[delecti]

The drive I got for ripping blu-ray discs cost me $80, 2 years ago. The current best seller on amazon is also $80 (both $79.99, to be precise, so the same price down to the cent). The same drive I bought is $116 on Best Buy right now. It can also write to discs (ostensibly, I didn't consider that when buying it, and don't have any reason to test it).

Meanwhile the cheapest external drive I can quickly find on Amazon is $35, just under half as much as I paid, or about a bit under a third for the same drive today. Either way it's far less than 10-20x.

[jeroenhd]

For context: 21% VAT and Amazon resellers pretending 1 euro is worth 1 dollar in their pricing makes for the biggest price difference between what I found and what you bought.

From what I can tell, the affordable BD players cannot play all discs. They can read (and probably write) all data discs, but when I buy a disc, there's no guarantee I will be able to rip it and make it accessible over my LAN. That's the kind of drive I want, and that's what ends up getting scalped.

[delecti]

The one I bought can play and rip all discs, after a firmware update. It was the one currently for sale for $116.

It only takes a little bit of research, and there are plenty that are not being scalped (or probably more commonly, scooped up by people who intend to use them). I found some in EU pricing in just a minute of searching. The MakeMKV forums are full of suggestions for suitable drives.