[Telaneo]

Thankfully, the people who buy those drives for unreasonable prices are usually willing to share their spoils. Only one needs to actually have the hardware for the rest of the world to share the joy.

It's annoying if you have some more obscure blu-ray release that nobody else has ripped, and even more so if you don't know a guy who can do you a favour.

[jeroenhd]

There's a piece of merch that I want to buy that will take weeks to ship to where I live. I currently have nothing that's capable of playing optical disks, so I was looking into buying a drive that can help me out (I'd rather rip the thing and stuff it into my Jellyfin than deal with a dedicated machine hooked up to my TV).

I can take a $120 gamble to just buy a USB BD-drive and hope the disc isn't DRM'ed enough to make it a problem, but I'd rather just be sure and grab a drive that can rip everything. Unfortunately, because we can't have anything nice, scalpers make these drives impossible to obtain.

[Telaneo]

Big bummer. I bought a drive way back to make sure I could rip disks if I wanted to, but I haven't had the need yet.