Considering Upgrade

[LiquidNex]

I've had DVDFab Platinum for a long time and as my collection of Blu-Rays has grown I'm finally considering upgrading to the Blu-Ray features of the product. I didn't in the past because Blu-Ray drives were extremely expensive and usually limited to 2 or 4x. Here are a few questions I've been wondering. I'd also like to hear any opinions or advice in general from people who have already made the jump and what success or struggles they've had.

1. What are the fastest Blu-Ray drives available and about how long does it take to rip an exact copy of the disc to a hard drive? (For example, a DVD to DVD copy to my hard drive takes about 10-12 minutes per disc, and about 80-90 minutes per .AVI or .MKV)

2. Can DVDFab preserve pop-up content such as the expansive special features and menus available on Blu-Ray?

3. Are there any Blu-Rays with copy-protection that hasn't been successfully stripped fairly quickly after their release? One thing I definitely don't want to do is buy a bunch of movies and then not be able to back them up and be stuck watching 800 menus and warnings and previews on the original disc.

I've got about 30 Blu-Rays at the moment and I'm getting kind of annoyed not having digital copies of some of my favorite/newer movies. Thanks for all your help.

[edit] One more related question...I've got about a dozen HD DVD's from when I jumped on the wrong ship a couple of years ago, is there any version that would support those if I had an HD DVD drive?

[Bendit]

I have a Pioneer BDR-205BK Blu Ray Burner installed in a NexStar DX External 5.25" SATA enclosure. It is connected to my Dell M6400 laptop via eSATA.

It screams. I highly recommend it. NO SPECIAL DRIVERS NEEDED!

Copying a BDR main movie only on my hard drive, set at BD50 (no compression) setting takes a little less than 20 mins (for a 27 gig main feature).

Now, re-opening the movie on the hard drive (once copied) and compressing it to BD25 (to fit on a single layer BD-R disk) takes many hours though. That is CPU and GPU dependent, it has nothing to do with the Blu Ray drive in that case. I can re-compress a movie in about 4-5 hours. The actual burn (to BD25 disk) takes about 15 mins using that Pioneer drive (maybe a little more).

Hope this helps.

EDIT:

PS: I am using IMGBURN as the burning software, with Optical Quantum BD-R 25GB recordable media (1x-4x). With this combination, it burns way faster than 4x. I have yet to make a coaster! Always a successful burn, even at full speed.

EDIT:

I have a lifetime license for DVDFab Blu Ray. IT'S GREAT! Best product out there. I am not using the burning engine that comes with DVDFab, so I cannot speak for its quality.

[Johan]

I have been using the Bluray option for a couple months now works well. There have been titles with protection that Fab wasn't able to remove but were addressed in next release. There will always be new protections. Ripping speed varies a bit because of size my average would be 30-40 minutes compression also varies depending on the quality level you choose and your system. Compression will fully utilize all 4 cores of a quad processor plus video GPUs, from reading the forums I've seen anywhere from 1.5 hrs to 12 hrs. My burner is an 8x there are faster ones check newegg.com for your price/performance range. DVDFab can copy the full disc for functionality but will not compress in this format.If you have an older system this will be a very lengthy process Compression is only available in the movie only format at present.Overall I'm very satisfied with the performance and also the ability to compress to a DVD9 which are much more affordable than Bluray blank media.
As for HD DVD I don't have an answer for you.
Hope some of this helps.

[Complication]

At present, you cannot compress a Blu-Ray with DVDFab and keep the menu and special features. You would need to by the more expensive dual layer BD-R discs.