Interesting to see that demand for optical drives is increasing, although apparently it’s only in Japan: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/optical-drive-demand-surges-amid-windows-10-retirement-japanese-users-switching-to-windows-11-are-buying-up-blu-ray-drives
Still, hopefully that means Bluray writers stay on the market for a bit longer.
What’s the use case? I haven’t had an optical drive for all least 10 years and can’t say that I’ve missed it. Not even once, I think.
Backing up Blu-rays and watching them on your device.
Unlike with music, you can’t buy DRM-free Blu-ray quality movies outside of Blu-ray. If you stream a show or movie, even if you have “bought”, you don’t own it.
You can torrent blu rays. And if you already own the disc, it’s probably even legal. Maybe.
Someone has to rip it in the first place.
I prefer to rip my own, as well as CD’s and DVD’s I already own. I also do a lot with retro hardware that doesn’t always have a USB port.
BluRays are also fairly decent for offline, offsite backups, though writable media is getting expensive.
Retro gaming and media rips.
You can literally pop a ps2 game and just play with pcsx2, don’t even have to rip it. Given the recent pushes towards “you’ll own nothing and fuck you if you don’t like it” it isn’t surprising to me that a company is offering a path back to media ownership.
Based on the specs for the machine, that’s the goal as well. I wouldn’t consider a 16 GB kit sufficient for much else than a media/web machine anymore, and that’s the default on the advertised rig
One of the good things about emulating is not having to manage a bunch of discs.
Also, you still own media whether it’s on a disc or a disk. Laypeople think having media they can ‘see’ matters, but it really doesn’t.
You should read the EULAs you sign when you Buy digital media.
If it isn’t on a physical device that someone can’t take away, you don’t own it, and even then you still have DRM in the way of you and the data you bought and paid for. That’s why game consoles are being sold without disc trays, and why services like game pass are being pushed so hard. The writing has been on the wall for years, and ubisoft’s director even said it out loud.
Emulation from backup file still requires somebody rip the game, and if you download that you’re stuck in a legal gray area, even if you own a physical copy of the game. For some, that’s a dealbreaker.
I don’t care what EULAs or the law says.
Then my comment wasn’t for you 😊
I have several use cases, a big one being that it gives me an alternate storage medium for backing up home photos and videos. Obviously there’s caveats on how long BD-Rs last (although M-discs should outlast me) and the issue of needing a player in future, but it gives me more peace of mind knowing that I can backup these sorts of things to different storage types (external hard drives are all well and good until they’re corrupted by power issues or user error, or you want to keep a copy at a relative’s place and it’s a multi-hour trip… with optical media you can just keep adding discs to the offsite backup as needed and update the external HDD less frequently).
The other major use case I have has already been mentioned - backing up Blurays that I’ve bought (or, in the case of a few shows I like, being able to compare the DVD vs Bluray frame by frame).
I use M-DISC (not all blu-rays are M-DISC) for backing up important documents.
I have a PC USB Blu-ray drive, and bought a backup one last year just in case this one dies.
There are rumors that the last two makers of consumer computer blu-ray drives have ceased production. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the actual reason sales have surged in Japan, as physical media is still quite popular there.
That’s quite possible, unfortunately…
Blue-ray drive? Wild.
Smart. Kids are really hyping physical media again, akin to when 80’s kids brought vinyl back in the 2000’s.
Or the 90’s kids who buy vinyl today
Does it run Linux?
Why wouldn’t it?
unsupported hardware, firmware bugs
Sometimes they use the oddest hardware in such a machine for which only windows drivers exist, at least for the moment. Hardware shops manage to fuck this up especially with wifi cards.
I had the same question
Intel core i3? …
Do you use Blu-rays tho?
My parents would always say Blu-rays are waste of money and they just rent some ordinary DVD from the store instead.
Try watching a regular DVD on a modern OLED TV and I think you’ll understand.
I want it.
I guess it’s a little more compact to make it internal, but I’d think that an external USB drive would be a much better option, not compete for space in the laptop. I mean, people can’t be using the thing all the time.
considers
Though there was a point in the past when laptop vendors would design the laptop to support a secondary battery in the optical drive bay if you didn’t want an internal optical drive, and that would be something I’d like. That’s the only way you can exceed the 100Wh maximum on flights, if the battery is a spare removeable, not built-in.
I think I rembember modding my Macbook Pro to remove the optical drive and add a second SSD, an eternity ago.
