Suggest a external Blu Ray drive, for ripping my Rino Quads to FLAC under Linux

[elvi]

Good morning.

Looking for an external USB c BD player.
I don't rip movies, but would rip audio from concert disks.
I don't need 4K support now, but suggesting a UHD drive is a plus.
I can run Windows, but it's fat and sometimes stupid .
I prefer to use the current LTS Ubuntu.


Thanks in advance

 

[linuxfan]

MakeMKV -
https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
or
HandBrake -
https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/1.7.0/get-handbrake/download-and-install.html
recommended installation method is by using Flatpak -
https://flathub.org/setup/Ubuntu

 

[linuxfan]

Oops sorry, that was suitable software.
Regarding hardware, I'm a fan of Pioneer optical drives. I see the current external model is BDR-XD08B, or for UHD - BDR-XS07UHD.

 

[elvi]

HHMM..

troubling post from the Makemkv forums..

planned to purchase the Pioneer Electronics BDR-XD07U to rip 4k bluray drives to my Jellyfin server, but it is unavailable on Amazon. I ended up buying the Pioneer External Blu-ray Drive BDR-XD08B instead. When I went to use MKV it said that this drive was not libre-drive compatible but wasn't enabled was running firmware 1.02.

 

[linuxfan]

Well I'm a bit behind the times, having last ripped a Blu-ray Audio disc around 2016, using a Pioneer BDR-205 from 2011 (which I still use to this day).
After a bit of reading, it seems that modern Blu-ray drives require hacked firmware in order to rip UHD Blu-ray, and this flashing process can be complicated. On the MakeMKV forum they suggest to buy your Blu-ray drive pre-flashed from various forum members, there's a list of sellers here -

https://www.reddit.com/r/makemkv/comments/mvz5h8

Forum member Billycar11 recommends Pioneer BDR-213/2213 or Pioneer BDR-S13UBK/S13U-X, even if you want an external drive - for which you would install the drive in an external SATA-to-USB3 enclosure.

Bear in mind a flashed drive is only necessary if you wish to rip UHD discs. I understand that almost any Blu-ray drive can be used for regular Blu-Ray or DVD discs, without any special firmware.
The Rhino quadrophonic discs mentioned by elvi are regular Blu-ray Audio discs.

 

[linuxfan]

Back in the old days I used BDInfo and tsMuxeR, with AnyDVD HD running in the background ...
so I just tried MakeMKV now, and even though it reported my old Blu-ray drive as -

LibreDrive Information
Status: Possible, but very unlikely to happen

MakeMKV was still able to read the Blu-Ray disc (a well-known commercial Blu-Ray from 2019) and the rip process completed just fine.