External optical drive - suggestions?

[Bitter]

I got a touch of the stupid when I built my new HTPC and forgot to use a case with an optical drive.

Suggestions for a quiet external? I don't mind getting an enclosure and drive separately if that ends up being a better value or lets me make a better end product. I know there's a few crazies on here still using physical media that probably have first hand experience. Slimline or full size isn't a big deal but slimline would fit in the space under the PC case.

Most important to me is that it's quiet.

Blu-ray preferred but those are still a bit pricey.

Budget....uh $100 and down would be great but probably not realistic.

[jaslion]

Keep in mind you cannot 4k bluray on a pc due to drm. Else get a lg or samsung usb one they are perfectly fine and put em on some foam or rubber padding to reduce vibration noise.

[Bitter]

26 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Keep in mind you cannot 4k bluray on a pc due to drm. Else get a lg or samsung usb one they are perfectly fine and put em on some foam or rubber padding to reduce vibration noise.

Oh, I thought that had been 'fixed'?

[jaslion]

39 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Oh, I thought that had been 'fixed'?

So you need cyberlink powerdvd a INTEL 7th gen or newer cpu with a screen that has hdmi 2.0 connect that supports dhcp 2.2 with a active connection to the internet and have intel sgx functional

 

Or you get a lg drive that you flash with a firmware and copy the disc/use vlc with it since the drm is now broken.

 

Or well yarr harr feedledeeday your owned shit

[Bitter]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

So you need cyberlink powerdvd a INTEL 7th gen or newer cpu with a screen that has hdmi 2.0 connect that supports dhcp 2.2 with a active connection to the internet and have intel sgx functional

 

Or you get a lg drive that you flash with a firmware and copy the disc/use vlc with it since the drm is now broken.

 

Or well yarr harr feedledeeday your owned shit

So look for LG, got it

[jaslion]

8 hours ago, Bitter said:

So look for LG, got it

These ones specifically:

WH16NS60

BU40N

WH14NS40

 

Then flash em to go around the drm

[Bitter]

3 hours ago, jaslion said:

These ones specifically:

WH16NS60

BU40N

WH14NS40

 

Then flash em to go around the drm

I found some promising BU40N candidates and a good list of compatible drives once I knew what I was looking for, thanks

[itsfreerealestate]

you seem to be after a drive mainly for playing blu rays back but it's worth mentioning the verbatim mdisc external drives are around the hundred eurodollarpound mark and can write their blu ray mdiscs which have capacities up to 100gb per disc. the discs are readable in normal blu ray drives but use an inorganic (glassy) layer, as opposed to organic dye, which they claim provides somewhere in the region of several hundred years worth of storage integrity in accelerated environmental testing; far beyond magnetic, electronic and typical optical storage media.

On 2/1/2024 at 7:34 PM, Bitter said:

I know there's a few crazies on here still using physical media

it's useful for some things. floppy drives can be handy for storing code, because you can physically move the write protect tab on the side to prevent writes and take it out the drive altogether, so you're less likely to accidentally delete something you've spent weeks or months working on. it's all text anyway so doesn't tend to use up much space.

 

companies like verbatim and sony are still actively developing optical media, particularly for media (m3h m3h m3h) backup; as in, photos and video. e.g. sony has a cartridge based system (petasite[tm]) that's essentially a stack of blu rays inside a protective cartridge. each cartridge holds about 5.5tb and they produce drives with up to 960 bays in them i think, so you can store something like 5.5 pb in the hot swappable array. picrel is one of the cartridges. it's an interesting mid point between single layer storage and holographic; the latter never really took off... yet... i wouldn't be surprised if it reappears for bulk offline storage