monitors at 60Hz, the internal retina display, an external HD webcam and a 1G ethernet connection simultaneously. Reading or writing an optical disk is hardly noticeable.

I thought so.

I remember when optical drives made the move from IDE to SATA. Lots of people thought this meant a performance increase for optical drives, and people who knew better had to explain that this wasn't the case, that the SATA drives were just coming out because IDE was going to go the way of the dinosaur.

Although those SATA cables do block less airflow than those old IDE cables, so I guess there is a performance boost[ent]hellip[/ent] of sorts.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why would I buy something I already have? Also, that is USB 2.0. I’m trying to speed things up.

Any decent machine will come with USB3.1/USB C, which is much faster. But because the external 3.0/C drives are newer, they're more expensive....https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-BDR-...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=Q1Z3FXP6MM6MJSM91BFQ

Is an optical drive even capable of filling the bandwidth pipe of USB 3.0?

Are the 3.0 drives actually faster for ripping?

Irrelevant. What counts is if the drive can deliver more than USB2.0

 

[phands]

Irrelevant. What counts is if the drive can deliver more than USB2.0

Sort of...except that even current Blu Ray can only transfer at 288 MBpS, and USB 2.0 manages 480.

 

[Underseer]

Irrelevant. What counts is if the drive can deliver more than USB2.0

Sort of...except that even current Blu Ray can only transfer at 288 MBpS, and USB 2.0 manages 480.

Doesn't USB have trouble guaranteeing bandwidth? I seem to recall that was one of the advantages Firewire had over USB back in the day. Wouldn't that mean the 480 is a maximum value? What can we generally expect for sustained throughput?

 

[phands]

Doesn't USB have trouble guaranteeing bandwidth? I seem to recall that was one of the advantages Firewire had over USB back in the day. Wouldn't that mean the 480 is a maximum value? What can we generally expect for sustained throughput?

Not so much since 2.0, but that transfer rate is still aggregate, so any other devices connected subtract from available bandwidth for others. Plus, physical design has an effect....USB 2 only guarantees performance for cables less than a certain length (which I can't remember, but is maybe 3 metres). But even so, USB 2.0 and above will outstrip any optical drive in existence right now.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Doesn't USB have trouble guaranteeing bandwidth? I seem to recall that was one of the advantages Firewire had over USB back in the day. Wouldn't that mean the 480 is a maximum value? What can we generally expect for sustained throughput?

Not so much since 2.0, but that transfer rate is still aggregate, so any other devices connected subtract from available bandwidth for others. Plus, physical design has an effect....USB 2 only guarantees performance for cables less than a certain length (which I can't remember, but is maybe 3 metres). But even so, USB 2.0 and above will outstrip any optical drive in existence right now.

That makes no sense. The optical drive hard wire connection to the computer itself can be no slower than the bandwidth of the Blu-Ray drive and it is a single use pipe. So what is the external drive getting that the internal isn't. Having more bandwidth is irrelevant if I already have enough. It isn't like I'm stepping up to the third gen blu-ray standard.

Besides, the original thing you linked to, required using two USB cables which means there is a throughput concern.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Irrelevant. What counts is if the drive can deliver more than USB2.0

Sort of...except that even current Blu Ray can only transfer at 288 MBpS, and USB 2.0 manages 480.

I wasn't saying whether it needed 3.0 (while I could have figured it out I didn't bother), I was saying it was the wrong yardstick. Go over 2.0 speed and you benefit from 3.0 even if you're nowhere near maxing out 3.0.

 

[Underseer]

Doesn't USB have trouble guaranteeing bandwidth? I seem to recall that was one of the advantages Firewire had over USB back in the day. Wouldn't that mean the 480 is a maximum value? What can we generally expect for sustained throughput?

Not so much since 2.0, but that transfer rate is still aggregate, so any other devices connected subtract from available bandwidth for others. Plus, physical design has an effect....USB 2 only guarantees performance for cables less than a certain length (which I can't remember, but is maybe 3 metres). But even so, USB 2.0 and above will outstrip any optical drive in existence right now.

That makes no sense. The optical drive hard wire connection to the computer itself can be no slower than the bandwidth of the Blu-Ray drive and it is a single use pipe. So what is the external drive getting that the internal isn't. Having more bandwidth is irrelevant if I already have enough. It isn't like I'm stepping up to the third gen blu-ray standard.

Besides, the original thing you linked to, required using two USB cables which means there is a throughput concern.

USB wasn't originally designed for sustained data transfer. It was just meant for mice and keyboards and whatnot. So it can have trouble maintaining throughput depending on how long the cables are, how much traffic is coming from other USB devices, etc.

Granted, my understanding of the technology is probably somewhat dated, but I doubt it's changed that much since I actually paid attention.