Question about blu-ray copying and equipment

[The Burning Man]

Hi, all. After years of backing up my dvd movie collection I am finally considering doing the same with my blu-ray collection. Just a few questions for you experienced lads. I currently have a Mac 10.7.5 and a PC XP with 150 GB hard drive. First question:

Is my PC too out of date for copying blu-rays?

Will AnyDVDHD do a full, non-compressed copy of a BD if I have a dual layer 50 GB blank or a 25 GB blank if the movie is small?

Will ANyDVDHD, BD rebuilder and IMG Burn work with a MAC.

I ask about the uncompressed version because I can't see any reason to back up a blu-ray and be watching a reduced quality compressed image. Sort of defeats the purpose of having blu-ray.

I appreciate any feedback for a blu-ray burning newbie.
The Burning Man

[Ai Haibara]

I'd want to know more about your PC before I could make a judgment like that. Using XP doesn't rule it out, however... but just to be on the safe side, you might want to buy a larger (and hopefully faster ) hard drive.

The only way AnyDVD, BD Rebuilder, and Imgburn will work on the Mac is through dual-booting to Windows. Well, that's not entirely true; you might be able to get away with using Imgburn through one of the Wine-based solutions, Parallels, etc. - but frankly, I'd much rather run them on a Windows system than try to get them working through Wine.

[jman98]

If you want to rip BluRay discs on an XP PC, then you need to install the free UDFReader program on your XP box. Click on the word UDFReader in my first sentence and you'll be taken to a place to download it. XP does not understand the BluRay file system format and you may have problems if you don't install this software. It's really better to deal with BluRay under Vista or later, but you could do it under XP.

Many people are pretty happy with compressed BluRay files. I think BDRebuilder does a very good job. But if you want to burn to BD-R DL media, that's OK. I do want to warn you that some BluRay players have on and off playback issues with BD-R DL discs. They might work fine today, not work at all or have a lot of problems tomorrow, and then work fine the day after that on the player.

[Ai Haibara]

I should also note that the DVDFab people do, in fact, have an OS X version of their DVDFab HD Decrypter, so that might be an option. I haven't tried it, though, so I don't know how well it works (I don't have a BD drive... and only have a riplocked Superdrive on my Mac, so I don't usually do much ripping on my Mac ).

[The Burning Man]

Hi, Ai. I have a non-name brand custom built PC from a local computer shop. It has an ASUS P4P800-E motherboard, Intel Pentium 4 processor 3.20 GHz, Nero 6, 150 GB hard drive, 1 GB ram, Windows XP, Sapphire VGA card, in other words an ancient computer by today's standards. Gotta be at least a decade old. Might be time to upgrade.


It sorta sounds like blu-ray back ups haven't reached the ease and popularity of dvd's yet.

Also, jman98, does the same problem occur with BD+R DL media?

[usually_quiet]

It sorta sounds like blu-ray back ups haven't reached the ease and popularity of dvd's yet.

I'd say that is true. Blu-Ray drives and blank media are more expensive than DVD drives and blank DVD media, so not as many people have them. Also, Blu-ray copy protection is harder to remove than the copy protection used for DVDs, and there are not as many programs available that can remove it.

There is even a relatively new form of copy protection method, Cinavia, which causes Blu-ray players to stop audio playback after 20 minutes if the disc is a copy, not the original. Blu-Ray players made in the past year are required to obey it, and firmware updates for some older players adds Cinavia compliance. Not every Blu-Ray movie uses Cinavia, but the last I heard, there is only a partial solution available for getting around it.