Why disc drives are an endangered species

[mattmatik]

The only reason I got an optical drive (Blu-Ray) for my 2012 build was to put them on my media server for my PS3/WD TV Live. My wife and I love watching BD movies, none of the streaming services come to close to the fidelity. I see optical drives hanging around for awhile yet.

Apple has a major investment in iTunes so of course they will limit support for outside media.

[Nashy]

My new build about 6 months ago has one. I've never used it. It was thrown in free with everything else I bought.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Optical media is home to much higher quality media though. CDs have a higher bitrate than MP3s bought from any online storefront and definitely sound better....blu-rays (heck even some DVDs) look vastly superior to any highly compressed streaming or "digital copy" version.

You may want the optical to die but you're all willing to accept such terrible compromises with regards to quality it makes me cringe.

...

Most streaming video is terrible quality, but we passed transparency for audio a while back.

[Shane Nokes]

Most streaming video is terrible quality, but we passed transparency for audio a while back.

Not for multi-channel audio. I can definitely hear the difference between a Netflix stream and my movies on Blu-Ray.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Not for multi-channel audio. I can definitely hear the difference between a Netflix stream and my movies on Blu-Ray.

I was talking about audio settings (i.e. It'll be hard to find somebody who can actually tell the difference between 256Kbps AAC and FLAC, etc.). Audio for streaming media does often suffer though (I swear YouTube uses mono audio for some quality settings)

[Shane Nokes]

Ah, gotcha. :)

Agreed on YouTube...most of their audio is crap for some reason when it comes to the higher quality vid files. :(

[ShadowMajestic]

As when I build my PC around 2000ish, I didnt bother buying a floppy drive (which i still needed a few times tho, stupid winXP)

My current system does have a DVD drive, It hasnt been connected for at least a year or 2.

If i used a CD/DVD drive 20times the last decade, thats much.

And comming with the new Apple's having no CD drive... there have been Dells and HPs at least that had no DVD drive for years.

Since when was the iMac the flagship of the Apple desktop computer range. I didn't realise the MacPro was considered lower in the range.

I would love to give up my optical drives but it's still the highest quality music format widely available and whilst that is the case I will have one in my desktop.

a CD, really?

vinyl has higher quality mate. Unless you have 1 3min song being the whole CD instead of 20ish songs.

[seta-san]

As when I build my PC around 2000ish, I didnt bother buying a floppy drive (which i still needed a few times tho, stupid winXP)

My current system does have a DVD drive, It hasnt been connected for at least a year or 2.

If i used a CD/DVD drive 20times the last decade, thats much.

And comming with the new Apple's having no CD drive... there have been Dells and HPs at least that had no DVD drive for years.

a CD, really?

vinyl has higher quality mate. Unless you have 1 3min song being the whole CD instead of 20ish songs.

CD does have the better quality. It's uncompressed audio. It always kind of made me sad that HD-Audio discs didn't become popular with 6-7 channels uncompressed.

[+KibosJ Subscriber²]

I have a Blu-ray drive in my PC and I still use it. It will be a while before I retire the drive, although.... I do need the SATA Port it currently occupies :p

[LaP]

I was talking about audio settings (i.e. It'll be hard to find somebody who can actually tell the difference between 256Kbps AAC and FLAC, etc.). Audio for streaming media does often suffer though (I swear YouTube uses mono audio for some quality settings)

Dunno i'm watching Battlestar Galatica: Blood and Chrome from youtube and the quality is okay. It's not blu ray of course but it's good quality.

[Klownicle]

Flash sticks are getting to be throw aways like discs are. However, I think if the larger size blurays came down in price this would be different. 25GB are still .50-1.00 a piece, and 50gb are 3.50-5.00 a piece. Thats no way to push a format. Unfortunatly I think this has alot to do with piracy. I burn discs occassionally for client backups or install media when its just quicker than the throw away thumbs, especially boot diag media.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

i still use my optical drives occasionally. my car (2005) doesnt have an aux port, so i cant play mp3s in my car. i'll burn CDs when i buy a new mp3 album. i'll also backup blu-rays as well. i'd like to buy a blu-ray burner eventually so i can create backups of important data. that way i can keep copies of stuff in my safe.

[kjordan2001]

Optical media is home to much higher quality media though. CDs have a higher bitrate than MP3s bought from any online storefront and definitely sound better....blu-rays (heck even some DVDs) look vastly superior to any highly compressed streaming or "digital copy" version.

You may want the optical to die but you're all willing to accept such terrible compromises with regards to quality it makes me cringe.

No, they just flat out tell their customers what to think and the cultists believe everything blindly.

At least until we're all on gigabit connections and then can stream a bluray quality movie.

[Hum]

Millions of people are going to want to back-up their movies, documentaries, music, pictures, and other personal files, for years to come.

People are not likely to throw out their DVD movies and are going to need to play them.

A DVD recording is much less likely to fail, compared to a hard drive, USB drive -- I'm not sure about SD flash cards.

Until they come up with something more reliable than the CD/DVD discs, these will be around for a long time to come.

[SysReboot]

personally, I'm of the opinion that the media industries (movie & music industry) are lobbying hard for this to happen to protect their extortion rackets.

Streaming services are poor at best, nothing beats physical media for quality. what happens when you can't gain access to the internet, or your internet provider throttles you because they haven't invested enough in providing acceptable bandwidths for everyone & you decide to stream 8 or 9 HD (debatable?) quality movies per day (fair use policies?). whilst you may have a high speed connection & the industry says you need a minimum 2mb broadband speed to stream movies (in reality streaming HD at 2mb is nye on impossible, even at 8mb & 16mb it's damn frustrating when you get freezing, buffering, jumping, audio sync problems etc).

& streamed audio is still crap compared to vinyl or CD/DVD even at 320k, even flac, even wave files. & yes you can tell the difference in sound quality, those that say you can't tell the difference have obviously never listened to a high end audio system with excellent quality speakers to match. getting rid of physical media (which is what the movie/music industries are wanting to happen) will seriously punish those who like to listen to quality music for the sake of ever increasing profiteers.

[Mainer82]

Funny, I just purchased a Bluray burner for the purposes of backing up my huge collection of photographs. What are people going to do that need to archive data?

[WAQT]

The last time I used the DVD on my laptop was.... never! Its been like 2~3 years since I last used a CD/DVD. I hate the fact that my laptop has a DVD player (so much space wasted!), the laptop could be slimmer, or had a bigger battery in it, if it wasnt for the DVD, I know I can get an ultrabook that's withour a DVD/CD player, but they don't have a numpad, and I am lost with out it. Looking forward to the time where laptops start coming without a DVD/CD drive.

[devHead]

Since when was the iMac the flagship of the Apple desktop computer range. I didn't realise the MacPro was considered lower in the range.

I would love to give up my optical drives but it's still the highest quality music format widely available and whilst that is the case I will have one in my desktop.

I've gotta say I'm in the same boat; my car plays only standard audio CDs, so I still like making mix CDs for it. Otherwise I probably wouldn't need it. It makes sense that Apple would kill them off. Heck, to purchase an additional 'Superdrive' (read: basic DVD/CD burner) for their Mac Pro costs an extra $100!! For a device that is going for like, $13 now.

[Shane Nokes]

I've gotta say I'm in the same boat; my car plays only standard audio CDs, so I still like making mix CDs for it. Otherwise I probably wouldn't need it. It makes sense that Apple would kill them off. Heck, to purchase an additional 'Superdrive' (read: basic DVD/CD burner) for their Mac Pro costs an extra $100!! For a device that is going for like, $13 now.

...and to think people think Microsoft vastly overcharge for the hard drives for the Xbox 360 eh? ;)

[c.grz]

Not had an internal one for ages, bought an external for the odd occasions i might need one.

Same here; external DVD-burner for the off occasion it's needed.

[Crisp]

My machine has no optical drive. I have no need for one, although if I really did I would just use the laptop as it's the only computer in the house that has one, which came with it.

[*RedBull*]

It's really stupid that Microsoft makes Win8 available for download for the consumer upgrade path but only distributes DVDs for the OEM version. I want an ISO damnit!

But you can get it on DVD if you pay for it. Also you can make an ISO from the downloaded install files. I have Win8 install on USB drive. Just google how to do it.

I don't see disks going away for a while yet. One of my laptops have no disc player while the other newer one does. I have a usb Multi player.

[Phouchg]

Might be that I'm in a third world country, but where I work, DVD drives is one of things that sells the most, for some weird reason. About a half of new PCs (the more advanced ones, mostly) indeed don't have them anymore, but I've also heard the "Yes, I wouldn't use it for anything, but how else I'm going to install Windows?" argument. Though the thing is - best part of them are being sold as they are, and so we stock several 10 unit boxes of them at a time.

We did consider offering premade bootable flash drives (and config boot order accordingly), but arguments against were - 1) can't make them read-only, 2) people would simply lose them, and 3) bulk orders bring crazy profit *cough*

[primexx]

But you can get it on DVD if you pay for it. Also you can make an ISO from the downloaded install files. I have Win8 install on USB drive. Just google how to do it.

I don't see disks going away for a while yet. One of my laptops have no disc player while the other newer one does. I have a usb Multi player.

I don't have an upgrade licence. I bought two System Builder licences and I can't get an official download.

[Knightwolf20024]

I don't have an upgrade licence. I bought two System Builder licences and I can't get an official download.

i believe you still can by making an image of your disc from an image program and using the usb creation tool offered free from microsoft to make a usb installer