I didn’t think I’d spend hours reading about this today, but some things surprised me:
- Just using a Playstation sounds like it won’t work or will be a huge time sink.
- Blu ray optical drives are way more expensive than I thought
- The copy protections on Blu rays are exceptionally annoying, to the extent where there is really only one closed source software – MakeMKV – that can work around them. This post goes into some interesting details.
- Finding a drive that is known to work with MakeMKV is a pain. There’s a brand called Pioneer that seems promising but they have stopped producing bluray drives
went out of business last year. I have no idea which model works, and it’s common that secondhand sellers will swap enclosures and pass it off as a different model. - Sometimes you need to flash the firmware on the drive to make it work with 4K UHD discs.
Anyway I was going to try ripping a Blu-ray that I bought recently, since I couldn’t find a quality rip anywhere, but I’m pretty turned off from the whole prospect at this point.
Anyway I’m not really asking for a specific reply, I just thought this topic was interesting and I’m curious what people think about Blu rays and optical media in general. Does the future seem bleak? Are we going to be stuck with shitty WebDLs for most new content? Or is physical media here to stay?
Pioneer is a well known Japanese electronics company, they are still going strong, but have exited the optical disc drive business.
So no, Pioneer has not gone out of business, they have however changed focus from optical drives.
Got it, thanks for the correction. I had never heard of Pioneer before; I must’ve misinterpreted what I was reading on the forums.
How old are you? 😅 I think their name is bigger in the audio business, they made/make audio equipment, car stereos, CD Players, etc but you certainly don’t see their name as often as you used. But then, people aren’t really buying home/car audio equipment like they used to.