What's the 411 on Blu-ray?

The last console I owned was a PS2 haha.

The PS3 seems like a good deal at <$200 used.

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That’s what I’ve been getting stuck on is 4k. The TV can do it, but I’ve been watching shitty 720p pirated garbage for my entire life so it seems unnecessary. And yet. . .

This is the kind of stuff that kills me, these standards seem so nebulous from my un-initiated perspective.

Good video, thanks :+1:

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4K on it’s own is pretty meh, if you have a large display like a projector or large TV with a wide FoV then maybe the difference over 1080 will be noticeable but in general it’s not worth it. HDR is the big advantage to UHD and when it’s done well, on a display which has enough contrast to pull it off then it can be really impressive.

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Uhd is decent. Hdr is primary case for it. As many uhd movies are actually 2k. Like marvel ones are 2k up scaled to 4K.

With that said. Uhd Blu-ray’s are rippable using makemkv. Though I’m not going to get into specifics. Google is your friend.

Non uhd Blu-ray’s rip without issue with makemkv. Or you can stream to vlc.

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I ended up ordering a Blu-ray drive to make a digital backup of my discs, my tv has an Nvidia shield built in so hosting a Plex server on my PC looks like it should be a simple solution. Kinda wish I could avoid making an account to host media locally, maybe I’ll find something else later on.

I chose this method partly because the $70 I paid for same day delivery of this drive was the cheapest option to get the moving pictures from that disc into my tv. Also, the thought of falling into the rabbit hole of comparing all the feature combinations I think I need / cost of different devices makes me sad and I don’t want to do it.

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Are you making uhd backups or non uhd? If non any drive will work. If uhd you need a uhd friendly drive.

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This first one is non-uhd, but I made sure to pick a uhd-friendly drive that I can update the firmware on later.

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The only blu-ray player that matters is the one you can rip your movies with.

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wanna share you drive (s) for the class?
and [edit: the rest of the message might have been seen to encourage rule breaking behavior]

Google found.

    ASUS BW-16D1HT

    ASUS BC-12D2HT

    LG WH14NS40

    LG WH16NS40

    LG BH16NS55

    LG BH16NS50

    LG BH16NS40

    LG BH14NS58

    LG BH14NS50

I personally have the 16D1HT and WH14NS40

It requires flashing modifed firmware to the drives that back dates it to previously usable firmware. As the companies making these drives have updated the out of the box firmware to not permit uhd reading.

This is a near complete guide on hosting your own server for media consumption.

Here is one that has nothing to do with proprietary software (plex). Instead it is based on jellyfin.

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use Emby (or Jellyfin) instead of Plex.

I think it’s pointless here getting hung up on the merits or otherwise of 4K. You said you need a player to play a (presumably) specific blu ray disc at home.

You didn’t say if that was Blu Ray or 4K Blu Ray. You implied that it was a standard blu ray, but you linked a 4K Blu Ray player. These are as different from eachother as Blu Ray is from DVD. I’m asking because if you need to play a 4K disk, it’s important that you get a 4K drive. If you have a standard 1080p blu ray disk, though, you probably don’t want to spend a load more extra money on something you don’t need.

If you put a 1080p Blu Ray in a 4K Blu Ray drive it will be like playing a DVD in a blu ray player. It won’t actually make it 4K or HDR. It might (but probably won’t) apply a sharpening filter.

It’s not a case of “oh well I can’t see the difference, so I don’t need the 4K anyway. I’ll just put this 4K Blu Ray in a normal blu ray drive and watch it in HD”; if you try that it will not play at all.

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@Argone The WH14NS40 is the drive I picked up.

Thanks for the links, looks like there is going to be more to this than I thought (like always!)

@Zedicus I’ll look into both, thanks. Plex seems great but seems to have way more features than I plan on ever using.

@cakeisamadeupdrug My disc is a 1080p Blu-ray (Batman Beyond complete series). The only reason I was thinking about 4k was because my TV is capable of it.

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I would get a 4K player iff you intend on getting other disks to play on it in future. If not save some money and just get a bog standard 1080p player. Either way the output will only be 1080p from that disk.

The big advantage of Libredrives is direct reading, which can bypass region locks in some cases. Previously you had to rely on firmware hacks to revert the region lock fuse, but I believe Libredrive direct reading is different.

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Only worthwhile [devoted] Blu-ray player, would be them region-free builds

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Region free isn’t without hassle though, they’re specially programmed firmwares that change the boot firmware with specific remote presses because they have the boot firmware for all 3 regions in the machine. (I know LG modified ones work this way)

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