News Optical Discs Aren't Dead, as Pioneer's New Drive Doubles BD Write Speeds

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I'm probably one of those old farts that still wants a new ODD for my secondary rig, and this seems like a good option, cutting down the number of ODDs it has from 2 to 1 (has an old gen DVD/CD reader/burner and a read-only BD player). I've slowly archived both disc-based and HDD-based backups of some old and extremely precious family photos and videos. As well, making both physical and digital copies of older physical audio CDs I still own because why waste money buying it again just for mp3 quality when I already have the original discs that just need some digitizing and a secondary physical back up.
 
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TechLurker said:
I'm probably one of those old farts that still wants a new ODD for my secondary rig, and this seems like a good option, cutting down the number of ODDs it has from 2 to 1 (has an old gen DVD/CD reader/burner and a read-only BD player). I've slowly archived both disc-based and HDD-based backups of some old and extremely precious family photos and videos. As well, making both physical and digital copies of older physical audio CDs I still own because why waste money buying it again just for mp3 quality when I already have the original discs that just need some digitizing and a secondary physical back up.
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I still have an external DVD, and am slowly working through several hundred CD/DVD from days gone by.
Either copy and trash, or just trash.
 
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Admin said:
Despite the year 2022, Pioneer has released a new SATA optical drive that will let you record data or video on high-precision BD-R media at up to 16x, as well as write and play back a very wide gamut of optical discs and media formats. Designed for built-in 5.25 inch drive bays, this drive is priced around $150.

Optical Discs Aren't Dead, as Pioneer's New Drive Doubles BD Write Speeds : Read more
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I am pretty sure you could already buy BD-R drives with those specs as far back as 2016
 
Interesting. A major company like Panasonic doesn't develop something like this without a realistic plan to make money.

I thought I was the last person using disks but haven't burned more than a handful of audio CDs in a few years..
 
Kamen Rider Blade said:
If it's good, and priced reasonably, then Pioneer has my $$$
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The article states it's around $150 in Japan, which doesn't exactly seem all that "reasonable" for an optical drive at this point unless you absolutely need to burn a lot of discs for some reason. Really, a blu-ray drive would need to be priced no more than $30 or so for me to consider putting one in a desktop system, as I wouldn't likely get much use out of it. But they never really became impulse-priced like DVD drives did, and by the time they came out software was already moving to digital distribution, so they never really took off, outside of perhaps in Home Theater PCs.

targetdrone said:
SSDs are cheaper, faster, and offer much more compatibility than user writable optical media, which is hard to find in good quality these days.
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One potential advantage of optical media is that outside the initial cost of the drive, it is a relatively inexpensive way to provide a physical copy of data to others. With 25GB BD-R discs costing around a dollar, or around 25 cents for a DVD-R, you can distribute data to others without much concern about getting the disc back. Though the initial cost of the drive means you need to have a use-case in which you make a lot of discs for that to make sense. These days, it's possible to find 32GB thumb drives in multi-packs for around $3 each, which isn't much more expensive, and will likely be a lot more accessible to whoever you are distributing them to.

hotaru251 said:
not to mention their durability is greater.

i've had too many discs get scratched up from beign in a plastic case or sleeve and even had the act of spinning crack the center ring from inside.
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While optical discs can potentially get scratched if not handled carefully, I wouldn't necessarily say an SSD's durability is greater, at least for long-term archival storage. An SSD will have lots of components, including things like capacitors that can fail over time, rendering the drive's contents inaccessible. Flash memory can also lose its charge over time when powered off, so there's a fair likelihood that a drive that's been powered down for a number of years may lose data. At higher storage temperatures and with low endurance remaining, an SSD's flash memory might even lose data within a matter of months. So for long-term archival purposes, powered-down SSDs might not be a great choice. And platter-based drives need to operate with extreme levels of mechanical precision, so they may also be prone to failing from being in storage for many years. Optical media has also been shown to degrade over time, though I suspect it will tend to hold up better than an SSD when stored under good conditions for years.
 
cryoburner said:
Optical media has also been shown to degrade over time, though I suspect it will tend to hold up better than an SSD when stored under good conditions for years.
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Earlier generations of Optical media were using Organic based dyes.

Proper Blu-Rays, use Synthetic chemicals in their dyes, ergo not having the issue of short-term degradation.

They've done accelerated wear testing and Blu-Rays are better than older Optical Media.
 
targetdrone said:
SSDs are cheaper, faster, and offer much more compatibility than user writable optical media, which is hard to find in good quality these days.
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Different purpose. BD are mostly used to store data for long term archival or to distribute media cheaply. Properly kept, they can last a very long time.

One very good thing about blank discs are that they are 100% virus/trojan free!! This makes it very good way to transfer data from an extremely sensitive environment.
 
hotaru251 said:
not to mention their durability is greater.

i've had too many discs get scratched up from beign in a plastic case or sleeve and even had the act of spinning crack the center ring from inside.
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Not quite. A high quality BD could last as long as 20yrs or more in a controlled environment (low dust low dumidity). Thats something not possible with SSD/HDD..... You can try storing a SSD/HDD for 20yrs, there is high chance it may no longer work.
 
hotaru251 said:
we were talking durability on actual usage.

not archiving.
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How much are optical drives being used for general, non-archival storage though? It would be inconvenient to store data on a disc that you intend to access on a regular basis, so that's not likely a common usage scenario for them. And an SSD isn't going to help for something like storing video on a disc for playback in DVD or Blu-Ray players, nor are SSDs well suited for distributing data to others relatively inexpensively. Each has different use-cases.

escksu said:
One very good thing about blank discs are that they are 100% virus/trojan free!! This makes it very good way to transfer data from an extremely sensitive environment.
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I was thinking of that, although technically one could burn malware to a disc and add it to a stack of blank media before it makes its way into the sensitive environment. Though really, you probably shouldn't have autoplay enabled for any types of external drives in that case.

Of course, if you have something like a bootable OS or other utilities burned to a write-once disc, you shouldn't need to worry about an infected system corrupting them. Or modifying any data files, for that matter. Data stored on an external, user-writable drive could potentially be encrypted by ransomware when connected to a system, for example, but write-once media will generally be safe from tampering.

I do have to agree with the notion that optical drives in general have become much more of a hard sell over the last decade or so. Even a decade ago, most PC users were making relatively little use of them, and that's only gotten worse as internet speeds have continued to improve and the price of other storage options has come down. Back in the mid-90s when read-only CD-ROM drives were becoming common, they were incredibly useful, as the amount of data a single disc could hold was on a similar level as the capacity of an entire hard drive, while internet speeds were incredibly slow, if available at all. So they became the primary means of software distribution. Then writable drives made it possible to store large amounts of data for far less than any other option, and DVD drives helped keep up with the increase in hard drive and file sizes.

But by the time Blu-Ray drives came out, they were well behind the curve of hard drive storage capacities, and PC software was already moving to online distribution, and could typically fit on a DVD if physical distribution was required. And the only real mainstream use-case, playing store-bought films, was hampered by excessive DRM. So, Blu-Ray drives never became more than a rarity in PCs.
 
cryoburner said:
How much are optical drives being used for general, non-archival storage though? It would be inconvenient to store data on a disc that you intend to access on a regular basis, so that's not likely a common usage scenario for them. And an SSD isn't going to help for something like storing video on a disc for playback in DVD or Blu-Ray players, nor are SSDs well suited for distributing data to others relatively inexpensively. Each has different use-cases.


I was thinking of that, although technically one could burn malware to a disc and add it to a stack of blank media before it makes its way into the sensitive environment. Though really, you probably shouldn't have autoplay enabled for any types of external drives in that case.

Of course, if you have something like a bootable OS or other utilities burned to a write-once disc, you shouldn't need to worry about an infected system corrupting them. Or modifying any data files, for that matter. Data stored on an external, user-writable drive could potentially be encrypted by ransomware when connected to a system, for example, but write-once media will generally be safe from tampering.

I do have to agree with the notion that optical drives in general have become much more of a hard sell over the last decade or so. Even a decade ago, most PC users were making relatively little use of them, and that's only gotten worse as internet speeds have continued to improve and the price of other storage options has come down. Back in the mid-90s when read-only CD-ROM drives were becoming common, they were incredibly useful, as the amount of data a single disc could hold was on a similar level as the capacity of an entire hard drive, while internet speeds were incredibly slow, if available at all. So they became the primary means of software distribution. Then writable drives made it possible to store large amounts of data for far less than any other option, and DVD drives helped keep up with the increase in hard drive and file sizes.

But by the time Blu-Ray drives came out, they were well behind the curve of hard drive storage capacities, and PC software was already moving to online distribution, and could typically fit on a DVD if physical distribution was required. And the only real mainstream use-case, playing store-bought films, was hampered by excessive DRM. So, Blu-Ray drives never became more than a rarity in PCs.
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I'm probably one of the few non-archival types where this sort of drive makes sense. Being an owner of an LG drive similar to this one, I routinely use makeMKV to rip Blu-Ray (and UHD) movies to my internal 18 TB WD Gold drive. Streaming causes compression artifacts that degrade the visual experience for me and I can't be bothered to pull out a disc every time I want to watch something, so having an optical drive that allows me to rip and then digitally store all my media in one place is invaluable. But yeah, I can't think of anyone else I know who does anything remotely like this, so that's absolutely an edge use case to be sure.
 
I think there's probably still a lot of life left in Optical Disk Drives - though mostly as a read format rather than a writing one. I suspect there are still a huge number of people with neither the internet bandwidth and/or data allowance to allow constant downloading and streaming.

Can't see many good reasons to still be using disks for data storage.
 
My BD movie and mostly DVD TV series collection is really too big to consider spending time ripping it to a server in the same quantity. https://www.steigerdynamics.com/htpc-products just built me a superb HTPC, though with an LG BD drive. I will need another HTPC for my other HT , so maybe this Pioneer drive. I have little trouble finding new movie titles and even TV series of interest at mubi, hollywood reporter and elsewhere-and which the regional public library system usually owns-to consider subscribing to streaming services any time soon. And much of what I watch is vintage stuff which those services aren't likely interested in showing, so my optical collection remains highly relevant, at least until disc rot happens. Audio quality is also a priority and lossless DTS, and may not yet be available from online services. And JRiver player decodes DTS-MA from BDs perfectly. https://www.jriver.com/index.html

So I hope that Pioneer will continue to offer well designed and build BD drives.
 
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SSD is not the best long term data storage solution. Malware can delete data and ransomware can encrypt your data. If your SSD stops working, data recovery might cost $1,000.

Data written to an M-disc, can NOT be deleted or encrypted. The data is etched into plastic. Plastic can last hundreds of years. If the Blu-ray drive stops working, you just buy a new Blu-ray drive and you have access to your data. Worse case, a computer with a digital microscope could be used to read data that is stored on an M-disc. That might be expensive, so just buy a spare Blu-ray drive and keep it in storage.

Blu-ray picture quality is better than online streaming picture quality.
 
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