Ahoy everybody. Lately I was thinking about buying Blu-Rays to actually own the media that I enjoy watching. I need some recommendations for player/ripper hardware so I can both backup make a backup and also share what I’ll get with you guys.

Let me know of something good and preferably cheap that I can get in the EU. Thanks, guys :)

  • Banzai51@midwest.socialEnglish
    10·
    6 days ago

    MakeMKV for ripping it. You can either buy it or use it free by going to the forums and getting the monthly reg key.

    If you then want to reencode, Handbrake. I’ve given up on reencoding my personal collection and bought a couple of large hard drives. But to make sharing easier, might want to reencode to x265 or AV1 to manage the file size.

    Also might want to consider a libre drive. It is a Blu-ray/UHD drive that has custom firmware which region unlocks it and helps the ripping process. You can find reputable sellers in the MakeMKV forums.

  • FBJimmy@lemmus.orgEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    I started trying to do this a while back and hit a bit of a brick wall… Key takeaways:

    • You can just rip the video as-is, retaining quality, but at the expense of file size - BluRay uses quite light compression so you’re looking at potentially 40GB per 1080p film.
    • So then you think “okay, I’ll re-encode it using a modern algorithm, maybe x265 or AV1”… Massive rabit hole! To get a good quality re-encode you need to have a lot of time on your hands. You can do it quickly (e.g. an hour) using a GPU but the results will be terrible. Good results take not just many hours to encode on a high end consumer CPU, but also often several iterations of this to get right. Some things (animation, new digital films) are manageable with some default settings, but anything that was originally filmed on real film and has noise is extremely difficult to get right.

    In the end I reverted to finding a copy someone else had encoded if possible, or for rarer stuff I now just have a fat wallet full of the original disks.

    • Hyacin (He/Him)@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      In the end I reverted to finding a copy someone else had encoded if possible

      This. If I own the media already - their backup, my backup, makes no difference, I’m legally entitled to it (in my country at least.)

    • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      you’re looking at potentially 40GB per 1080p film.

      Yeah, the largest movie I have right now is my remux of the 4K transfer of Lawrence of Arabia, clocking in at 97.3GB. So many 40-80GB remuxes though. Funny enough, the 1080p remux of LotR RotK extended edition punches way above its weight in file size just because of the length, it’s 44.6GB itself. This is all hevc but again just remuxed not reencoded.