Blu Ray drive for Mac Pro (1 Viewer)

[Rodney]

I tried my first UHD disc yesterday. I had to patch the firmware on the external blu-ray drive, a BP60NB10. The only issue I came across was that I had to attach it to a Windows machine to do it (though I read that a virtualized Windows machine would have worked on the Mac). After patching, I re-attached the drive to my Mac and was able to rip Unforgiven. I then moved the file to my Synology/Plex Server, and using Infuse on my AppleTV it came across as 4K (BT.2020 HDR) Woo-hoo!

 

[Nelson Au]

Hi Rodney- that’s great news you got we’re able to make and MKV file from a UHD blu ray! I was thinking the file size must be huge!

Since my drive can read UHD discs, at some point i’ll try it. But it’s good to know you could only do it via Windows. I’ll try it on my to see if it works before going to Windows.

 

[Nelson Au]

Wow, I looked at this thread and realized I started it a year ago. Time flies, especially in a Pandemic. In reviewing the early posts in this thread, I can see I personally made quite a Trek of this effort to learn more about the hardware needed to convert Blu Rays and DVD discs to digital files learned about Plex and Infuse streaming from my computer. I’ve done three complete TV series so far and continue to rip others a bit at a time, I’m really enjoying the ability to bring up a TV show and watch an episode a day. It’s been great during this pandemic and I’ll have to keep it up for more episodes. I’ve been ripping a few more movies too and did my first Criterion title, with the extras too.

Hardware wise, the Pioneer drive is still working fine and I am keeping it going through the Mac via some little work arounds so the drive is continuing to be recognized by the OS. Reviewing this thread reminded me of the side effort to figure out the issues I was having with WiFi, and getting the Apple Airport to send the signal to the other side of the house. I learned about the range issues with wifi and that walls get in the way. . So far, it’s still all working, albeit with some short lag while a file initially loads when in Apple TV using Infuse. It’s not a big deal right now.

Though yesterday I sort of had a short pang of what it might be like to have a drug addiction problem. Late in the afternoon while I was working at my home office desk, I noticed a text message come in on my iPhone that had an odd delay and I then notice my iPhone tell me the WiFi was not working and it asked me if I wanted to use cellular. Upon checking the PC and the desktop Macs, both could not get on the Internet. I had a short amount of panic thinking, if the Internet isn’t working, how will Plex still work and could I stream something later in the evening! So that had me thinking, does Plex need access to the internet to work. I had not considered that before. Luckily a few minutes later, the Internet was back. There must have been some short interruption from the ISP or the modem had a hiccup. I figured Plex needs to see the title information from the internet databases so it can display the right artwork and titles.

So far this has been a great fun experience and journey and I greatly appreciate all the members who posted here to help me and share in our experiences. Thank You!

 

[Rodney]

But it’s good to know you could only do it via Windows. I’ll try it on my to see if it works before going to Windows.

To be clear, I only had to use a Windows machine to apply a firmware patch on the UHD drive itself. I did the actual rip with MAKEMKV on my Mac to create the file. The end file itself (just the movie) is 57.87 GB.

 

[Nelson Au]

Rodney- thank you for the clarification on the need to apply a Firmware patch to the drive via a Windows machine.

Your MKV file size for Unforgiven isn’t as big as I imagined at 57.87 GB. That’s not bad. I checked for the largest MKV file size I’ve converted from standard blu ray and that would be 44.41 GB for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Out of curiosity, I looked for the smallest file size for an MKV file I have and it would be the 1968 film, Bullitt clocking in at 15.37 GB. So two blu ray movies could fit in the space for one UHD MKV file.

Of course, On hour TV show episodes from blu ray are smaller.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

@DaveF and @Nelson Au and anyone else who is doing HTPC hobbying - Best Buy is offering the WD EasyStore 14TB drive for $190 for their Black Friday promotion (available to order as of now) - limit one per customer. Best price I've ever seen for a drive that large.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-14tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/6425303.p?skuId=6425303

The same brand/model drive in a 12TB size is also $190 which is a sale price it's hit before but not everyday - limit two per customer.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-12tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/6364259.p?skuId=6364259

 

[DaveF]

That’s a superb price for 14TB! It’s easily shucked and used in a NAS, too!

but I’m in a lull, not buying new discs, so don’t need more storage. So tempting though!

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Josh, thanks for the heads-up! I’ll check how much room I have left in my current drive. I’ve been slowly converting Star Trek DS9 still and a few movies so I’ve been wondering I’m wondering how I’m doing for space. But a drive like that could be used for back-up too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

That’s a superb price for 14TB! It’s easily shucked and used in a NAS, too!

but I’m in a lull, not buying new discs, so don’t need more storage. So tempting though!

I just filled the last drive I had bought and still have some discs left to go - the timing couldn’t have been better for me!

 

[Mike Frezon]

@DaveF and @Nelson Au and anyone else who is doing HTPC hobbying - Best Buy is offering the WD EasyStore 14TB drive for $190 for their Black Friday promotion (available to order as of now) - limit one per customer. Best price I've ever seen for a drive that large.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-14tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/6425303.p?skuId=6425303

The same brand/model drive in a 12TB size is also $190 which is a sale price it's hit before but not everyday - limit two per customer.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-12tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/6364259.p?skuId=6364259

Soooooooooo tempting.

 

[Citizen87645]

I bought the 10TB drive for $150 a couple weeks ago. The price per TB is negligible to do a return and get the 12TB, but if I hadn't already purchased the 10 I probably would go for the 12.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I only use these kinds of drives for backups of data (images, documents and videos) on my laptops and have had great success with portable Seagate drives.

I've had a couple of these bigger desktop WD drives (in this big cases which need external AC) and have had them fail. So I'm a little leery of them.

 

[Citizen87645]

I use WD My Book as my primary backup. It suddenly stopped working last year, but it was still under warranty, and the return and replacement was easy to do.

I'm assuming those doing conversions of their Blu-rays don't do an additional backup? Since the conversion would technically be the backup to the Blu-rays?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I actually do backups of the data since most of my discs are offsite right now. Each hard drive in my Plex system gets cloned once it’s full - just before I stash the discs contained on that drive into storage. I haven’t had a drive fail yet but if it ever happens there should in theory be an immediate replacement available.

 

[jcroy]

I use my external wd drives primarily for medium term storage. (I generally minimize or outright avoid stuff which requires long term storage).

Some ripped dvd isos will be on these external drives for a year or less.

I usually end up just copying the iso files to my htpc desktop computer, and play the video files from the internal hard drive on the htpc desktop.

The problem I find with playing video isos straight from an external hard drive to the htpc desktop, is that the external hard drives develops a lot of excess heat after an hour or two.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey guys, I waited too long and I see the Best Buy deal on that drive is over. I guess I wasn’t in a hurry as I still have a 10tb drive I bought at last year’s sale. Still unopened.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It was nice while it lasted. I just got a shipping confirmation. And since it was limited to one per customer, my dad just got a shipping confirmation also. Now to explain to him that the package he’ll be getting is for me...

 

[Citizen87645]

Curious how many of these drives you have to house your collection.

 

[Nelson Au]

Cameron, I’m going the internal drive route as I have a mid 2012 Mac Pro, the last model before the cylindrical version, so the last tower. It currently has a 12 TB Toshiba internal drive that’s being used to save media. It’s about half full now, 42 movies from Blu Rays and 8 complete TV series. Several TV series are from blu ray sources, Star Trek TOS and TNG. The Thunderbirds, the rest are from DVD sets and one is about 3/4 done, still ripping two more seasons to finish it. I’m probably no where as far as Josh and Dave and JR in the number of titles I have converted to MKV.

I see that Other World Computing is having a deal on the same 12 TB drive I bought before and the pricing is a few more dollars then the Best Buy deal. I’m tempted to go there as then I’d have a matching second internal drive. The Western Digital could be external back up.

 

[Nelson Au]

On another topic, as I mentioned before, I have this square shaped house with a hole in the middle that’s an open air atrium. I was initially having trouble with my wifi speed when I first set up Plex as the Apple Airport is on one end of the house, and an Apple TV4K at the opposite end. There is a direct line of site from the Airport to the ATV4K through two floor to ceiling windows that are single pane each. The distance is about 50 feet. That’s in my main HT set up and it’s working great now. It took some experimenting to position the Airport and ATV4K and it works fine with MKV files with multichannel audio.

For my second set-up, in the kitchen family room area, the wifi has to pass two walls made of wood and Sheetrock with foil lined fiberglass insulation. There’s floor to ceiling glass too, but the Airport is not in direct line of sight with the ATV. The second ATV is recently having issues with buffering where the image will pause and I have to wait until the movie or TV show resumes. I figured my wifi speed issues was coming back as for a while, it was more or less ok in this second spot. It’s perfect when playing lower resolution material ripped from DVDs. YouTube and CBS All Access works fine. But it was really bad yesterday with playing HD from Plex material. So I used my MacBook Pro and checked the wifi speed. My AirPort Extreme is measuring 1300Mbps in the same room the Airport is in. 50 feet away and through two windows in the living room, it was 195Mbps. Quite a drop! But the streaming of HD material is working great. Going into the family room, the speed measured at 176Mbps. Once it measured at 195Mbps. Clearly the signal is lower and or fluctuating.

I did a test, I was watching Forbidden Planet I made as an MKV file from the blu ray. Looks great! Works great on the line of sight living room set up. In the family room it was buffering every 3 minutes. Sometimes it would go 15 minutes before buffering. Most of the time, it would play a whole episode of TOS and TNG Star Trek made from the Blu Rays without a hitch. Also I would select mono or stereo audio if that option is there to lower the processing needed.

So I was pretty sure I need to consider a MESH wifi system soon. However I was also wondering about the two ATV’s I have. The one in the family room is an older ATV HD. The living room has an ATV 4K I bought early this year. It has a faster processor. I thought maybe it was able to transcode faster while running Infuse to playback the MKv files. So to test my theory, I placed the ATV 4K in the family room. It was actually working pretty good, again playing Forbidden Planet, until 15 minutes in, it started to buffer again. So another good theory down the drain. I thought because the wifi speed was not that far off between the living room at 195Mbps to the family room at 176Mbps to 195Mbps, the faster processor might compensate.

Whats interesting is I have great Wifi coverage in the house. iPads and iPhones and laptops work fine when I do meetings with Webex. I am in my home office mostly doing Webex on the laptop and that’s where the Airport is. But I’ve used my laptop for Webex in the kitchen too. That’s almost at the opposite end of the house.

Anyway I thought it was worthy experiment as it was making me crazy. I need faster wifi speed between the WIFi Base station to the ATV’s. Setting up MESH wifi in the near future would be great for adding more ATV’s such as the bedroom too. .