Help Bluray to Nexus 7

[Rhyan]

Hi,

This is more about the Bluray hardware than anything else (I already use DVD Fab and Handbrake to get DVDs to my Nexus 7, and I'm fairly certain the same process will work with Blurays once I can read the discs on my PC).

Does anyone have any recommendations for a Bluray drive for my PC? Are they much of a muchness (I'm not looking to write to Blurays), or are there certain manufacturers or models I should head towards or avoid?

Thanks,

Rhyan

 

[breadnatty08]

Rhyan, you're looking for a physical Blu-Ray drive for your PC?
If so, I can get your thread moved to the appropriate spot.

 

[Rhyan]

Rhyan, you're looking for a physical Blu-Ray drive for your PC?
If so, I can get your thread moved to the appropriate spot.

Yep....much appreciated. Wasn't quite sure where to start the thread.

Rhyan

 

[zoxxo]

Bluray drives can be picked up for under $100. Your biggest obstacle will be the specs of the machine that you intend to rip the movies. It has to be multi-core and the more cores and the more memory the better. Your also looking at WinVista or Win7.

I picked up an LG Bluray burner for around $50 and dropped it into an old WinXp machine. The drive reads DVD's fine, but because of the age of the hardware and OS, ripping Bluerays is pretty much out of the question...

 

[Rhyan]

I completely forgot I started this thread!

For those who are interested, I ended up getting on of these and it works a treat. I ended up going for a USB drive so that I could connect it either to my laptop or desktop.

Have decrypted several Blurays without a problem using DVDFab (it's also enabled me to rip some of my more tempremental DVDs, too).

Rhyan

 

[sparksd]

I completely forgot I started this thread!

For those who are interested, I ended up getting on of these and it works a treat. I ended up going for a USB drive so that I could connect it either to my laptop or desktop.

Have decrypted several Blurays without a problem using DVDFab (it's also enabled me to rip some of my more tempremental DVDs, too).

Rhyan

Are you using DVDFab Blu-Ray Ripper for this? If so, what settings are you using and how large are the generated conversion files?

Dave

 

[Rhyan]

Are you using DVDFab Blu-Ray Ripper for this? If so, what settings are you using and how large are the generated conversion files?

Dave

I use the free parts of DVDFab, so it's the HDDecrypter, I think. It may even have been the Bluray copy section (as it allows you 30 days' free trial before defaulting to HDDecrypter) - I'll check again tonight, as it's been a couple of weeks since I've used it.

I tend to set it decrypt the main movie only at BD9(1080p). I'm not creating back-up copies of my discs, as I just want to convert them to mp4 so that I can watch them on my Nexus 7. I can't say I check how big the directory ends up being, as I delete it after converting to mp4 using Handbrake.

However, I decrypted Prince of Persia (main movie only) the other day at BD50 (highest quality) as a test, and the directory ended up being somwhere in the region of 20Gb(!).

If I get some time, I'll see if I can run some tests to compare sizes of the different settings and will let you know.

Rhyan

 

[sparksd]

Thanks. I was curious about the size of the final MP4. I have done some conversion of standard DVDs and played with different settings such that the final MP4 runs from 1.2 to 4.2GB and what I'm finding is that the increased resolutions, etc does not make a great deal of difference on the 7" N7 screen (at least to my eyes) and I have wondered about the knee in the curve on quality vs size.

 

[Rhyan]

Well, I had a go at decrypting my Bluray version of Batman Begins (just the main film) using DVDFab. I decrypted using the BD50, BD25, BD9 and BD5 settings (all at 1080p).

I then converted using Handbrake's "Android High" setting.

The directories created by DVDFab were roughly the following sizes:
BD50 - ~17.7Gb
BD25 - ~17.7Gb
BD9 - ~7Gb
BD5 - ~4Gb

The resulting MP4s were as follows:
BD50 - ~688Mb
BD25 - ~688Mb
BD9 - ~673Mb
BD5 - ~625Mb

Randomly chosing scenes in the film (e.g. when he's checking out the Tumbler for the first time) I can't say there was any noticable drop in quality going down from BD50 to BD9 on my Nexus 7. There was a noticable drop in quality dropping to BD5, though. It wasn't terrible, just not as clean (edges were fuzzier; no pixelation, though).

I suspect the BD50 and BD25 are identical, since the main film comes in under 25Gb anyway (i.e. the maximum size for the BD25 setting).

One thing to note is that, if you're running the free version of DVDFab (i.e. the HDDecrypter module only), it will only allow you to decrypt Blurays at BD50. Only in the 30-day trial or fully paid versions of the Bluray Copy module will allow you to change the settings for decryption. To be honest, that's not too much of a bind for me (running the free version), as it took forever and a day to decrypt at BD9 and BD5 on my core2 duo machines (desktop and laptop) at home, and I never keep the purely decrypted files that DVDFab exports. I only use them to convert to MP4 and then delete them.

I hope that helps.

Rhyan