Who is still heavily using optical media ?

Who is still heavily using optical media ?


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I build a lot of retro PCs on the side, and so I use my optical drives quite a bit to burn Windows 95/98 data CDs, as well as burn restore image CDs for said retro PCs. I couldn't live without my optical drives, guess I must be a complete dinosaur! :whistle:
 
Been finding it useful for transferring data between systems in a virtually read-only format (when using mastered burning). There's less to be concerned about vs USB or other flash media in that regard (I haven't been able to find real-world examples of malware affecting mastered discs).
 
I have a bunch of movies I burned to DVD and BR yrs ago and I still have that drive. Its just not in my pc.
Thanks Hollywood video.
Most can be watched free on online now though.
 
Ah thanks. I got a mis-order that I got to keep (got my $ back eBay China) I ordered female - female Dupoint (how they got that term is beyond me but that is what they call them) anyway I got male pin - female so I can make my own jumpers without destroying anything just put them in the proper pins on the Intel header and plug into the motherboard headers
PS: You keep you house hot I like it cold as you can see from my weather station
PPS: Sorry for being nosy but I like all things tech like most people [h]ere LoL!
Ya, pretty much, just put the pins into the corresponding pin on the header cable.

Also, my room gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter, it's the hottest and coldest room in the house.
80* is where I feel most comfortable.
 
I build a lot of retro PCs on the side, and so I use my optical drives quite a bit to burn Windows 95/98 data CDs, as well as burn restore image CDs for said retro PCs. I couldn't live without my optical drives, guess I must be a complete dinosaur! :whistle:

I suggest you leave you look into the IODD. It presents itself as a USB CD/DVD ROM to the host machine. So as long as the PC can boot from a USB CD(basically everything post 1998), you can use the IODD to present whatever ISO you want.

As a side note, IDE to SATA adapters are cheap and simple. Using a $10 40GB Intel SSD from eBay on those retro machines makes a huge difference.
 
I have loads of drives sitting around in the stack, some hanging out unplugged in older machines (except my Pentium ][ where it's needed for games), and a BDRE in my file server I actually use for burning. Aside from making CDs for the car, I have a couple friends that aren't able to get cable TV or internet at their home (rural area), so I make DVDs and Blurays for them of current shows they want to watch.
 
Ya, pretty much, just put the pins into the corresponding pin on the header cable.

Also, my room gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter, it's the hottest and coldest room in the house.
80* is where I feel most comfortable.
The closer to 60°F the better for me, however the electric heat thermostat failed the maintenance left me without heat in the living room! It went down to 52°F and where my kitty sleeps by the chair next to the windows is was 46-48°F I bought a new thermostat with my own $ this is what the old one looked like! it still clicked when turned but was only passing 120V half of the line so the heaters only used 1/4 of the power so practically no heat output.

Now I need an IDE DVD-rom or writer for my Socket A/462 board I fixed
 

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Does one of those remotes control all the other remotes, like The One Remote?


Edit: On topic - I think I have used an optical drive twice in the last decade, but think I even got rid of that. It was a portable USB DVD RW.
The Logitech Harmony can control most of the stuff, but that is an old pic and all those remotes are in a drawer.
I just use my Apple TV 4K remote to turn on my ATV, AVR, and Projector since they use HDMI control. The ATV remote also controls the volume on the AVR.
 
Does one of those remotes control all the other remotes, like The One Remote?


Edit: On topic - I think I have used an optical drive twice in the last decade, but think I even got rid of that. It was a portable USB DVD RW.
My bad I did not mean to de-rail the whole thread with my questions sorry
I want an HD-DVD drive I got a few discs at a Dollar Tree store as hey an HD-DVD for $1.06! Does an E-IDE Blu-ray drive exist as well as an HD-DVD one? not like it matters my old IDE PC is from 2002 so I doubt it can use that.
I just need an E-IDE DVD-reader a burner is not needed as I have other PCs that can do that too bad eBay and others think they are made of solid gold or sliver.
 
My bad I did not mean to de-rail the whole thread with my questions sorry
I want an HD-DVD drive I got a few discs at a Dollar Tree store as hey an HD-DVD for $1.06! Does an E-IDE Blu-ray drive exist as well as an HD-DVD one? not like it matters my old IDE PC is from 2002 so I doubt it can use that.
I just need an E-IDE DVD-reader a burner is not needed as I have other PCs that can do that too bad eBay and others think they are made of solid gold or sliver.

The XBOX 360 had an external USB HD-DVD drive available as an add-on for it. You might be able to fins one of those cheap as HD-DVD wasn't around that long. Sad thing is, I thought the HD-DVD format itself was better than BluRay, but the Blu-Ray disks are definitely more resilient with that hard coating they have. My HD-DVD disks are very fragile (super easy to scratch).
 
The XBOX 360 had an external USB HD-DVD drive available as an add-on for it. You might be able to fins one of those cheap as HD-DVD wasn't around that long. Sad thing is, I thought the HD-DVD format itself was better than BluRay, but the Blu-Ray disks are definitely more resilient with that hard coating they have. My HD-DVD disks are very fragile (super easy to scratch).

I saw that quite a while ago is it able to be used without the Xbox-360 EX: for ripping the disc?
I still have my Xbox 360 but I'm trying to get an Xbox Series X for actual non scalper price!
Scalpers are the scum of the retail market and the manufactures fuel them by not making enough to go around and the retailer also need to do a better job of limiting one per person like one per address and one per payment method I doubt they will get another credit card just to scalp.
 
The closer to 60°F the better for me, however the electric heat thermostat failed the maintenance left me without heat in the living room! It went down to 52°F and where my kitty sleeps by the chair next to the windows is was 46-48°F I bought a new thermostat with my own $ this is what the old one looked like! it still clicked when turned but was only passing 120V half of the line so the heaters only used 1/4 of the power so practically no heat output.

Now I need an IDE DVD-rom or writer for my Socket A/462 board I fixed
Picture of cat? :)
 
OK I'll oblige and further derail this thread sorry to the OP!

PS: Jericho The Cat (first, Middle, & last name) does not approve of my mouse pad he says it's a fraud he sees no mice just a tailless imposter named Logitech!
 

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I've got 2 Blu-Ray drives in my main computer, one reader and one burner.

I bought the burner cause I wanted to mess with M-Disc for archival purposes, but I could never get it working good (still want to revisit this, though).

Also, I was able to rip some of my favorite movies to watch on the computer. I have probably around 100 Blu-Ray movies, but most of the time I just watch them once and don't bother with it again.

Sadly, if I ever am able to do a full PC build, I might have to give up the optical drive. I do like having it, but I maybe use it once or twice a year.
 
I always used to include an optical drive in my builds, but nowdays I avoid them. Because it's a pain to have to physically put a blueray into the drive to watch it and take it out when you want to watch something else. And BluRays barely have any storage and usually only hold "one" movie. One!

Nowadays I use hard drives like I used to use BluRay's, just swapping them in within seconds via my USB drive dock. Except that a cheap 8TB hard drive contains hundreds of high quality media, far more than any optical disc. And you can access any of them in seconds. A hard drive collection is much MUCH more efficient for high quality media than an any optical drive/disc will ever be, especially if you manage it using something like Kodi. Way, way more convenient and much faster.

I only occationally use an (external) burner to extract physical media to my hard drive collection so I can access it conveniently, otherwise I try to stay away from optical media.
 
I saw that quite a while ago is it able to be used without the Xbox-360 EX: for ripping the disc?
I still have my Xbox 360 but I'm trying to get an Xbox Series X for actual non scalper price!
Scalpers are the scum of the retail market and the manufactures fuel them by not making enough to go around and the retailer also need to do a better job of limiting one per person like one per address and one per payment method I doubt they will get another credit card just to scalp.

Works perfectly fine with Windows PCs - I've never owned an XBOX 360.
 
I loved HD-DVD but I got burned hard. Probably had at least 50 discs, some of them imported for like $50 a pop.
 
HD-DVD also seems to bitrot very quickly. Had a friend buy a bunch of them cheaply from blockbuster and hollywood video when they went under...DVDs and blu-rays are still fine, almost all the HD-DVDs are unreadable now.
 
HD-DVD also seems to bitrot very quickly. Had a friend buy a bunch of them cheaply from blockbuster and hollywood video when they went under...DVDs and blu-rays are still fine, almost all the HD-DVDs are unreadable now.

The bit rot problem was super prevalent with "Flippy" disks (HD-DVDs that were HD-DVD on one side and DVD on the other) and pretty much any HD-DVD (and a LOT of DVDs as well) made by Warner Brothers.
 
I loved HD-DVD but I got burned hard. Probably had at least 50 discs, some of them imported for like $50 a pop.

My Toshiba stand-alone HD-DVD player hasn't been used in years, but I imaged all of my HD-DVDs using the XBOX-360 HD-DVD drive on my PC. I later acquired the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD/DVD reader drive I use now, but it has only ever been called to read one HD-DVD ever.

I ran into a few HD-DVDs that just did not work, all Warner Brothers releases. Reading on the internet showed this was a widespread problem with their releases, so I called them and they said my disks were out of warranty but as a courtesy, they would replace 1 (and only 1) of my defective HD-DVD products. So I got them to replace my defective Matrix Trilogy HD-DVD boxed set - they replaced it with the Blu-Ray boxed set.

I only lost a handful of disks that I had to replace myself (most notably a few of the Harry Potter movies).
 
Yeah, I just sold on ebay my Xbox drive and all the HD-DVDs, I think I got like $250. Not a great recoup, but it was a few years after HD-DVD died so I was happy to get something.

I've since bought the movies I really liked on Blu-Ray (Matrix trilogy, etc.) and I have a decent Blu-Ray collection now.

I also bought a stand-alone Blu-Ray player for my projector (it's a Sony model, but from like 10 years ago). I've noticed the newer players don't support 3D Blu-Ray anymore (PS5, some 4K players) and I still have a bunch of 3D Blu-Rays I want to watch.
 
I have a DVD burner in my tech bag if for some odd reason I need it.
I replaced my 12.5mm ODD with a 12.5mm high 1.5TB spinner in a HDD caddy years ago in a past laptop.
The laptop I'm plannig on getting doesn't have one, just 2 m.2s and a 2.5 SATA bay.
 
I still have a BluRay/DVD burner in my PC, but my next build will not. It is SATA, and I have a SATA/IDE to USB converter, so I figure if I need it in my next build for anything at all, there I go for those rare use cases.

I'm not sure I have ever used it to install anything on my gaming PC in all these years, but I have used it to burn all of our vacation photos and videos to blueray's for backup beyond my storage HDD. I have used it to burn a few ISOs as well for some older PCs I have.

Hell, my cars do not even have CD players anymore, it's all Satellite, USB, Android Auto Apps and Bluetooth anymore! lol. All the music I used to play while driving is simply on a really large USB drive now sitting in the car.
 
The promise of Optical Media is that if you take care of it, it is effectively immortal, making it an excellent long-term storage solution on paper. The reality of it is, that as demand for optical media has decreased, the quality of optical media has ALSO decreased, and low quality optical media... degrades (sometimes quickly).
 
The promise of Optical Media is that if you take care of it, it is effectively immortal, making it an excellent long-term storage solution on paper. The reality of it is, that as demand for optical media has decreased, the quality of optical media has ALSO decreased, and low quality optical media... degrades (sometimes quickly).
I don't know for you guys, but I've mostly always bought Verbatim and never had a single reading issue several years later.
 
I still use optical media often. I always buy movies and music on optical media so that I always have them. I saw some stories about people losing access to movies and such from streaming services so I find owning physical media the safest bet. I use an optical drive, a Pioneer 212U to rip lossless audio to my computer and then to other devices. I even have a Teac FD505 3.5"/5.25" combo floppy disk drive for my computer for some truly retro action.
 
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