Full-Size 5.25" USB 3.0 External Blu-ray Burner! (assemble and test) 

They're alright for every now and then, but they're nowhere near the performance or reliability of a full-size drive. As we enter the almost certain sunset of optical media in the home, we may as well do at as well as we can to prepare for the future.

I agree to agree! 😆Most of my laptop slim drives have failed somewhere around 200-300 burns. I've had traditional desktop drives go into the thousands. The huge performance difference is what surprised me. I knew the full size drives were faster, but I didn't appreciate how much. As far as USB vs. SATA, it doesn't seem to matter. USB 3.0+ has heaps of bandwidth. In an episode coming some day you'll see a ripping tower I assembled that I refer to as "The Nuke". It has 7 drives in it, all connected via a single USB 3.0 output, and it performs shockingly well.

@@TheBrokenTech OK I am looking forward to see that ripping tower. I have had not such good luck when connecting multiple drives to multiple USB ports. Nero Burning ROM did not like that, switching from drive to drive. Not good.

I can't speak particularly to USB burning, but for years and years I ran 3 instances of Nero to burn simultaneously to 3 different SATA DVD burners without any issues at all. The tower I only constructed for ripping, so it may not burn well. I've never tried it. It does rip 2 Blurays + 5 DVDs at once without any issues.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! 👍

Those cases are getting harder and harder to come by. Honestly, no more often than normal people really need an optical drive these days, a full-size external is a fantastic option. You buy it once and as long as there's USB on a machine you have an optical drive ready to go. I'm not sure how much real need of Blu-ray there is for people who don't watch or rip movies to their PC. I'm not sure if much software was released on the format. That said, there's only about a $40 price difference between a DVD burner and a 4K capable Blu-ray burner.

It's been a great combo so far, but I think I prefer the Asus drives these days. They're slightly more expensive, but seem to be a little better at reading more difficult discs.

​@@TheBrokenTechAsus drives ARE LG drives with different faceplate... Best slim drive is BU40N

I heard that the OWC has less internal space than the NexStar, so it doesn't properly fit all 5.25 drives. So I ended up going with the NexStar to be safe. Did you run into that issue at all?

@@DanielIkpeama No, but I measured the length of my optical drive before I purchased the OWC.

Thanks! I'm glad you got everything worked out! Hummm... I'm surprised you managed to get Win 11 installed on older hardware. The last time I looked MS was demanding "TPM 2.0" hardware which I thought was a relatively recent thing on the market. My Dell from a few years back has it, but from 2014-ish doesn't.

@@TheBrokenTech Tons of how to's to create a ISO that bypasses the hardware block for a clean install or modify the Win10 registry like this one. Even Microsoft relaxed a bit recently and has a how to page on how to get past it for older PC evaluation. One of many. Still get security updates as well. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ovgWN6YD2ws.html

@@24hourgmtchannel64 Huh... Good to know! I have a few machines around that I would like to bring into the next generation and it looks like that may be possible after all. Thanks!

Whats is a great burning software? Nero?, Cyberlink?

Funny enough, a slim drive video is the next on the list... I think.

In the long run, I think that will be the better option for you. I think you'll save a few bucks doing it that way too.

It's a solid combo. 👍

You're very welcome. Good luck with it! 👍

It's getting to be a challenge to even find a case with full-size external bays. But... with a bay adapter and a floppy controller, I think you could put a floppy in a new PC..?

@@TheBrokenTech Probably. I bought a pci floppy controller and pcie to pci converter. Hopefully this works. It would be pretty cool

@@genblob It looks like USB floppy adapters are a thing too..?

There are piles of copy protection strategies that were implemented on games. Other than the very obvious utilities that are already out there, I wouldn't really have the first clue how people are archiving them. I quit PC gaming in the 1990s. 😂

Welcome to the circus! 😂

Pioneer locked their firmware down about a year ago and no longer support 4K discs on anything except official hardware/software. I've never heard of a duplication grade LG, but I'd be willing to look into one if you can provide a model number. I have no interest in burning discs, so that's personally not a concern.

I just left mine as a straight-shot like you saw it here and it's been fine. I'm not in and out of it all that often though. Maybe 5 times, total.

There are some very early drives that would do just as yours does. _Never_ flash it. 😆

@@TheBrokenTech nice. I got into plex pretty early, and started ripping my own collection to that. Have only tried using the drive over sata though. It's it slow over usb 3?

@@middle_pickup I speed tested it in the video. 👍 The fastest I've seen a 4K disc rip is about 45mb/sec, with 25-30mb/sec being pretty typical. That's around 2-3x, I think.

@@TheBrokenTech did you test it against a sata connection for comparison?

@@middle_pickup I thought I did, or at least mentioned it, but maybe not? You can always speed test your SATA drive against my results and see how it stacks up? That said, I have had both an LG and ASUS drive in regular use SATA connected to the same machine that was used in the video and I haven't noticed any speed difference between it and USB. In fact, I have 7 drives USB connected in a single tower and the bottleneck is the mechanical hard drive they write to. 😂Around 250-300mb/s and it just can't keep up anymore. I have a SSD scheduled to go in there as a go-between. The theoretical max of the 7 drives is probably around 400mb/s, which is about 65% of what USB 3.0 can support.

That matches my experience as well. They tend to be more durable and faster too.

I would have tried the OWC enclosure as well if I wasn't so pleased with this one. I think the Vantec is just slightly less expensive too. As far as buying them assembled, you never know for sure what drive is going to be inside the case. I always recommend people build their own for that reason.

There's a lot to unpack there since we're talking about things across platforms and formats, locations, and across time. Get ready for an essay! 😆 (I don't expect in-detail responses to posts like this... a round table discussion on the channel on these sorts of topics could be fun someday). -Location: Optical formats will still be popular in the developing world because it will be some time before technology catches up to them, but I wouldn't expect to be able to buy top-tier products in the future like we can today. It will likely dwindle down the cheapest acceptable "thing" and that is what will be on the market worldwide. My views (and what I see anecdotally) are from a western's perspective, so, maybe it's that way everywhere or maybe not. -Quality of disc vs. streaming: There are a lot of variables at play. Speaking broadly I would say that modern streaming exceeds DVD quality pretty easily (my internet connection is capable of supporting a higher bitrate than a typical DVD movie and I'm in the lowest cost tier) and is approaching or exceeding 1080P blu-ray grade. 4K UHD blu-ray quality is still a realm that is really only realistic on disc at the moment. How much any of that matters is up to the viewer and the size of the screen. On a screen up to 50"-ish, the difference between a good standard definition DVD master (de-interlaced for modern screens) and a 4K disc is noticeable, but not stark. On something like my 85" screen it can be pretty dire. Once the pixels get that big, it's nice having 4x more of them to carry the load. Hardware upscaling is a thing too (I think both my TV and UHD player have their own systems for it) and can make a big difference. Even in the days of old with my "regular" HD blu-ray player, the 1080P DVD upscaling could correct all but the worst interlacing and such. The newer technology does what it can to drag the older tech on its back. -Death of optical discs in media: *CD audio: It's pretty much all over including the crying at this point. It has been dead so long that only dinosaurs like me even visit the grave anymore. It's simply not being issued anymore and many artists are now just producing their own music and releasing it digitally themselves, no studios and no factories to make the discs. Plus, many people simply use RU-vid as their jukebox and never pay for anything at all. Beyond that, it's been considered "uncool" for probably 15 years or more to have physical music discs laying around. Despite my love of the format, and the fact that I still buy it, the only time I really spin a CD is to rip to MP3. I still prefer to actually own "something" for my money (and RU-vid audio is an unacceptable source for my preferences), so, that's why I still buy them. I also plan to re-rip them (a monumental project that will be covered on this channel...) to a lossless format at some point. From there forward, they will simply be hundreds of pounds of artwork. *DVD: Almost as bad as CD, but studios are still producing movies so they're still minting the format and operating the factories. Demand in Asia is going to be strong for it for a long time (thanks, in part, to the easy piracy of the format), but westerners have already pretty much abandoned it. I have DVDs that I had to special order, that are still rare today, and I doubt I could get more than a few dollars for them. There's also still a lot of stuff out there that is 4:3 or letterboxed format and I would say most modern audiences wouldn't have any patience for that at all if there was a widescreen version available. I have thousands of DVDs and I haven't gotten a new one in years. Like CDs, they are also considered "uncool"... even by me at this point. 😞 *Blu-ray (1080): Never did see the adoption rate that DVD or VHS did and had the unfortunate timing to come to the market at large just as streaming and HD cable was kicking off. From 2010 forward, DVD sales have dropped by about 10% a year while Blu-ray has only gained about 1% of that loss. *Blu-ray (4K): Always has been an enthusiast format, much like Laserdisc, and will probably live and die the same way. The average viewer cannot tell a difference between 1080 and 4K (no matter what they say... assuming they turn off all of the terrible effects available on 4K TVs that make everything look like a soap opera) unless it's on a pretty big screen or there has been a lot of good HDR work in the 4K master that 1080 doesn't support. 4K is a much bigger deal in the gaming world, which I think is the only reason we've seen the price of 4K screens come down so sharply. -Death of optical on PC: *Hardware: It's indisputable that manufacturers simply aren't prioritizing optical drives in new computers. Laptops have omitted them even as options for 10 years or so and desktops are getting to be about 50/50 with only crappy 9.5mm drives being available. In 2021, I didn't see Dell offer any Inspiron desktop available with with one. That worked to my fortune since I made a video on that topic that has performed very well, but even "very well" by my standard only equaled about 25,000 views so far. Even assuming (rightly) that my video is terrible and badly advertised, even if 10x as many people found it that's still only 250,000. Dell has no doubt sold millions of Inspirons in the same time. With that said, the only market for "good" 5.25" drives is the enthusiast market. We no longer have any manufacturers pulling the cart to advance technology or reduce costs. We're on our own. Around a year ago Pioneer released what is likely to be the most advanced Blu-ray drive ever to be made and the trade publications actually made fun of them for it. Now is the time to buy if you're a buyer because I don't see the hardware improving or becoming more available. The drive I installed in the video has been unchanged since 2016 in regard to features. I will probably pickup one of those Pioneer drives before I hang my spurs up on the topic. *Gaming: It's almost as dead on PC as CDs are in media. If you buy a game on a physical disc, it's just the installation files. Something like Grand Theft Auto 5 (6 DVDs of data) takes hours to install, _then_ downloads 50GB of updates, and afterward doesn't even require the disc in the drive to play. It has always online DRM: no internet = no play. You're actually punished for buying it as a physical edition because you have to plug discs in and out and babysit it the whole time. Plus you had to go to the store to buy it when you could have downloaded it already. When it comes to modern PC gaming, digital is king. 80% of that is the draconian always online DRM, but as soon as consumers accepted it that ship sailed. I still like to own "something" in my hands, but even I have to admit that in the present market physical PC games no longer make sense. You can't sell them used, they take longer to install, and you don't need them after the first day they come home. *Applications: Pretty much the same situation as gaming. Licenses are all administered online and usually the software has mandatory updates that require internet access anyhow. I upgraded editing software recently and the version from 2 years ago appears to be the last that will even have a physical release. Without an internet connection I wasn't even allowed to install it. *Archival: There may actually be a small resurgence here. From what I've read, Covid and work from home has created monumental amounts of data that may be useful for archival without needing to be readily online. Small to medium sized businesses could pretty realistically burn off a few TB of virtual meetings and such to UHD discs and store them away as reference. For that purpose, it's hard to argue with the affordability and longevity of optical discs (if stored correctly and burned properly). *Retrieval: I believe this is the current biggest market, with myself included in that market. People already have a collection of physical assets that they want to retain access to on their new PCs. Despite being the biggest segment, we're still a tiny lot. Most people have either given up on their old data, forgotten it, or copied it off by now. What was once an unthinkable amount of family photos stored on a single CD is now a laughably small amount of data stored on a tiny fraction of a micro SD card. The technology for an average person to be able to retrieve that stuff back from disc has been available affordably for at least a decade. -Death of optical in gaming consoles: I'm positive we're in the final general right now. Sony offering the PS5 with and without optical drive pretty much says all there is to say about it. I haven't experienced the current console generation yet, but even my PS4 behaves _almost_ like a PC in terms of physical media use. It's just an installation disc. BUT... game consoles (at last not yet) don't require always online DRM. My PS4 is happy to play a game forever without an internet connection as long as the disc is still in the drive. I have no idea how the digital only PS5 handles it, but I would imagine if you bought the digital only version you knew what you were getting into. All of that also says nothing of laser rot becoming a known phenomenon in older game systems (the lasers simply dying due to age) and people becoming less confident in the longevity of their collections. That makes physical appear no more secure than digital... and that might well be true. Anyhow... Hope you enjoyed my Ted talk on the death of optical media. 😆 If you're still using it now, you're already in the enthusiast camp so you're best off to invest a few bucks in good hardware while there's still good hardware to buy affordably. Even my lowly industrial grade Laserdisc player, which I'm nearly certain was plucked out of a driver's ed machine when I bought it on eBay almost a decade ago for $50, is now a cool $200. "Good" ones are over a grand... This future will come for 120mm disc players too.

@@TheBrokenTech ." Speaking broadly I would say that modern streaming exceeds DVD quality pretty easily" None that I'm aware of. DVD is over 11Mbs. 1080p on youtube is substantially worse than 480I DVD. Same with netflix, though I don't know what their data rate is. All of the compression necessary to get 1080p down to a reasonable bitrate takes a major toll on the video quality. Bandwidth for the user is not a big deal, but is a huge deal for the providers. They have millions of devices sucking down video. CD is already making a comeback. CD is the best anyone can hear and is physical. Nobody will ever convince me anyone other than a kid even has the potential to tell the difference between "hires audio" and a well mastered CD. Blind testing always shows people cannot tell the difference. CDs are pretty mainstream, though nowhere near the early 2000s peak, but is on the rise. They are sold in most stores selling music, Amazon, Ebay and many other places. They will probably never reach their peak again, but I'm not 100% sure. ALL of streaming, both video and audio has grown up in the "free money" era. This money is already drying up. The crashing of the tech bubble is going to have major impacts we can probably not predict. Most streamed audio is not very good compared with CD. More on par with an FM station. Not terrible, but not great, at least in my experience. As I said, I think this is being driven by cost. Probably only a small fraction of people ever used CDs or DVDs for anything but installing software, which generally doesn't come on optical discs anymore. If you want reliable backups, optical media is the best, IMHO. Flash storage isn't permanent. I still use tapes, both cassettes and VHS, though admittedly my VHS use gets less and less frequent. I still use tapes a lot because I ride a bike for fun and it's just a lot easier to operate it while riding. I can do it all blind. I make up a playlist on youtube (usually) and record it off to compact cassette. Though there has been a minor resurgence, I don't expect it will ever reach compact disc numbers. People have paid an incredible price for all of this convenience. I cannot imagine we are going to have yet another bubble. We've have 3 major bubbles in a single generation. This has never happened anywhere ever before. All kinds of flaky ideas have been funded. Carvana has now lost like 98% of its market cap and is expected to go bankrupt. ALL of the tech companies are being severely affected by this and it's not even close to over. Interest rates are still historically quite low. Some of the more wacky stuff is already dead. How many of these things are going to be pets dot com 2.0?

1x DVD transfer speed, as in the speed at which you watch a movie, is around 1.25mb/s. A 16x drive would top out in a meaningful way to about 12x which is right around 11-ish mb/s (and is pretty much exactly what you saw in the video), so maybe that's where you've found that number? That's not the data rate that you watch though. My internet connection actually can pull around 10 megabytes/second and I'm in the cheap package (with 100mb/sec fiber available). That smokes the very best DVD by a wide margin as far as pure horsepower available. Also, DVDs have their own varying compression from title to title (as does all digital media) so the experience always will depend on how its mastered. Agree to disagree as far as viewing experience on DVD vs. streaming. 1080p RU-vid looks vastly superior to DVD to me. Same with Amazon (I haven't had Netflix in ages). It should since it's had an additional 25 years of compression development to draw from where DVD has stayed right where it started. Some of the quality you're seeing could also be down to whatever your streamer decides to serve you, based on a lot of factors, since streamed media is literally mastered as it's served. I also vaguely seem to remember this coming up before and your comparisons being based around a 15" laptop screen? As regards CDs, I've had the exact opposite experience. I've tried 3 times this year to buy new music on CD and failed all 3. Digital only, or hilariously: vinyl. I also haven't met anyone under 40 who has an actual music collection. I don't mean to say that they aren't out there, but _everyone_ Gex X or older either has or had some sort of collection. I can't think of any of my high school friends that didn't have at least a few dozen CDs or tapes. My millennial/Z associates have essentially none. My Playstation 4 (and all PS4s) has no CD audio playback capability (despite the hardware being able to do it) at all and those came to market 9 years ago. I think most cars gave up their CD players years ago at this point too. I see Amazon does still show some CD changes available, but I haven't seen on in a store in forever. It's simply not something the younger generations seem to really care about. That's the evidence I see around me, so, that's what I've got to work with. 🤷‍♂️ If there's evidence of a resurgence, it's not around me. I'm also not much of a man about town though. 😁 As far as quality, the biggest opponent I know of to CD quality isn't kiddies, it's Neil Young. He's been complaining for years that the algorithm was flawed from the start (and as I recall, he's right... but only Superman could hear it). There are formats that are superior to be sure (SACD for one), but vs. high bit rate MP3 the difference is indiscernible to me and I own an actual room full of fairly competent gear. Even at that point I'm still planning to re-rip to (probably) wav audio just because there really isn't a reason to not go 100% lossless. Music streaming to me is basically good for candy. It's fine to listen to new things, but I still prefer at least CD quality for my main meals. The FM radio analogy is pretty accurate, but I would give the nod to streaming for quality (not via RU-vid... Amazon Music isn't bad). No debate at all there. But... I still believe we're in the minority. Most people have tin ears anyhow. They know really good, or really bad, with the center being where most of them are happy. I envy them. Ehhh... Cost is relative. What I spend on physical media vs. streaming is about the same since I'm buying used stuff most of the time. I know a good few people who drop serious money on multiple steaming services and would actually save money if they went physical. I think it's probably just about as likely to be about convenience and selection than it is anything else. I will already choose to stream something that I own on blu-ray because I'm too lazy to go get it. 😆 There's a lot of debate about optical media being suitable for archival, but my results have been excellent. I think I've had one or two burned discs fail in the last 20 years. My oldest CD-R is from 1995 and is still playable. My Jeep has had the same burned disc in the player since 2010 and it's gone through all of the heat and cold and seasons and everything else for all of that time. Plays fine still. Maybe my day is coming, but I simply haven't had the problems that some people seem to report. These days regular old hard drives are so cheap that I tend to use them for that job (in duplicate) but optical is still a good option for a lot of situations. I have not touched a tape in well over a decade and I 100% do not miss the experience. Since around the iPod era, modern headphones typically have basic playback controls integrated into them and are far easier to use than just about anything else. 90% of the time these days I'm using bluetooth in-canal ear pods paired to my phone. Pause/play, volume up/down, track skip/repeat are done on 3 buttons by my left ear and I carry something like 1500 albums on me at all times. I could never go back. Even if you don't want the phone part of the phone, using it as only a music player is well worth the expense of a cheap one. I determined awhile back the VHS is unwatchable on a modern TV... at least to me. 😆 Laserdisc is just barely tolerable and half of the fun of that format is just the discs themselves, so... it's a treat just to mess with them at all. I do still have my VHS machine, but only because it was so expensive I can't bare to throw it out. I will probably integrate it into a "retro" setup at some point. Of the many bubbles there may be out there in the world, I don't think digital media is one of them. All of the signs that I can read are showing me that physical media is dying. If Amazon or Netflix goes under, someone else will swoop in to take their place. The market is immense and they have spoken. Anyhow, I'm fine with being a relic from days gone by and slotting myself into the enthusiast market. When I think "physical media" I mostly think of my CD collection and I still enjoy owning it on every day but moving day. I remember buying almost all of them and those are usually fond memories. If you're in the same camp, just make sure you're comfortable with your hardware position moving forward and then it won't matter if there's a resurgence or not. There's no doubt that the most capable optical drives ever produced are being made right now and no new optical format as stepped forward in 7 years to out date them. I suspect there won't be as there are already 8K displays, but no 8K physical formats (in fairness, there's very little 8K digital content too).

​@@TheBrokenTech This is simply wrong. A 4.7GB (4,700,000)DVD disc simply divided by 7200 seconds is over 650kB per second or 5,222,222.222.222 bits per second. That's for a 2 hour movie on a 4,700,000 byte disc. Dual layer maxes out higher. Obviously, this is not 10. I'm going by what Google says, so it could be a maximum and not typical. Still higher than youtube. From wikidpedia: "DVD-Video discs have a raw bitrate of 11.08 Mbit/s, with a 1.0 Mbit/s overhead, leaving a payload bitrate of 10.08 Mbit/s. Of this, up to 3.36 Mbit/s can be used for subtitles, a maximum of 10.08 Mbit/s can be split amongst audio and video, and a maximum of 9.80 Mbit/s can be used for video alone." Your speed doesn't matter. AFAIK, nobody is streaming video anywhere near your bandwidth. I'd love to know what DVDs you are watching that they look so bad. The last DVD I watched was a few months ago. I watched a national geographic nature disc. The video blows away youtube at 1080p. I'm watching them both on a 1080 screen. I have gigabit fiber optic service. Everyone who claims they can hear the difference between high res audio and a CD fails a blind test. These are the same people who can tell the difference between using the cables your equipment came with and some ridiculous overpriced gold plated triple wrap marking wank cables. I think vinyl has come back largely for 2 reasons. First is owning a physical media copy of the music. I think this plays a pretty significant role. The second is because vinyl can be as complicated as you want it to be. You can buy 3000 Dollar vacuum cleaners for cleaning the discs, 1000 dollar cartridges. You can spend hours setting them up and leveling them. Trying all kinds of different pre-amps. etc etc etc. There are literally THOUSANDS of youtube videos on these and many more subjects around records. I do think this is the other major drawl of records and why it is nearly 100% men. Good quality optical media is archival. It is flash memory that isn't. Flash is not permanent. For regular use it is good enough and I think the non-permanence of flash is a bit overstated, but I have seen enough failures to know it's not permanent. I can operate my walkman without looking and without stopping. The only thing I have to stop for is to turn over the tape. I can just get an auto-reverse deck for that if I cared. It has large physical buttons and wheels (both for tuning, which I also use it as a radio and volume) I can operate through sweat pants, which is what I usually wear when cycling. The badness of tapes is something else massively overstated. They're not perfect by any means, but they are good enough. A good machine will sound better than most phones playing streamed music. Certainly I agree digital is more convenient. I don't use headphones with integrated controls. "Of the many bubbles there may be out there in the world, I don't think digital media is one of them" SHOCKING. Maybe not digital streaming media specifically, but tech definitely. My main stereo CD player is a Phillips CDI machine from like 1991. I have several others. I have a number of portables too, which I used in cars back in the day with a cassette adapter. But I always thought CD players were not good for portable use like on a bicycle or running. They're just too big. Another reason I like CDs is a lot of people have ditched their CD collection and they are dirt cheap in thrift stores. I've like doubled my CD collection in the last 10 years. I have them all digitized on my hard drive and in my ipod. The streaming I have tried sound like crap to me, even with my old ears that top out at like 12khz and which were never good from the time I was a kid (I used to wear a hearing aid, but I just don't like how they feel and the constant noise in your ear) They are getting ridiculous. There are practical limits to resolution tied to size which is tied to the average living room/family room size.

There are some flaws in the data you're using and the most key of them I think is my fault. You're citing bits and I'm citing bytes. I'll take the blame for that one since I can't remember Mbps vs MBps since it's typically irrelevant in normal life to normal people. Divide your wiki citation by 8 and you get 1.4 megabytes/sec... or pretty much what I said (if there's a parody bit in the standard, then it's exactly what I said). To finish this point, my internet connection pulls 10 *megabytes* per second and is the slowest one available in my area. Everything I said stands true. Just on the basis of horsepower, the cheapest internet connection I can get stomps all over the bandwidth available to a DVD player. It doesn't have a chance. As far as what the streamers are sending, I'm unlikely to attempt to sniff the network to find out, but Amazon claims their top 1080 quality is 6.84gb/hr. That's not up there with what Blu-ray can do, but it's not leaps and bounds different in viewing experience and is far superior to a typical DVD. I have no idea what their maximum 4K data rate is capable of, but I imagine it's up there. So, whether or not the streamers are being honest, they're claiming to be sending a lot more data than a DVD would and that's how it ends up looking to me. It's not actually saying DVD is "so bad". I'm saying it's "so bad" in comparison to things that are 25 years newer technology... because it is. It's objectively true. If I'm honest I don't watch many DVDs at all expressly for that reason. Try that same Nat. Geo. content in streamed HD sometime (even on HD cable). Anyhow, I know for a fact we watch the same videos because I'm the guy that makes some of them. 😁 I have never tried to burn my own content down to DVD, but now I might. It's shot in native 1080 so I have no idea how that will go. If nothing else, interlacing it for a tube TV would drive me nuts on a modern screen without any correction. If you're not compensating for that, I don't know how you put up with it on a modern screen of any size. I'll be the first person to agree with you calling Neil Young (among others) a pompous tool. 😆 But... the truth is that there are standards out there that exceed CD audio. I can't hear it, but they do exist and I believe that to be empirically true. I also think plenty of those high-res releases get really nice remastering jobs done on them, which would likely help their CD counterparts out too. Vinyl is a hobby all of its own for sure. I personally chalk the resurgence up to a bunch of artists that grew up in an era where they couldn't chop and hack actual LPs from their own era the way those before them did. So, they release their own music on vinyl so the void can be filled. DJ culture is as much to credit for it as anything. Personally, I've found that I don't really need that vinyl touch in my life. I have enough things to tweak out on endlessly if I want and I have no talent for creating music. I think the gulf between optical media and flash media is wide enough that there are other technologies that I would chose over both right now. Mechanical hard disks are about as good as it gets as long as you do so in redundancy. You just can't get more space for less money at the moment. Eh... It's the weight of the Walkman, the tapes, and the limited selection that I would never be able to get over in the modern age. I've been carrying an iPod or a phone since 2005 so I could never go back (I'm wondering why you have gone back since you also own an iPod). The sound is secondary to me in that argument and is another place where we will agree to disagree. My Dad has what at the time was the top level Sony ES tape deck and the best quality recording from CD I could make with it wasn't even close to CD quality or streaming. On a scale of 1-10, I'd put CD audio at 10, streaming around an 8, compact cassette at 6-ish. RU-vid audio I'd put around a 7. There's no question there is a tech bubble. I just don't see digital streaming as being a bubble. Netflix already took a 75% devaluation earlier this year, survived it, and is coming up the other side. People very clearly want streaming services. You have a working CDI and you use it to play CD audio? I'd probably try to preserve that guy for gaming as rare as working ones are. Again, laser rot is a thing and it appears that many CD based appliances all have a death clock running. I have an Adcom player in my main setup, but I don't think it's even seen wall power in 10 years. I'm more concerned about being able to access my CDs as data, hence the PC drive situation. Converting a CD to a wav to play it as a lossless file will always be an option for playback all the way down to about a 386 as long as I can access the original data to begin the chain. I only used a Discman for a few years before my vehicles got in-dash CD players. I'm a car audio snob, so, cassette converters would have never been permissible (though they did come in handy in company vehicles + iPod/phone some years later). I agree that they were too bulky to really be active with. Those "Sports" models with belt clips always made me laugh. I never saw anyone actually use one. I'm too lazy to go thrifting, but the iron was quite hot to strike on CDs via Amazon and eBay about 10 years ago. I was buying them for $0.25/ea, plus a buck or two for shipping. Now they're getting up to $5-ish or sometimes $10. I think the supply has dwindled since production has slowed (or likely stopped in many cases). Until the younger Boomers start to move on to the next life, the market might continue to rise. I honestly kinda hope I'm mostly done buying CDs. I really don't want to store many more than what I have and I will likely also inherit my parents collection. I suspect I'm currently around 1500 and that they are as well. That gets to be a lot of plastic to haul around. No such thing as ridiculous when it comes to the size of a man's TV. The proper size is the one that fits in the room and can be paid for. 😆 That said... I'm pretty curious about how I'm ever going to move my 85. Getting it out of the box was sketchy enough. I'm not sure putting it back in there would even go that well. I was hoping to be into a projector by now, but that just wouldn't work where it has to go.

Hummm... Most of my experiences are toward the opposite. I've had generally good luck with LG drives as a whole, but the slimlines tend to die sooner... usually after a few hundred discs (which could be a year or two). I generally attributed their shorter lifespans to the laser mechanism itself taking more abuse since its tray mounted (which is a generally popular opinion). The slimlines are slower, louder, and _more_ expensive ($62 vs $99 comparing two recently purchased bare LGs I acquired). I've also measured my desktop, which I admit is a modern desktop that only has a slimline bay, to run at around 20 watts doing most trivial tasks. The _most_ I could demand out of it is about 125w, and that is with an i7-10700, a basic GPU, a HDD, an SSD, and an optical drive _all_ running as hard as I could make them. My laptops are actually more "power hungry" because they're harder cool, so the fans work harder. 😆 Anyhow... It's no surprise that different people would have different experiences, but those are mine. I'll be comparing the slimline to a fullsize in head's up testing in the future, so they will each have their time to shine. The _one_ thing that presently makes the slimline standout vs. the full-size is that they have different error correction strategies. The full-size drive will attempt its best guess at a read and send that data down stream. The slimline will sit on the same data indefinitely until it's able to confirm accuracy. In concept, I'd rather have the slimline's approach, but in reality it seems that if one drive can't read the data then the other one won't either. So... a distinction without a difference. My evaluation is ongoing, so, we'll see.

@@TheBrokenTech 125W at full load? Man just ramping my cpu up gets me over 300W in my desktop.. I'm kind of jealous lol.

@@AlanDike Don't be too jealous... I'm talking about a box-stock entry level Dell desktop and Dell _cripples_ CPU boost performance to only a few seconds. So in another board I can boost the CPU to 125w indefinitely (as well as the cooling load that would go with that), the Dell firmware only allows it for a few seconds. The CPU fan won't even spin up to full speed. So... with that low power comes sub-par performance as well. That said... I was still shocked by it. It was playing GTAV at a competent, but not great, level, copying data from an optical disc to a hard drive, and rendering a 1080/60 RU-vid video on the SSD all at the same time. 125w was it. Idle power is mind boggling. With just Intel graphics, it would rest at like 15w. I'm positive 5w is just the power LED. 😂

I'm pretty sure it was running on Win11 in the video, so that's not an issue. However... Intel has removed support for *4K* movie Blurays from 11th generation and onward CPUs. They have somewhat decent reasons for doing that and it will, kinda, become the topic of a future video.

I don't know anything about ripping PS3/PS4 games. I'm glad you're happy with your drive though. 👍

It appears that branding may be more popular in European markets. It's a fantastic product in either event, but I have to say the Euro name is way better. 😂

Pioneer has a reputation for making excellent drives, but I don't have any experience with them. Right now I'm pretty fully stocked on drives so I probably won't be adding any more to the collection. So far, my anecdotal evidence suggests that the best drive in my fleet is an ASUS BW-16D1HT. It's supposed to be the same drive as the LG, but for whatever reason it will sometimes read discs that my LGs won't. I now have 2 of the ASUS drive and I'm trying to see if they both share that trait. I have 5 of the LGs (3 4K capable and 2 not) and if one of them won't read a disc, none of the others will either. I'm also testing an LG BU40N, but it's too early to say anything about it.

You're very welcome. That's a deep dive of a question you're asking. The drive linked _will_ read 4K discs for whatever purpose you want _as long as it has the correct firmware._ Making sure you have the right firmware, and whatever software you need to make your copies, is probably beyond the scope of anything I will likely cover on this channel. There are piles of threads on places like Reddit that get into all of that.

OWC also offers one, but I haven't tested it. You may also find that importing one isn't "that" expensive..? I've had to do that with a few things from Amazon UK before.

@@TheBrokenTech I am from Russia so not an option anymore. I think I'll buy the electronics and print my own, a bit hacky but should do it for now.

I've had very good luck with the Vantec adapters if you can find one. It's the only adapter of its type that reliably works with IDE drives too, if you ever need that.

Sure will. 👍

Thanks! I greatly appreciate you watching! 👍 I have several of the style of adapter you're talking about and the only functional down side of them that readily comes to mind is that there's nothing to protect the connectors on the drive, plus the adapters themselves are lever arms on those connectors. So if you ever move the drive a bit the wrong way, or tweak the cord, you could damage your drive. In general, I prefer the approach that I've taken on the channel where the optical drive goes in an enclosure and HDDs go in a dock (see the "Cheap USB Hard Drives" video). This is the more expensive path, but also the more robust option. That said, it's still not perfect. I was careless late one night and turned my HDD dock into a trebuchet and launched the drive in it across the room (see the "Seagate Warranty Experience" video). 🤣 I would have launched it the exact same way with a less robust adapter too, so... 😅 That said... The optical drive enclosure is a *tank*. I have no idea what level of abuse the drive inside it could tolerate, but I'm reasonably sure I could drive a car over the box itself without it taking any considerable damage.

Sounds like a return is in order.

I have a couple of LGs older than that which are still running and too old to flash as well. I'm also confident that Vantec enclosure will be around long after I am as long as the electronics hold out. It's a tank.

@@TheBrokenTech Sure is! Buddy of mine, after seeing mine, went and got a sony? 16x that was a whole packaged thing.. and it's a HEAT monster.. like deforms plastic under the drive hot. Mine seems to max out at 12x vs. 14x.. which is annoying.. BUT I've never made a beer coaster with my ol reliable.. and it's always been dead nuts reliable, regardless of what OS I'm using it with. I'm sure the drive is older than that.. I think I got it in 2016, though it may have been 2017 (bought nero 2016 platinum at the same time)... These drives are old workhorses for sure

@@AlanDike I have a tower with 7 drives in it and I'm surprised by just how much heat the drives make when at full speed. The discs come out hot. Like...Not "Ouch" hot, but hotter than "warm"... and that's just reading them. There's so much aluminum in that Vantec enclosure that it would probably stand up to the heat of a hair dryer _plus_ the drive. It's chunky and old school, but it's a great product. The modern drives with aftermarket firmware can also be unlocked for unlimited speed. I've seen mine pull some pretty crazy read numbers, like 35mb/s. I'm not sure what that comes out to in "X speed", but that's hauling the mail for an optical disc. That's approximately 1 audio CD of data every 20 seconds.

If it's any consolation, that enclosure really is one of the most robust pieces of computer hardware I've ever seen, plus the USB adapter inside it would cost you ~$20 on its own. That makes the bomb-proof box more like $30-ish, which isn't so bad, IMO. Honestly, I'm just happy to be able to buy anything of any quality at all. Normally stuff like that would be made of plastic so thin you could see through it and still be 80% of the price of something good. 😂

​@TheBrokenTech True, I have the same combo and the quality is pretty good. Also slightly cheaper than buying an external drive of the same size. Would be nice though to have a bit more competition in the enclosures market, but then again this is pretty niche market

@@denkt I always expected to try the OWC version, but I'm so pleased with what I have that I just can't be bothered. 😂

She's thicc... 😍

Nero DiscSpeed is available for free from places like CNET and Softpedia. Just be careful what you're clicking on and you should be fine. It doesn't look like Nero offers a direct download link for it anymore.

It's just the stock HP wallpaper.

I was going for Mad Max, but... my technical skills are probably closer to comedy. 😆

Correct. You need specialized software to do that. That's a topic I will probably touch on _briefly_ on the channel in the future. There is _tons_ of information out there about how to do it, but I don't want to upset the RU-vid gods by going into any great detail about it.

@@TheBrokenTech thank you for the info

@@Skankhunt556 You're very welcome. 👍

Yep! Off to the races immediately!

Yep!

@@TheBrokenTech Can all the burners burn 100GB discs or do you need a specific drive for that? I've never used a blu ray burner before.

I think at this point they all can. To be honest, I haven't burned a 4K disc either.

Speed is a massive issue if you're planning do anything but watch a movie with your drive. This is so obvious that I didn't even consider pointing it out in the video. I'd venture that 90% of people that actually want to have an optical drive today, and use it, are archiving their data with them. Nobody is interested in doing that at 1X. So, the answer to "who cares?", is _just about everybody._ They've been marketing drives based on "X" speed for 30 years. I also don't know anyone who is taking long walks on the beach with their optical drive. If you're going to make the investment in ownership, you may as well invest in the better one. That was the entire point I was making. The reason this video exists is because most cases no longer have a bay to even install a drive, not because I'm touting the portability of either option. If you actually do have some specific need for a *portable* optical drive, like you're in-field tech support and somehow you must use one (in 2023..?), then absolutely get the lighter weight, slower, louder, less durable option. That's a use case for such a unique realm of user that I'm sure they wouldn't need my help with the decision. Power has nothing to do with it. A slim drive installed inside a case, with the full power of an ATX supply rail available to it, will still perform the same way. I say that based on the experience of having owned around a dozen of them over the years. They are, generally speaking, about 1/2 the speed of their full-size cousins (and last far less than half as long). I have a slim 4K LG drive that I'm testing right now, installed a desktop, and the results are exactly as expected so far. Noisy, slow, and less robust all for about the same price. Size is all it has going for it. Anyhow... I'm glad you liked taking a look at the enclosure. You'll be pleased to know that I do plan to put that slim 4K LG in a slim enclosure, with its own power supply brick, and demonstrate it on the channel against the exact setup you saw in this video. I'm doing that expressly because I know there are people that simply prefer to have the more compact option. I'm not oblivious to that, but you give up so much in exchange for it that I don't personally feel it's worth it.

@@TheBrokenTech Clearly you misread my intent and my comment meant no disrespect as you seemed to have thought it did. When I mentioned power I was referring to how the "actual power" each unit receives, 5v for the mini and 12v for the external powered drive; and that's huge when it comes to the speed of the drive. Perhaps I missed the point of your video when I said who cares regarding speed. Yes, everyone that's used such a drive knows full well how speed is a huge issues; especially when you noted moving data took 5 min on the external drive and almost 20 min on the mini drive. I've been working with PCs since 1986 and I know full well, when the CD Drive was first introduced, how important speed was. It's likely that when I said speed I was referring to play speed while you where referring to copy speed as it seems both of us are right with regards to which speed each of us meant. No worries, I mean no ill will in my comment, as I'm sure you meant no ill will in your reply. I'm a Capricorn so I speak tactlessly direct and sometimes don't fully explain because I'm too busy using the shortest possible terms; plus I easily get on a rampage and forget where I'm going with my sentence... LOL... No worries Mate, I'm subscribed and look forward to what you get into next... Cheer's...

@@cybercapri It's water under the bridge. 👍 Since we're agreed that read speed does matter, how we go about getting it is now the topic. The voltage issue is a distinction without a difference as regards performance of one drive to the next _within_ a PC. What matters is wattage, and when installed in a desktop, they all have the limit of the power rail to draw from. In that configuration slim drives, in absence of any constraint to be USB compliant, are still radically slower. That said, USB 2.0 power compliance could be a reason why the particular drive in this video was _such_ a bad performer. It could be intentionally crippled by that compliance. The enclosure I've selected for the slim drive trial is wall powered (and I will likely attempt high-power USB powering it as well), so the results should be the same as when internally installed. With all of that said... I do now see this as 3 tiers of performance, which I hadn't deeply thought about before. The bottom tier is of USB 2.0 power reliant drives that are so slow as to not be worth owning outside of occasional, low-demand, use (IMO). That is what I had set out to demonstrate in this video, but I neglected that the 2nd tier of slim, auxiliary powered, drives exist or that they would have appreciably different results. I'll test this drive again versus a slim powered cousin and we'll see what happens.

@@TheBrokenTech I look forward to seeing what you get into next...

Correct.

@@TheBrokenTech Is SGX a requirement? Won't all modern CPUs work? Also, have you made any observations on noise levels? Are these drives relatively quiet for regular playback (assuming one can get that up and running)

@@jackjazzjacket SGX isn't needed for the way we're doing it. Yes, the drives are pretty much silent in 1:1 speed for playback. If you rip some of them can get loud.

@TheBrokenTech Thank you! I paid an arm and a leg for the 4k UHD Lord of the Rings trilogy for my sweetheart one night, thinking I just needed quick fix external reader. Needless to say it's been an absolute journey, in the end made easy with your video. Thank you, thank you!

@@jackjazzjacket Sadly, your journey is not yet over. PC playback is not as straight forward as a set-top player. With something like that box set where some of the attraction is bonus features and such, you may still be disappointed in the end. I'll be discussing this in more detail in the playback video, which I'm just putting the finishing touches on now.

I've never really noticed any particular tray problems with any of my drives... I think, ever? Normally the utilities I use automatically cycle the tray (and kick it open at the end) so I probably never even paid attention to it. Wow... I haven't seen a DLT tape in over 20 years. Even data centers all switched off to DASD some ages ago... it put me out of a job when they did! 😆

I got alot on LTO too but with M-DISC the important stuff is written there as its not susceptible to electro mag pulse, has a 1000 year lige on it etc…. Optical M-Disc is best for archival.

That's a native 4K video and I have to assume it's recorded with HDR enabled, which you have to have a compatible display to yield results from. I have no idea how RU-vid decides to serve that content on down the line, but I wouldn't imagine HDR on its own would make much of a difference in most normal content. It could be that for whatever reason your combination of hardware and that content ends up serving you something you find more appealing. I think on my camera enabling HDR actually reduces the frame rate (I think that's true of that link too as there are no 60fps options... frankly, it looks like it was shot with my exact camera*), so it's a give and take and probably varies in importance depending on other factors. FWIW, that looks like a pretty typical RU-vid video to me. His lighting is good and that certainly helps. Interestingly, it's not showing me the HDR options. Could be since this PC doesn't support it, but it also doesn't support 4K and I am being served those as choices. 🤷‍♂ *This particular video is one of the first filmed with that camera. So... if it makes a difference on your end, time is on your side since my content will be shifting in that direction. I don't presently want to commit to filming in 4K because of the immense resource load required behind it. I also think the ignorant operator, audio setup that I frequently screw up, and my bargain basement lighting are bigger problems as far as quality goes at the moment. But, mostly the ignorance. 😆

@@TheBrokenTech Considering probably a very large fraction of your viewers are watching on a phone with an at best 10" screen, probably don't make a difference anyway. As I said, most videos don't have that. I think the linux tech tips channel used to upload them and the difference was even better on their videos. You could literally see every pore on the person's face, even at 480. It's odd that I am seeing this "HDR" tag and you are not. My hardware is extremely out of date. The integrated video is from like 2007. I gotta get off my butt and get a new PC one of these days. Perhaps you are getting it by default and I only see it on certain videos with something enabled which isn't normally enabled. Like I said, I just thought of you when I saw the video and thought you might be interested. If you like car stuff, Rainman Ray has a decent channel. It's not normally tool testing like that video was. It's usually auto repair.

@@tarstarkusz It makes a difference in what RU-vid is going to want to promote. Higher quality recordings are given preference over lower quality. I've also seen people complain about not getting 4K quality on channels and videos that really, really, don't benefit from it. So... there's a business case for it even if there's no practical case. As for hardware, it's possible that RU-vid doesn't even understand what you have and is serving you a best guess is based on the content available. I couldn't even begin to guess how they vary their compression from person to person based on who knows what factors. It is also possible that maybe there is some setting that I've got flipped or it's incompatible with my browser or whatever. Hopefully soonish I'll get a 4K capable machine rigged to the 4K capable screen and then I can tinker. I appreciate that you did think of me. 👍

@@TheBrokenTech I'm much pickier with audio. It is easy to do bad audio. At least 20% of youtubers have flat out bad audio. But video, to me, once you have decent lighting and angles and shots that make sense, unless the video is flat out bad, you hit a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly. Though I am no film critic, I think most video problems on youtube are made behind the camera or with the camera's settings, not with the resolution. A lot of youtubers get too hung up on video quality and not "shooting quality" or "content quality." You (general, not YOU) can shoot in 4k, but it will never make up for poor shots or shooting with the light source behind the subject or some other basic mistake.

Audio is the first thing that will make someone click off of a video for sure. My audio is actually pretty good, IMO, when I remember to turn it on. 😆 It's easy to forget that when professionals do this there is a director, camera guy, sound guy, grips, etc, etc and I'm just a bumbling idiot. It's impressive that any of us make anything useful at all.

Everything looks good on my end. Perhaps a reboot and/or reboot of your internet services would help?

@@TheBrokenTech Thanks for looking into thi and the quick reply :) I already tried the rebooting part, even different systems. I think I have to call my internet provider. Probably a problem on their end then.

@@Waldherz That's a weird problem for sure. Mostly in that it's only _this_ video you can't get to load across multiple systems. It could also be a RU-vid network glitch in your market. Perhaps it will solve itself if left alone for a bit? Or... perhaps you've angered Lord Humungus? 😆

@@TheBrokenTech Hm, RU-vid told me that it must be a problem with my hardware (which it isnt) and closed the tickets. I guess Im going to download every video I want to watch now :/ Thanks for the suggestions though. Im back to doing research for my long term disc player setups.

@@Waldherz Well, for whatever it's worth, the setup in the video (you can't watch) is working pretty well from a hardware perspective. 🤣 The enclosure has been great: amzn.to/3uBvxNB The drive shown works well: amzn.to/3FIif8s But if I had to do it over again I'd probably go with this Asus drive as I have one of them as well and it seems to read troubled discs a bit better: amzn.to/3Ohv9x3 Also... Home Theater PC is about to become a pretty large topic on the channel. Hopefully you'll be able to view those videos. 😅

If you're talking about running SATA data and power out of a desktop through an open slot cover or something... I don't recommend that. A proper eSATA setup would be the least acceptable option, but would be as expensive and less versatile than USB. Never mind that laptop users simply couldn't do it. If we're talking about connecting via SATA-to-USB, I have about 10 of that style of adapter (the Vantec CB-ISA225-U3 is a great product too). They're fine, but they don't do anything to protect the connections or the drive itself. If you bump it in operation there's a good chance that you're going to get data corruption. Or worse, should you mishandle it while assembled, you can break the connections off of the drive. The purpose of this video was to show people something that will be durable, high performance, and long lasting so they'll be prepared for the day when you won't be able to buy this hardware anymore. The $30-$40 price difference between a USB adapter vs. the enclosure is money well spent. If the budget is too tight for that, then it's probably too tight for Blu-ray (and certainly 4K) as well. An inexpensive USB DVD drive (also shown in the video) is probably a better fit for those users and a better place to save money.