External BR Drive question

[kevinbellamy]

So, for the past 4 years I have been using my HP desktop as my region-free DVD/BR Player. I use a combination of DVDFab Passkey 9 and Cyberlink PowerDVD 16 with no major playback issues.

I will be relocating shortly to a much smaller home and instead of lugging my huge monitor and 20lb tower with me, I figured it would make more sense to cop a laptop. Well, I started looking online earlier for laptops and much to my surprise, a lot of companies are... er... have ditched optical drives!? This is news to me.

I guess my question or really my concern is, will an external BR drive offer the same quality, speed, overall performance if connected via USB compared to internal drives connected directly to the motherboard?
Maybe that's a silly question. I dunno seeing I have no real experience with external drives minus.

- I only intend on using the drive for video playback. No ripping.
- DVD upscaling is important also.

[rdodolak]

I noticed the same recently, but some of the business laptops and some of the 17" consumer laptops still have optical drives available. However, you'll be fine with USB 2.0 or above.

[Supermartyoh]

Its the notebooks with the celeron processors and lower that are ditching the optical drives for size and cost reasons.

I wouldn't recommend a Laptop for your application as from my experience they tend to overheat and the internals aren't as reliable as a dedicated desktop. Unless you get a known reliable brand and good specs (3.0 ghz and above, 8gigs of ram, etc.), you should be alright, but IDK what you're budget is so that would be a factor in getting a really good laptop that would be kinda $$$, or a desktop thats would end up cheaper being more reliable and having better innards.

I'm using a cheap BD drive (USB 3.0 but i'm 2.0 because my win 7s aren't 3.0) off Amazon I got 4 years ago and it's still going fine. However, regardless of budget for that try to find one (weather brand name or not) that has good reviews and you'll be set!

[kevinbellamy]

Thanks for all the info.

[TheLaughingMann]

Originally Posted by kevinbellamy

Thanks for all the info.

If you do get any external Blu-Ray readers, keep the cardinal rule in mind:

If the USB cable has 2 plugs on it, you may want to use both plugs to run it.

[IndieBlue]

Originally Posted by Supermartyoh

I wouldn't recommend a Laptop for your application as from my experience they tend to overheat and the internals aren't as reliable as a dedicated desktop.

I second that. Dust has been my problem. No matter how much I spray it out, there is more.

@kevinbellamy
If you haven't bought an external drive already, I would recommend reusing the old one. I converted my old blu-ray drive to an external one by buying a "USB 3.0 to SATA" adapter. It worked well for me and is a lot cheaper.

[kevinbellamy]

Originally Posted by IndieBlue

I second that. Dust has been my problem. No matter how much I spray it out, there is more.

@kevinbellamy
If you haven't bought an external drive already, I would recommend reusing the old one. I converted my old blu-ray drive to an external one by buying a "USB 3.0 to SATA" adapter. It worked well for me and is a lot cheaper.

I just purchased a new desktop and its without a BR player so I'll prob try the above method. Any particular brand/model recommendations?

[AdamWestFan]

If you don't mind me asking, can anyone recommend a good reasonably priced external blu-ray drive for burning blu-ray discs? I'm getting tired of going through dvd's so fast while I'm capturing old home movies. Any help would be appreciated.

[TripleHBK]

Originally Posted by AdamWestFan

If you don't mind me asking, can anyone recommend a good reasonably priced external blu-ray drive for burning blu-ray discs? I'm getting tired of going through dvd's so fast while I'm capturing old home movies. Any help would be appreciated.

I've used this exact drive for nearly 5 years now and have been very happy with it. Use it with Imgburn and you shouldn't have any issues. It's only a 2x burner, but I can burn a BD50 in around an hour and a BD25 in around 35 minutes or less.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SE-50...s=samsung+bd-r

[AdamWestFan]

Thanks for the help! You guy's rock!

[kevinbellamy]

Update

I ordered the following USB to SATA adapter.
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Convert.../dp/B005B3VO24

Im content with the price. Works great. More importantly I didnt have to buy a new external DVD/BR drive