Best Blu Ray external player?

[Djrippey]

Hi Guys! I've followed your advice for the last couple of years in ripping all of my DVD's into digital files which I now can watch on my Apple TV. Now I'd like to upgrade to Blu Ray and 3d Blu Ray. My question is, what would be the best blu ray external reader for me to use? Does it need to be a reader/writer? Or just a reader?
I also know that you can use handbrake and for blu rays you need to use makeMKV, but I'm wondering how big the files usually are on average and whether or not ripping 3d Blu Rays to digital is even worth it. Is there any Quality lost during the compression process? I'm planning on getting a large 3DTV this year and I'm wondering how all that will work. Thanks for any advice and help you can give.

 

[scottycs]

...delete

 

[priitv8]

There's nothing to write home about 3D support on OS X. At least yet.
So IMHO ripping BD3D-s in 3D is just waste of time. Unless you plan to burn your rips back to BD-R again or share them on piratebay.

 

[McGiord]

Best is a relative term.

In my case the best one was:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack_max

The size of the final file will depend on the level of compression you choose.

 

[mpantone]

Since I never intended on watching Blu-ray discs on my computer -- just ripping them -- for me "Best" meant "Cheap."

I ended up with this sub $40 drive from Amazon.com. It works fine.

As McGiord says, the file size depends on the compression level. How much compression is noticeable? You'll have to assess this yourself.

Some people are bothered by screen artifacts with minimal compression. Others could watch a Blu-ray and say it doesn't look any better than DVD. This was a rather frequent comment when Blu-ray (and HD-DVD) discs first emerged on the market, so clearly some folks have non-discriminating eyesight. But hey, some people like eating at McDonald's. Go figure.

After a fair amount of experimenting with compression and watching the resulting files on different screens (home TV, computer monitor, iPhone, iPad), I have concluded that I can live with 1080p HD Blu-ray footage encoded at a ~2500kbps bitrate. This results in files that are about 1.1GB per hour. I think that's a reasonable balance between image quality and file size since I occasionally put these movies on my iPad and I don't really care to encode multiple versions.

 

[Djrippey]

So ripping 3d Blu rays may not be the best answer it sounds like. Maybe I'll just keep them for now. Does the cheap $40 amazon one play the 3d ones? It doesn't look like it. I saw an LG blu ray writer and best buy that played 3d blu rays but it was $150. I was hoping to keep the cost down below or around $100. Anyone know of an external blu ray player for mac that will play 3d Blu Rays that it also good for ripping? I'm probably going to get the amazon one, but if there is one that plays 3d that isn't too expensive, I'll get that one for the future...

 

[blanka]

I got an even cheaper one from ebay (18 pound). It rips 3D off course. I think XBMC can play its 3D files.

 

[priitv8]

I think XBMC can play its 3D files.

Do you mean in 3D?
Every 3D bluray is backwards compatible with 2D. So a regular 2D rip is the same old. Nothing special.
It's the native FullHD 3D picture in MVC (Multi View Coding), that can not be played in 3D on an OS X yet.
Side-by-side and over-under rips are also 2D technically, but afaik there's still no tool to produce them on OS X.