PC Blu Ray drives

[Masque]

Was wondering: are internal PC Blu Rays better looking (in 1080p) than PC DVDs?

Thinking about getting a Blu Ray player, but only if the quality is better than DVD at 1080p.

None of the entries at Amazon for either internal or external PC Blu Ray drives mention literally ANYTHING about playback of Blu Ray discs. None of the comments and reviews mention anything about disc playback either. Which is why I ask here. It seems that 99.9 percent of the people using Blu Ray drives on their PC are using it to rip their movies -- not play them from disc.

[mtono]

Opprinnelig skrevet av emoticorpse:

Opprinnelig skrevet av _I_:

mpc supports dvd
if you rip the bd it can play that too

Mpc can also play blurays directly off disc, using makemkv as the "on the fly" decrypter.

great news to me. thx
c-jah.

[Ocelote.12]

I thought MPC can play only separate files from Blu-Ray. Most of the time the largest file is a main video, so you just can open it in MPC. But sometimes the film is divided in several files, so you'll need to know what order to play them in. Also, there's some stuff like picture-in-picture and some other bonus materials like secondary camera angle, that MPC, last time I used it on a Blu-Ray, didn't understand. But PowerDVD can understand this and supports menus. But it probably had some problems with UHD Blu-Rays. Don't know the details about UHD really, I don't have an UHD Blu-Ray drive, only regular Blu-Ray.

[emoticorpse]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ocelote12:

I thought MPC can play only separate files from Blu-Ray. Most of the time the largest file is a main video, so you just can open it in MPC. But sometimes the film is divided in several files, so you'll need to know what order to play them in. Also, there's some stuff like picture-in-picture and some other bonus materials like secondary camera angle, that MPC, last time I used it on a Blu-Ray, didn't understand. But PowerDVD can understand this and supports menus. But it probably had some problems with UHD Blu-Rays. Don't know the details about UHD really, I don't have an UHD Blu-Ray drive, only regular Blu-Ray.

A lot of bluray drives can read UHD discs but ship with firmware that stops that. In somw cases downgrade the firmware and you can do it again. That's what I did, but depends on thre specific model.

[mtono]

i just found a dvd/blu ray player in teh winodws store of my windows 11 pro, that is for free^^
serach for DVD player free in winodws store.
works with dvd good enaough. i have no blu ray.
just to mention.
byebye

[Masque]

Opprinnelig skrevet av secret_agent_man:

my comment:
i have quit blu-ray generally, because it is a mess to make blu-ray movie run anyway with windows in my case.. i always failed to be happy with it. i have 24" monitor and dvd looks good enough with dvd. above 32" blu-ray may look better, but always errors and such. what could you do? i cant say. with dvd movies everything works for me. i have lots of them.
isnt mpc (media player classic) supporting blu-ray? i dunno. mpc is free.

byebye

Would I be better off just buying a standalone blu ray player, do you think?

I don't need the writing functionality, at all. Just playing.

[Tonepoet]

It depends on what you mean. There is no technical reason a person could not put their own authored 1080p video files on a D.V.D.-R if their only concern was playing back the files on a computer. It's only when we get into the details of what codecs and D.R.M. game consoles and dedicated players support that it starts to matter. There's no reason the industry couldn't put such video files on a pressed D.V.D. either. It is just that they have decided they will not do that as the industry standard.

It would not really make sense to put an H.D. file on a D.V.D., because you would run into size constraings pretty quickly. A dual layer D.V.D. can only hold about 9 gigabytes of data, whereas a blu-ray disc uses a finer ultra-violet laser instead of the traditional red laser to read finer grooves. Blu-ray discs are specified to hold at least 25 gigabytes of data. Basically two and a half times as much. Plus you have higher capacity dual and triple layer discs too. You definitely could not store a whole 1080p hour and a half movie on a D.V.D.

Also, professionally authored D.V.Ds. do not contain 480p data. Progressive scan D.V.D. players just try to doctor up a 480i video file by deinterlacing it. Also, said deinterlacing would only happen on the player if you bothered to plug it in via Y/Pb/Pr component video or or H.D.M.I. Yellow composite broadband video signal cables and S-video only support 480i signal transmission. People rarely bothered using anything better than the yellow plug back in the day. Making the mater even sillier is that any television that requires progressive scan and accepts those 480i only inputs will have its own deinterlacer anyway. Progressive scan D.V.D. players are just a total scam.

Anyway, if you have no need to author your own Blu-Ray discs, I would kind of advise against putting a blu-ray drive on your computer.

Hollywood has done a lot to lock down the playback of commercially sold blu-rays on computers, and very little software is sold on optical disc at all these days, so as mentioned before, to play back a commercial Blu-ray, you need special software that costs basically as much as a separate dedicated blu-ray player that can handle the D.R.M. protocols Most of the old stuff was authored back when C.D. and D.V.D. was the only logical option too.

Moreover, even when there are physical editions of game software on discs, they are often kind of useless. They usually require you to download through Steam anyway. If you really want physical ownership of a game, you have to buy it on console, basically.

In consideration of this, a D.V.D. player is a bit cheaper and will play back almost anything you need to have played back.

[_I_]

there is a difference between dvd format and using a dvd-r/rw for storing data

dvd format is only upto 480p, using mpg2 compression, and menus etc..
there are dvd players that use hdmi, but the dvd format is limited to 480p

just throwing files on a dvd-r/rw can be anything in any format that fits on the disc
those may not be readable by the dvd player, some players can play 1080p video files, but not all

same as cd-r, you can put mp3s on cd or anything
but a cd player will not know how to play them

some cd players can play mp3 cds, but they wont be able to play video files or other stuff

[Tonepoet]

Yeah, that's basically what I was trying to get at. Thing is, if we're only talking about P.C. then D.V.D. format doesn't matter. D.V.D. format only matters for other devices that require or make it.

[emoticorpse]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Tonepoet:

Yeah, that's basically what I was trying to get at. Thing is, if we're only talking about P.C. then D.V.D. format doesn't matter. D.V.D. format only matters for other devices that require or make it.

I would think think this thread is focused on legitimate retail movie discs as the source of the media.

As soon as media files comes into the mix, any optical media as a solution makes zero sense when it's quicker to just throw it onto any usb connected device (external ssd, thumb drive) and most modern tvs can even handle them standalone without needing any type of playback device. Also, if we were talking about media files on a pc, then there would again be no need to even bother thinking about a drive because if the source is a media file, then you can just play it back without burning it?

And, I try not to even bring up media files and retail movies (assuming that's what we're talking about here) becauss then it might be treading on a discussion of where the files themselves came from if not from an actual backup made by OP or something and I know Steam doesn't amd shouldn't condone that.

[Masque]

Yeah, I just want to buy movies and series like Stargate SG1.

And just play them.

[Pepe]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Masque:

Yeah, I just want to buy movies and series like Stargate SG1.

And just play them.

Better buy a 4K Blu-ray player or a Console with a 4K Blu-ray player than having a PC solution. It's more future proof in the sense they just work, updates will come for all newer Blu-rays DRMs for much longer than for PC, plus you need to keep a pretty old PC to even make it work in the future.

The DRM on Blu-rays for PC imply having a certain processor with the SGX function (newer Intel processors dropped support of it - most 11th gen and from 12th gen onwards -, I don't know if AMD even supported this ever), you need a Blu-ray player/writer that has DRM enabled for Blu-ray movies, you need to buy premium legit software to be sure all Blu-rays work, like PowerDVD (which I see has gone with an annual subscription based model since version 23), or go the gray area and never be sure you're purchased Blu-ray will work. The whole Blu-ray business, but especially for 4K Blu-rays, is about making sure the Blu-ray consortium controls every aspect of playing these movies, allegedly not to get pirated. I give them credit for it, but it only needs one unscrupulous person with enough determination and knowledge to RIP their movies and share them to the world. Meanwhile, because of the complexity of the DRM, legitimate customers have to pay more for the approved devices and media to see a movie.

For players, I'd pick something from Panasonic or Sony. The more you spend, the more features they will have, mostly hardware output (I wouldn't care about the "smart" features, but your needs might differ). Later Edit: I remembered someone reviewing one player has said that their bought device couldn't run some kind of audio file; if you want to use the Blu-ray player for playing music, the supported files might be something you want to check.

For consoles, these are the ones that have Blu-ray movies support:
- Blu-ray: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
- 4K Blu-ray: Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5

[Tonepoet]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Masque:

Yeah, I just want to buy movies and series like Stargate SG1.

And just play them.

Okay, I misunderstood. I am sorry about that. 'Tis my fault.

Yeah, then D.V.D. is 480i and blu-ray is 1080p. That is not the only difference: Blu-ray also allows the playback of H.264 M.P.E.G. 4 part 2 and VC-1 encoding, in addition to M.P.E.G. 2 and has a higher bit transfer rate.

The end result is that a properly mastered blu-ray can be much higher quality than a D.V.D., not only in terms of signal output resolution, but also color depth and artifacting.

You can see the differnce in color pretty easily in Funimation's Dragonball Z level 1.1 blu-ray trailer, during a momentary split-screen comparison. Colors on D.V.D. tend to look oversaturated and washed out compared to blu-ray, although perhaps the level sets aren't the best comparison, as they seem perhaps a little undersaturated.

Blu-ray drives should be more or less interchangable on P.C.. It is digital data, so no signal degredation or alteration should occur between the drive and your computer. It's not the drive which handles final video output quality: It just reads the file on disc for your computer to handle. That is likely one of the reasons reviewers do not mention it.

I really wouldn't bother with it on P.C. if you just want to play back from disc though. A stand alone player might not decode video quite as well as your P.C. might be able to do, but the difference will likely be negligible, and we are at the point where you can just buy a standalone player for $50[www.walmart.com] if you do not want to buy a game console with disk drive. An internal drive will likely cost you just as much, if not more.

Also, these days there isn't even any digital to analog conversion taking place, so even between standard blu-rays players there is not likely to be a massive difference.

[HypersleepyNaputunia]

yes bd is a pain, its why i stick with dvd. bd is too locked down but it looks better for somethings. btw anime doesnt look any better to me on it than dvd

i just use a ps3 to play disc

[Tonepoet]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Pepe:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Masque:

Yeah, I just want to buy movies and series like Stargate SG1.

And just play them.

Better buy a 4K Blu-ray player or a Console with a 4K Blu-ray player. It's more future proof in the sense they just work, updates will come for all newer Blu-rays DRMs for much longer than for PC, plus you need to keep a pretty old PC to even make it work in the future.

I'm not so sure I can recommend that. Yeah, it is much better quality video than regular blu-ray, but the general public is pretty reluctant to buy a product to use as a standalone video player unless it is a sub-hundred dollar device, and while buying a console can be more economical,, it isn't exactly cheap enough to merit unless you plan on buying console games too. Not only that but 4k blu-rays are also a bit more expensive than blu-ray. You might be spending $40 on a movie, rather than $20.

Price matters. That's part of why D.V.D. is still kicking around.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ocelote12:

To play a Blu-Ray movie on a computer you'll need not only a drive, but also software like this:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914110/CyberLink_PowerDVD_22_Ultra/

Don't buy this kind of thing through Steam, buy it from the makers website.
First off this one is from 2022 and is outdated.

You can also very often find all sorts of discount codes online in order to get such software cheaper.

You can also just use VLC Media Player.

Can also purchase movies online and download them as a H265 encoded AVI/MKV/MP4 file and playback with VLC.

DVD overall are just terrible quality. I can't see why anyone would purchase physical movies anymore.