USB 3.0 work on external blu ray drive?

TheKazeTrigger

TheKazeTrigger

Completely Average High School Student
I was just wondering if I buy a external blu ray drive for my desktop (Dell Optiplex 9010 all in one) will it work?
It has two usb 3.0 ports.
I want to start buying anime in blu ray format more regularly in the future.
 
Depends on what you plan to do.

If you want to just play the disc you will require legal blu-ray software (which isn't free)/VLC which requires alot of setup of codec keys, or you will need to rip the blu-rays then play the files you get from ripping them.
 
Sadly playing back BDs on a desktop is not as easy as DVDs, but it is doable. There is a lot of cryptographic trickery going on and some mechanisms to make it not consumer friendly (e.g. inserting newer BDs can revoke certificates of the (legal) player you use, making all you're BDs unplayable until you update the player).

A lot of people use software to handle the decryption and rip the contents to disk so they can play it any time with any video player that supports the content. This does require quite a bit of storage and sort of negates the benefits of physical media IMHO. Also, if I'm not mistaken, ripping, even for private use, is illegal in the UK (?)

Another option is to acquire the specific key that belongs to a BD. Quite a few keys can be found on the internet, but there are methods for extracting these keys yourself. Again, I'm not sure on the legality in the UK, but in theory it's just a big number that is also present on your BD (although encrypted) and is not really circumventing DRM as it simply speeds up the process by skipping a few steps (IANAL).

Personally, I use the second option as I simply want to pop in a disk and play it on my Raspberry Pi, which is connected to my TV. There is just something really nice about switching disks while binge watching a show. :)

If you do plan on buying a BD drive, there are a couple of things to watch out for:
  • If you plan on ripping, try to find a drive that does not have a rip lock
  • If you plan on playing back using keys, try to find a drive that does not support bus encryption (as that will require a valid host certificate, which are not as easy to get by)
  • When buying an external drive, make sure the power supply is sufficient (especially when ripping), preferably not powered via USB.
  • For normal playback USB2 suffices as it can easily handle the bitrate of a BD.
 
Coincidence? I got a BD-ROM yesterday... This one

NB: Works fine with USB2

I have DVD Passkey installed from when they gave version 8 away a while back, and that handles the decryption of the Blu-rays. Rather than headaching over keys, and configuring playback software, (I haven't the slightest idea of how to do it with VLC, although I read the instructions online like 10 times) it's more convenient to get something like Passkey or AnyDVD installed. The version of Passkey I got stopped being supported last August, no more new keys, but playing around yesterday, it still managed to decrypt four titles that have been released since last August.

It really depends what you want it for. I can understand if you want the convenience of a media server, ripping all the discs to hard drive to stream to your TV, or if you're screencapping, capturing video, or want to use it to circumvent region coding. Or if you don't have an HD TV.But the cost of a BD-ROM plus a licence for AnyDVD/Passkey will probably be more than buying a chipped player from Multimedia Magic, or getting a cheapish Region B player, and importing a cheapish Region A player.
 
Well, doesn't the current disc standard sound like a royal mess! Proprietary software and transient credentials galore. (Heaven knows whether Linux playback will be conceivable...)
 
Zin5ki said:
Well, doesn't the current disc standard sound like a royal mess! Proprietary software and transient credentials galore. (Heaven knows whether Linux playback will be conceivable...)
Click to expand...
You can say that again! I only like the higher bitrate, capacity and scratch resistance of BDs, everything else is just to give the consumer a hard time trying to play the discs they've bought: AACS, BD+, StreetLock, Cinavia, BusEncryption, etc...
Just the thought that popping in a newer disk could prevent you from playing your existing collection is the worst.

On a slightly brighter note, most anime BDs (from what I can see) don't employ all those fancy DRM measures (yet).
Therefore, playback on Linux is fully possible if you have the right codecs and the right keys for your discs. Though, menu support can be very wonky.

It is that I like tinkering with stuff like this, otherwise I would have opted for a proper BD player (or two, for different regions).
 
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