Can someone help me choose an external bluray drive??

[64met]

Big time confused with all the options out there.... But, all I simply need/want is an external Blu Ray drive that allows me to rip bluray drives to my hard drive on my pc. Don't need it to watch movies. Any suggestions? Thank you!

 

[uafan4life]

Well, this one's a bit tricky.

As for the hardware recommendation, I'd go with this:
Newegg.com - ASUS 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 5X DVD-RAM 8X DVD-ROM 24X CD-R 16X CD-RW 24X CD-ROM 2MB Cache USB 2.0 External BD Combo Model SBC-06D1S-U/DBLU
It's Asus, which means the quality is excellent, and it's $89.99 with a $20 mail-in-rebate and $3.99 shipping, so it's a good deal as well.

However, you stated that you want a drive that will let you rip BluRay discs to your pc. By this I assume you mean movies. No commercially available, unmodified drive is going to allow you to do this. Technically, it's a copyright violation and possibly illegal. While you are allowed to make backup cop(ies) of the movies you own, breaking the encryption on the disc to make the backup is a copyright violation. It makes no sense whatsoever, but that's the way it is. You're allowed by copyright laws to own a backup, but the process of making the backup is illegal.

Note: I may very well be going on outdated information and may be somewhat incorrect. I am sure someone will correct me if that's the case.

Now, any BluRay drive can be used to rip BluRay discs. You will, however, need a piece of software on your pc to break the encryption. The best piece out there is, in my opinion, AnyDVD. You can purchase this software online. However, using it in the U.S. to make backup copies of DVD and/or BluRay movies is both a violation of the software's license agreement as well as a violation of copyright law. It's very much a use-at-your-own-risk endeavor. If you only make copies of movies you own for personal use, such as backups or personal viewing, then you are unlikely to suffer any consequences from copying these movies. I do this myself, putting the images on my home server, so that I can stream them to any of the PC's or TV's in my house without having to load a disc in wherever I want to watch it. It also reduces wear and tear on the actual discs.

However if, for some reason, you were to get sued for copyright violations and you had made copies of movies you did not own - such as friends' movies or rentals - then you could face a serious fine. You could face a fine for simply making backup copies of your own movies, but that isn't usually worth the movie Nazi's trouble.



Hope that helps.

 

[64met]

Yes, it does help. Thank you! RTR