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Is there a good external Blu-Ray Drive?

petvas said:
That's not entirely correct. a Full HD 1080p movie is about 50GB. You can download a max of 6,1MB/sec which makes 21,9GB/hour. You would need about 2 and a half hours to download a Full HD movie
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The average Blu-ray movie (sans extras) is about 20 gb in size. But still, only an hour would be nice. I doubt 50 mbps is coming anytime soon (e.g., next 2 years).

kastenbrust said:
Its fairly obvious as soon as theyre available for commercial download, people like Axxo are going to find numerous ways around the DRM, just like with the old iTunes music.
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I know of no one who has successfully and consistently stripped Fair Play from Apple videos.
 
25Gin about 7 hours for a 1.5 hour movie.
So to buffer 15minutes of movie you would need to start the download about 60 miunutes before starting the movie.

For every minute of movie it is about 4.2 minutes of download time without any stoppage or delay.
 
I was talking about a full Blu-Ray movie (m2ts format)

Most Blu-Ray films are bigger than 30GB and the best in terms of pic quality are 40-50GB in size...20GB are only older movies or movies with no good picture quality.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Now these download times... what format are we talking about?

Are we talking about MPEG-2 or something like MP4?
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Once bluray is compress what is the point, it will be like watchig cable TV.

hiow would 7.1 or 8.1 audio work?

Compress to transmit, uncompress in preparation for play back then compress as appropriate for the particular format and transmit that to the decoder.
Yikes, well maybe such delays would elimate lips sync issues.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Now these download times... what format are we talking about? Are we talking about MPEG-2 or something like MP4?
Click to expand...

The older movies' video are mostly in MPEG-2, but the newer movies are almost always in VC-1 or AVC (H.264). All come with at least Dolby Digital, True-HD, DTS, DTS-HD or LCPM, and have multiple languages and subtitles. I'm sure that if Apple were to start serving up 1080p content you'd likely only get AVC with Dolby Digital AC3 (no True-HD) and maybe captions wrapped in an MPEG-4 container. I've found that transcodes from Blu-ray m2ts files at 14 mbps bit rate the video quality is excellent, but at 12 mbps there is noticeable blocking.

petvas said:
I was talking about a full Blu-Ray movie (m2ts format). Most Blu-Ray films are bigger than 30GB and the best in terms of pic quality are 40-50GB in size...20GB are only older movies or movies with no good picture quality.
Click to expand...

That's not true. Those m2ts files that are over 30 gb are usually encoded in MPEG-2 (poor compression) and have multiple uncompressed audio tracks (i.e., True-HD, DTS-HD) in multiple languages that dramatically inflate the m2ts file size. You wouldn't see all those audio tracks in consumer downloads since they will be localized for the country of distribution (for most nations).

Most of the Blu-ray videos I have are new releases and if encoded in AVC they are quite small. Of course, they're all in m2ts containers, but the new titles almost always have AVC or VC-1 encoded videos. What kills the file size is the inclusion of True-HD and DTS-HD, and the additional language tracks. Attached are some of mine (m2ts) that have only been remuxed (video) or had the English AC3 or DTS cores extracted from True-HD or DTS-HD, respectively. No reencoding at all. You can see their files sizes range quite a bit and I only have three that are larger than 30 gb. Most are around 18 gb and the average is about 20 gb. The m4v files are Blu-ray rips transcoded with Handbrake into MPEG-4 containers at 1080p with AC3 DD.
 

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Cave Man said:
I see no difference between a transcoded Blu-ray at 14 mbps and the original Blu-ray disc on my 1080p system.



AC3 and DTS can already do 7.1.
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Sorry but the HD audio blows away AC3 and DTS hands down.
The imaging across the front is noticably better with the HD formats. The center channel is better utilized. The transition betwen dailog and music tracks smoother with less volume changes.
Channel blending front to rear, side to front to side, front to rear is far more defined than the older formats provide.

But then again, how many users will be looking for and expecting higher performance as stated. Probably on a very small percentage.

Bluray without HD audio is like ZR1 with single exhaust. you have the looks but not the sound
 
Cave Man said:
Excuse me, but can you point out where I said compressed audio was better than uncompressed audio? :rolleyes:
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Sorry did not mean to imply that.

Not having the HD audio, to me at the very least, isn't worth a rip of a movie.

I tend to get a little passionate on the audio side of things, sorry.
 
Since no ones actually bothered to answer the guys original question yet, I use the LG BE06 Blu-ray writer - very happy with it and I think decent value for money.

LG-BE06-external-Blu-ray-burner.aspx


I think its pretty nifty, and here it is running under Vista on my MBP:
IMG_5918.jpg


And if you want to author blu-ray discs in MacOS the only program I know that can at the moment is Adobe Encore CS4 - you just can't play it back again! :p

EDIT: Oh yes and you have to use AnyDVD if you want to watch on an external monitor like this one to cut out the HDCP crap.
 
northernmunky said:
Do you know something I don't?

I havent tried to create a blu-ray in Encore yet, but as far as I know if I wanted to check my burned disk I'd have to fire up the PS3 or [heaven forbid] boot up into Windows so I can see it?

Will VLC play a homemade blu-ray?
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Oh! :rolleyes:

OS X won't PLAY the disks, but it will MOUNT them... When you said "view your disks", I thought you meant on the Desktop. :D
 
Cave Man said:
The older movies' video are mostly in MPEG-2, but the newer movies are almost always in VC-1 or AVC (H.264). All come with at least Dolby Digital, True-HD, DTS, DTS-HD or LCPM, and have multiple languages and subtitles. I'm sure that if Apple were to start serving up 1080p content you'd likely only get AVC with Dolby Digital AC3 (no True-HD) and maybe captions wrapped in an MPEG-4 container. I've found that transcodes from Blu-ray m2ts files at 14 mbps bit rate the video quality is excellent, but at 12 mbps there is noticeable blocking.



That's not true. Those m2ts files that are over 30 gb are usually encoded in MPEG-2 (poor compression) and have multiple uncompressed audio tracks (i.e., True-HD, DTS-HD) in multiple languages that dramatically inflate the m2ts file size. You wouldn't see all those audio tracks in consumer downloads since they will be localized for the country of distribution (for most nations).

Most of the Blu-ray videos I have are new releases and if encoded in AVC they are quite small. Of course, they're all in m2ts containers, but the new titles almost always have AVC or VC-1 encoded videos. What kills the file size is the inclusion of True-HD and DTS-HD, and the additional language tracks. Attached are some of mine (m2ts) that have only been remuxed (video) or had the English AC3 or DTS cores extracted from True-HD or DTS-HD, respectively. No reencoding at all. You can see their files sizes range quite a bit and I only have three that are larger than 30 gb. Most are around 18 gb and the average is about 20 gb. The m4v files are Blu-ray rips transcoded with Handbrake into MPEG-4 containers at 1080p with AC3 DD.
Click to expand...

How do you demux them and how do you extract the tracks you want? What about subtitles? I don't think there is a tool that can do that on Mac OS X...
 
Cave Man said:
The older movies' video are mostly in MPEG-2, but the newer movies are almost always in VC-1 or AVC (H.264). All come with at least Dolby Digital, True-HD, DTS, DTS-HD or LCPM, and have multiple languages and subtitles. I'm sure that if Apple were to start serving up 1080p content you'd likely only get AVC with Dolby Digital AC3 (no True-HD) and maybe captions wrapped in an MPEG-4 container. I've found that transcodes from Blu-ray m2ts files at 14 mbps bit rate the video quality is excellent, but at 12 mbps there is noticeable blocking.



That's not true. Those m2ts files that are over 30 gb are usually encoded in MPEG-2 (poor compression) and have multiple uncompressed audio tracks (i.e., True-HD, DTS-HD) in multiple languages that dramatically inflate the m2ts file size. You wouldn't see all those audio tracks in consumer downloads since they will be localized for the country of distribution (for most nations).

Most of the Blu-ray videos I have are new releases and if encoded in AVC they are quite small. Of course, they're all in m2ts containers, but the new titles almost always have AVC or VC-1 encoded videos. What kills the file size is the inclusion of True-HD and DTS-HD, and the additional language tracks. Attached are some of mine (m2ts) that have only been remuxed (video) or had the English AC3 or DTS cores extracted from True-HD or DTS-HD, respectively. No reencoding at all. You can see their files sizes range quite a bit and I only have three that are larger than 30 gb. Most are around 18 gb and the average is about 20 gb. The m4v files are Blu-ray rips transcoded with Handbrake into MPEG-4 containers at 1080p with AC3 DD.
Click to expand...
How do u rip a bluray with handbrake? i didnt think u could.
 
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