Need BluRay drive recommendation

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Hi folks. I saw the tools on our sticky. I am so WOWed and very impressed of the tools you guys made. I actually would like to try it. However, I don't have a drive. Which guys do you recommend? Is there something that I can buy at NewEgg? Please let me know if I posted in the correct category.

Thanks,

Neil

EDIT:

I would like to go with Blu Ray. I will buy a Blu Ray player this coming Thanksgiving. I would like to make backup copies of the bluray movies that I will be buying in the future. Rather than playing the disc on the player everytime, I want to use my htpc to play them. That means, I would like to seek your recommendation of a bluray drive that can be use for backing up. Is there such peripheral and if so, where can I buy them?

Thanks.

[Guest]

(Bump after thread title change and edit.)

[markrb]

I use a PS3, 500gb external HD and Slysoft AnyDVDHD to decrypt my Blu-Ray discs so I can watch them on my HTPC. I use the Xbox 360 HD-DVD attached to my PC via USB for HD-DVD's.

I looked around and couldn't find a PC based Blu-Ray drive that was less then $500. Pioneer is suppose to be releasing a $300 Blu-Ray read only drive soon.

I figured that with the PS3 at $500 I could also play games, if I wished, and it would hold it's value for resale better then any PC only drive when I wanted to sell it.

I found all the info and software I needed to use the PS3 as a Blu-Ray backup device here and at ps3news.com and except for AnyDVD HD it's all free.

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD you will want to play off the local HD of your HTPC instead of trying to stream over a network. I stream DVD all the time from my server without issue, but the HD formats prove to much for my Gigabit network. I will copy the entire file locally then play it.

Mark

[v1rtu0s1ty]

I use a PS3, 500gb external HD and Slysoft AnyDVDHD to decrypt my Blu-Ray discs so I can watch them on my HTPC. I use the Xbox 360 HD-DVD attached to my PC via USB for HD-DVD's.

I looked around and couldn't find a PC based Blu-Ray drive that was less then $500. Pioneer is suppose to be releasing a $300 Blu-Ray read only drive soon.

I figured that with the PS3 at $500 I could also play games, if I wished, and it would hold it's value for resale better then any PC only drive when I wanted to sell it.

I found all the info and software I needed to use the PS3 as a Blu-Ray backup device here and at ps3news.com and except for AnyDVD HD it's all free.

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD you will want to play off the local HD of your HTPC instead of trying to stream over a network. I stream DVD all the time from my server without issue, but the HD formats prove to much for my Gigabit network. I will copy the entire file locally then play it.

Mark

That's a really good idea. I need to save more money. Based from what you said, you installed Slysoft AnyDVDHD on the PS3, correct? How is it done? Or do you remove the bluray drive on the PS3 and hook it up to your pc?

Thanks again Mark!

[Galileo2000]

That's a really good idea. I need to save more money. Based from what you said, you installed Slysoft AnyDVDHD on the PS3, correct? How is it done? Or do you remove the bluray drive on the PS3 and hook it up to your pc?

Thanks again Mark!

It's more complicated than that.

No, AnyDVD HD cannot be installed on PS3.

No, bluray drive is not removed.

You need the software called Swiss Army Knife (SAK) http://www.ps3-hacks.com/file/18
to rip BD and then send it to your PC over the network.

Then you can mount it with Daemon Tools and use AnyDVD HD to play it with PowerDVD or use some of the doom9 tools to rip it to the HDD and play it with PowerDVD using "Play movie from the hard drive" option. Or you can burn an .ISO out of the ripped files, this time without AACS, mount it with Daemon Tools and play w/PDVD.

[v1rtu0s1ty]

It's more complicated than that.

No, AnyDVD HD cannot be installed on PS3.

No, bluray drive is not removed.

You need the software called Swiss Army Knife (SAK) http://www.ps3-hacks.com/file/18
to rip BD and then send it to your PC over the network.

Then you can mount it with Daemon Tools and use AnyDVD HD to play it with PowerDVD or use some of the doom9 tools to rip it to the HDD and play it with PowerDVD using "Play movie from the hard drive" option. Or you can burn an .ISO out of the ripped files, this time without AACS, mount it with Daemon Tools and play w/PDVD.

This helps a lot! :D I have use daemontools and it's a cool tool. I can mount iso IIRC. Thanks for the other link too!

[snipper_cr]

Do you still have to worry about your DVD software downressing the images or are you getting full resolution?

When you say you stream DVDs over networks... how do you do that? I know HD content would be too much but for regular DVDs... what would you use?

[Galileo2000]

Do you still have to worry about your DVD software downressing the images or are you getting full resolution?

When you say you stream DVDs over networks... how do you do that? I know HD content would be too much but for regular DVDs... what would you use?

- no. I believe PDVD 7.3 plays full resolution.

- network is used to transfer .ISO files to the PC HDD, not to play them over the network. And those files need to be joined with "copy /b" command.

And if your question is about playing HD content over the network, it can be done easily, presuming you have a functional Gigabyte Ethernet network. Not from PS3, but from another PC HDD on your network.

There is a thread in this forum regarding PS3 and BD decryption.

[markrb]

I find it much easier to just install Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3. There is no need to use copy /b that way as long as you have an external drive that you can reformat. What you need to do is:

1. Install Linux on PS3 (I use Yellowdog, see ps3news.com for info).
2. Format USB hard drive to ext3 file format using partition magic or other.
3. Do a linux disc dump on the PS3 to create an ISO image on the external USB drive.
4. Install AnyDVD HD to PC
5. Install free ext3 file format driver on PC http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/
6. Mount USB drive to PC and Mount ISO in Daemon Tools.
7. Use ImgBurn to create a new ISO from the decrypted drive.
8. Mount new ISO in Daemon tools and play.

If you wanted I believe you could switch from the full Linux install to SAK with the external drive still in EXT3 format.

I use a server and mount my files from that for all regular video, but I have had occasional issues with HD content. That is why I prefer to copy the whole file locally.

Mark

[JetJock_fl]

If you wanted I believe you could switch from the full Linux install to SAK with the external drive still in EXT3 format.

Mark

I don't think the SAK EXT3 solution works at this time. Many people are getting a "No Such directory or file" when SAK tries

dd mnt/dev/sdf/BluRay.iso

Someone said it might be because SAK has a kernel that does not support EXT3. I'm not sure if that's true or not. But it does see the directory and the reports the correct size.

If anyone knows a way around this it would be great, otherwise I may just take SAK off and reinstall LINUX.

[HyRax1]

Old thread, but I myself use an LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo drive that I picked up new for only AUD$150. Peanuts.

I'm using the modified GGC-H20L firmware that removes the player authentication process and I use Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (64-bit) combined with DumpHD, BDVMDebugger and AACSKeys to decrypt and rip the title including BD+ removal and I am limited only to what processing keys AACSKeys has, so the only titles I can't decrypt (yet) are those newer protected titles (such as The Dark Knight at this time of writing) until new processing keys are discovered.

I then use a combo of MEncoder, MPlayer, MP4Box and MKVMerge to extract the video and audio tracks, compress the video into x264 and roll them all back into a 4-6GB Matroska file for playback on my MythTV box - near-zero video quality loss (you'd have to look bloody hard to see any artefacts - and no quality loss in the audio department since I don't compress that).

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Hi HyRax1,

Thank you so much for the suggestion. I'm so happy that finally, I bought a stand alone bluray player last week. It's a Pioneer BDP-320. However, I'm thinking of returning it since sometimes it freezes. Then getting Oppo BDP-83 instead.

Anyways, I have a new problem and I still need a bluray drive. My kids can't watch the bluray movie I bought in our minivan. The built-in movie player is only capable of playing DVDs. The bluray drive you recommended is no longer being sold in Newegg. Can someone please recommend what bluray drive I need that will allow me to copy my bluray?

Thanks.

[880]

All blu-ray drives can rip blu-rays. It's the software that does the hard work. To convert to DVD, you'd use another software package after ripping (but it will save you time if you just buy the DVD).

[v1rtu0s1ty]

All blu-ray drives can rip blu-rays. It's the software that does the hard work. To convert to DVD, you'd use another software package after ripping (but it will save you time if you just buy the DVD).

I was given a list back then but all the 4 bd drives are no longer being sold(discontinued). Are you saying that I can just get anything in newegg and it should work? What about the authentication? I remember that the drive has to be patched to bypass authentication.

[880]

Are you saying that I can just get anything in newegg and it should work? What about the authentication?.

Yes. AnyDVD HD has (and will almost always have) the authentication key. DumpHD and AACSkeys also have one. In case they don't work, you can use DumpVID to sniff out a disc's key from PowerDVD.

So a patched drive is a convenience; you only need a patched drive if you're on a non-Windows operating system and the current authentication key does not work.