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?
For mainstream content and somewhat well known content, both regular BD and 4K BD rip are widely posted shortly after release.
You do have some truly niche content and non-english content where it’s difficult to find BDRips / BD Remuxes, but you can usually access older DVDRips. If you’re into this kind of content (as I am), you might as well just buy the BD (or stick to the DVDRip which is fine as far as I am concerned).
Not unless the artist is selling directly
More often than not, for niche and/or non-english content, this is indeed the case. I also don’t see the big deal with supporting a smaller publisher.