Worth Getting a Blu-Ray ODD?

[marmiteonpizza]

Not a big fan of streaming movies

All personal opinion really =)

 

[15th Warlock]

All personal opinion really =)

You could say that I think for hi def media content nothing will beat optical media though, especially with 4K bluray coming pretty soon, you'll need to stream up to 100GB of data just to get a stream that matches that high degree of fidelity

Nothing wrong with streaming a nice movie while you're away from home and watching it on a tablet or laptop though

 

[RealNeil]

I watch BluRay movies on two Sony BD Players that are connected to TVs. They get updates from Sony over my network for free when they need them.
I have about 25 BD Movies. I only buy the ones that I really like. (lots of visual eye candy) Prices are down, but not low enough to not buy regular movies.

I bought two LiteOn BluRay drives a year or two ago. They're sitting on the shelf collecting dust considering the prices of the software to use them.

 

[The Von Matrices]

Worth it or not depends on how you use your optical drive.

A common decent quality DVD-RW drive can suffice, but if you regularly burn large files, they get to be annoying. As mentioned, if you want to backup some of today's games on disc, it can take several DL DVDs. It reminds me of the days when some games were packed in thick, multi tray jewel cases with several discs you had to load one after the other, such as Far Cry.

I don't look at this as an are they a good player situation because I feel the better software players (MPC-HC) and/or affordable and adequate home theater Blu-ray players, are actually better for that. Aside from burning, all they end up serving as usually is a way to install software from disc.

That said, Blu-ray burners are really coming down in price and I'm tempted to get one. The Pioneer 209BDK is only $55 right now at Newegg, and is one of the best rated. The media though is where it's really getting hard to justify continuing to buy blank discs for a DVD-RW.

Check out these prices. Even if you select the best value on reliable brands, vs comparing same brand, BD wins

TDK 8.5GB DL DVD = 14GB per dollar
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817131081

Verbatim 25GB BD-R 21GB per dollar
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130156

On same brand, DVD really loses big time!

Verbatim 8.5GB DL DVD 6GB per dollar
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130008

This is the real game changer, not just convenience of less discs. 64GB is the new 16GB on USB drives, and Blu-ray is the new standard for storing large files on disc. There's no contest. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827129075

Yes, but you forgot

Samsung 4TB external hard drive 33GB per dollar (and it's re-writable)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152420

Optical discs are are for all intents and purposes obsolete for backups. You can get more data for the same price on a hard drive, and it's rewritable, unlike the optical discs.

The only reason to burn discs anymore is if you want to send data to someone who will never return the medium. How many times does that occur in our lives? I can't remember the last time I burned a disc; if I need to transfer data to a friend I just loan him or her a hard drive, then he copies the data and returns the drive.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

No I didn't forget HDDs, you're just interpreting "backup" differently than I. I was referring to the kind of backing up you do when you accumulate and catalog games, movies, etc. You're backing up is in reality only temporary, because eventually with a rewritable drive you take those files and put them somewhere else, the drive fails, you run out of space for internal drives in your case, or just get fed up with the wires and clutter of external drives.

The potential to fail in itself is a big Achilles heal for any drive. I didn't even touch on the time it takes to sort and access files on a 4TB drive, vs just picking a disc from a cataloged collection. Everyone has their own ways and purposes. There is no one perfect solution for everyone, but anyone that uses drives for storage knows they aren't truly reliable backup.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

On same brand, DVD really loses big time!

Because dual-layer. And don't forget shipping.

BD-R 25GB * 25-spindle / $34.98 = 17.87 GB/USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130156

DVD-R 4.7GB * 100-spindle / $27.99 = 16.79 GB/USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817507005

DVD+R 4.7GB * 100-spindle / $29.98 = 15.68 GB/USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817507003

I always go with DVD+R because there tends to be fewer coasters.


The price goes through the roof with dual layer, doesn't matter if it is DVD or Bluray. For reference:

BD-R DL 50GB * 10-spindle / $42.99 = 11.63 GB/USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130157

DVD+R DL 8.5GB * 20-spindle / $26.99 = 6.30 GB/USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130008


You're right that BD-DVD does trend cheaper for the medium but it is more expensive across the board otherwise. Excepting the film industry, it has been rejected.

 

[D1RTYD1Z619]

external bluray odd ftw. Cbear through amazon.com.

 

[Jetster]

Almost any drive will beat optical media Bluray or DVD in quality, bandwidth and duration of life.

you'll need to stream up to 100GB of data just to get a stream that matches that high degree of fidelity

You do realize that BluRay drive connect to a SATA port? 6GB/s

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Optical discs, as a back-up, are foolish. The arguments are simple:

1) Low price per GB. The sweet spot on HDDs has always been cheaper per GB than an optical media.
2) Better durability. No, just no. I've had burned DVDs last anywhere from a year to three years before they're coasters. Between UV exposure, degredation of the dyes, and sensitivity to moisture you're looking at less durability. The average HDD I've owned lasts 5+ years, with some clocking in at over a decade by this point. If you removed the DOA and within the first 30 days failures I'm looking at 8 years on average, with only a couple of fatalities.
3) Ability to send them off without needing them back. I thought this argument was settled a long time ago. While USB transfer speeds aren't great, you can pick up packs of 16 GB sticks for a few bucks. They travel through the mail without any problem, and all computers have a USB port. While the cost/GB is higher, the durability of a USB drive means you don't have to treat it with kid gloves.


Optical media isn't dead, but it is dying. I can't say I'm too sad, because I really can't say the optical had anything over a good HDD. Discs beat the pants off of magnetic tape drives, but when was the last time you saw one of those for sale? Some companies keep them around for back-ups, but they're a minority and not the rule.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

You're right that BD-DVD does trend cheaper for the medium but it is more expensive across the board otherwise. Excepting the film industry, it has been rejected.

The examples I gave tend to indicate otherwise, and I purposely didn't include BD DL because of the price and failure rate. All one needs to do is buy single layer BDs of a great brand like Verbatim, and suddenly what you're referring to does not apply.

The real crime here is not BD DL pricing, or even failure rate. Clearly there aren't enough people investing in them for price and QC to be good yet. It's the fact that DVD media is priced higher per GB than even the best brand BD single layer, despite still being a more widely used format.

You also really should have indicated what brand and type of BDs you had fail before implying they're problematic in general. Even regular DVD media customers know discs can vary somewhat in quality by brand and type.

And the quality and age of the drive can factor in too. I've had DVD drives that stop writing well before they stop reading, and even one, which was a popular brand and model, that was DOA.

2) Better durability. No, just no. I've had burned DVDs last anywhere from a year to three years before they're coasters. Between UV exposure, degredation of the dyes, and sensitivity to moisture you're looking at less durability.

Yet you as well don't mention brand or type, what drive they were burned with, it's age and condition, etc, or how you stored the discs for that matter. UV exposure? Where were you storing them, on your car dash?

The people that start referring to discs as coasters often don't treat them very well. These are the people that are better off with Steam and HDDs. Just hope that you can predict their failure and do some mega transferring before they die. There's basically only a few things that cause premature disc failure, and what you're describing is def premature. 1) A bad burn from a crappy or aging drive, 2) poor quality media, 3) mistreatment by user.

And external HDDs can be even worse, most compromise speed and quality for price and portability. The other option is multiple 1TB internals or a few 4TB drives. Swapping 1TB drives can be a pain, while the larger capacity ones in general have less reliability, plus you have the potential to lose a HUGE amount of files.

 

[RealNeil]

Yes, the media that you use has a significant effect on the quality of burns.
The quality of the burner has a lot to do with it too.
I like Verbatim and recently tried buying a few 50-Packs of Plextor branded blanks. (since I use Plextor Duplication Grade DVD Burners)
Both brands work well for me. I plan to stick with the Plextor blanks from now on.

I also bought 100 Rosewill blank disks and had no problems with them either.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Yes, the media that you use has a significant effect on the quality of burns.
The quality of the burner has a lot to do with it too.

Even just the media alone, provided your burner isn't on it's last legs, will make quite a difference. Check the first answer to this CNET forum question about the lifespan of consumer grade burned discs, it's enlightening.
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-10149_102-152618/1-27-06-how-long-do-burned-cd-rs-and-cd-rws-last/

On the drives, just know that even if you buy a highly reviewed brand in an affordable price point, they will only last so long. It has mostly to do with how much you burn on them.

 

[Steevo]

I broke down and bought a BR drive for my PC, on sale for $34 from the egg, also as my drive is dying, and really all I want it for is a few movies like LOTR, where the cinematic views will be worth it. Otherwise DVD's are still good enough, movies are watched mostly for the plot and not the half tone difference in shadows some retentive types harp on about.

 

[The Von Matrices]

The examples I gave tend to indicate otherwise, and I purposely didn't include BD DL because of the price and failure rate. All one needs to do is buy single layer BDs of a great brand like Verbatim, and suddenly what you're referring to does not apply.

The real crime here is not BD DL pricing, or even failure rate. Clearly there aren't enough people investing in them for price and QC to be good yet. It's the fact that DVD media is priced higher per GB than even the best brand BD single layer, despite still being a more widely used format.

You also really should have indicated what brand and type of BDs you had fail before implying they're problematic in general. Even regular DVD media customers know discs can vary somewhat in quality by brand and type.

And the quality and age of the drive can factor in too. I've had DVD drives that stop writing well before they stop reading, and even one, which was a popular brand and model, that was DOA.

Yet you as well don't mention brand or type, what drive they were burned with, it's age and condition, etc, or how you stored the discs for that matter. UV exposure? Where were you storing them, on your car dash?

The people that start referring to discs as coasters often don't treat them very well. These are the people that are better off with Steam and HDDs. Just hope that you can predict their failure and do some mega transferring before they die. There's basically only a few things that cause premature disc failure, and what you're describing is def premature. 1) A bad burn from a crappy or aging drive, 2) poor quality media, 3) mistreatment by user.

And external HDDs can be even worse, most compromise speed and quality for price and portability. The other option is multiple 1TB internals or a few 4TB drives. Swapping 1TB drives can be a pain, while the larger capacity ones in general have less reliability, plus you have the potential to lose a HUGE amount of files.

Just to be clear, you are not splitting your risk by burning many discs as opposed to storing data on one hard drive since disc burning is not a set of independent trials. If you use the same burner to write on discs from the same manufacturer produced in the same lot (e.g. a single spindle), it's more likely than not that they will all fail at the same time, which makes the amount of data lost no different than a single hard drive failing.

If you care at all about archiving your data, you need to do regular patrol reads, no matter what the media. I have all my hard drives, primary and backups, set to read their entire disk every week for unrecoverable read errors, and if I encounter any UREs I obtain a new hard drive and restore any lost data from backup. Doing the same with optical discs is much less practical since you have to constantly change out the media, so basically you need to hope that you purchased and burned good discs.

 

[RealNeil]

Even just the media alone, provided your burner isn't on it's last legs, will make quite a difference. Check the first answer to this CNET forum question about the lifespan of consumer grade burned discs, it's enlightening.
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-10149_102-152618/1-27-06-how-long-do-burned-cd-rs-and-cd-rws-last/

On the drives, just know that even if you buy a highly reviewed brand in an affordable price point, they will only last so long. It has mostly to do with how much you burn on them.

It makes sense that the drives will wear out over time. I had some problems with LiteOn burners, but that had to do with the magnet inside being too strong to let the tray eject properly. They wouldn't fix or replace the drives, so I quit using their brand. Until then, I had used them exclusively.
Plextor is more expensive, but the quality is there.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The examples I gave tend to indicate otherwise, and I purposely didn't include BD DL because of the price and failure rate. All one needs to do is buy single layer BDs of a great brand like Verbatim, and suddenly what you're referring to does not apply.

The real crime here is not BD DL pricing, or even failure rate. Clearly there aren't enough people investing in them for price and QC to be good yet. It's the fact that DVD media is priced higher per GB than even the best brand BD single layer, despite still being a more widely used format.

You also really should have indicated what brand and type of BDs you had fail before implying they're problematic in general. Even regular DVD media customers know discs can vary somewhat in quality by brand and type.

And the quality and age of the drive can factor in too. I've had DVD drives that stop writing well before they stop reading, and even one, which was a popular brand and model, that was DOA.

Eh, wot? I said nothing about failure rates. Everything I linked was Verbatim--apples to apples.

Even just the media alone, provided your burner isn't on it's last legs, will make quite a difference. Check the first answer to this CNET forum question about the lifespan of consumer grade burned discs, it's enlightening.
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-10149_102-152618/1-27-06-how-long-do-burned-cd-rs-and-cd-rws-last/

I have CD-Rs that have lasted over a decade with no errors so...seems legit.

Just to be clear, you are not splitting your risk by burning many discs as opposed to storing data on one hard drive since disc burning is not a set of independent trials.

This is true too because hard drives can last just as long, if not longer, than optical medium. Both have a weakness though (dye failing in optical; mechanical failure in HDD).


I think what it boils down to is this:
-RW media is a joke. Use flash or HDD instead.
-Optical media is best for transmitting data on a physical medium and not expecting to see it again. It is most economical to make the data fit the medium: CD cheapest for files under 700 MB, DVD cheapest for files under 4.7 GB, Bluray cheapest for files under 25 GB.
-If you intend to get the physical medium back Flash is best unless you're talking many 100s of GBs, then HDD is best.
-If you're talking about transmitting terabytes of data, HDD is the most economical way to do it if internet isn't an option.

There is still a downside to Bluray that previous mediums (DVD and CD) didn't have and that's the lack of market proliferation. Only the film industry has widely adopted the Bluray medium so for long term data storage, the difficulty of finding replacement drives should weigh heavily on the decision to use it. Hard drive (preferably redundant) or DVD is probably best depending on the amount of data to be stored. I'd be wary of using Bluray because 20 years from now, one might not even be able to buy a Bluray drive but I bet DVD will still be widely available.