Thoughts on replacing internal bluray or getting external

[KnightRid]

Title says it all. My bluray crapped out on my laptop, Dell XPS 1645 (this thing is like 10 years old and still runs awesome with the i7 in it), and am wondering if I should try to disassemble the whole thing - http://www.insidemylaptop.com/disassemb ... dvd-drive/ - yea its crazy, or else just buy an external.

I am worried the external would be too slow on usb 2.0...??? but other than that it doesn't matter. I have an esata and firewire connector on it also so esata would be fastest I am thinking.

Only other thing that concerns me is the bulk of having a separate drive to lug around (I say lug but it probably is really light).

There you have it, give me your thoughts and even suggestions on which drive I should get.

I was ripping my movies to my NAS but ran into the problem of not going to have enough room (10.7tb usable out of 5 3tb red drives using 1 as parity) so I was playing with converting them to mp4/mkv/h265 and got so frustrated I stopped, hence the reason a drive is still nice to have in the laptop Any suggestions on great settings to convert the full dvd and bluray down in size but keep the best quality would also be helpful!

[bubba]

Doubt 2.0 will be fast enough. If you use Cyberlink for your burning software you would get the "haven't received a response from the drive blah blah blah" error, still burns, but takes for dam ever.

as for conversion..

I rip everything with AnyDVD to the disk, then convert with Handbrake to M4V. Plays on all the devices we have in the house (PS4, Android, PC, Raspberry Pi running OpenElec)

Now some things I rip the BR disk to high profile and it spits out a 4GBish file. I don't need it because the biggest screen I have is 36" so I mainly rip to the Handbrake default of "Normal" and get a 1GBish file. WAY better than the 25+GB of a BR disk or 4+GB of the DVD. I only rip the main movie. I don't need the extras and all that crap anyway. If I want to watch that I'll dig the disk out, and its very rare I want to watch the extras or commentary crap.

[KnightRid]

Doubt 2.0 will be fast enough. If you use Cyberlink for your burning software you would get the "haven't received a response from the drive blah blah blah" error, still burns, but takes for dam ever.

as for conversion..

I rip everything with AnyDVD to the disk, then convert with Handbrake to M4V. Plays on all the devices we have in the house (PS4, Android, PC, Raspberry Pi running OpenElec)

Now some things I rip the BR disk to high profile and it spits out a 4GBish file. I don't need it because the biggest screen I have is 36" so I mainly rip to the Handbrake default of "Normal" and get a 1GBish file. WAY better than the 25+GB of a BR disk or 4+GB of the DVD. I only rip the main movie. I don't need the extras and all that crap anyway. If I want to watch that I'll dig the disk out, and its very rare I want to watch the extras or commentary crap.

Ok, I dont really need a burner just a player so I may be ok....

You don't change any settings at all with handbrake? I would use the high profile myself to watch on the 50" plasma. I also just rip the main movie as I hardly (if ever) listen or watch the extras.

One of the main things I am concerned with are the black areas not having that blocky effect and looking washed out/faded. I hate that in movies that are converted. I have actually downloaded some from the internet for discs I have and then tried to convert my own discs to compare and mine always look worse LOL

[bubba]

Yup, run the stock "normal" profile. Good all around file size for all devices. That and I don't have a massive TV so the files look fine. Hell 95% of the time its running on a second monitor while I work on main monitor. Daughter watches everything on her tablet, the boy on his TV/PC/Phone.. largest screen being a Vizio 36" LCD TV.

[KnightRid]

Cool, thanx Bubba