Is the reason why there are no laptops with inbuilt Blu-Ray drives really because there is no demand, or is it because the blue laser is so super-powered that it would drain the battery quick smart?

>>105597603 (OP)
I had one in 2009 (Dell XPS) and it was cool, but only in a "college dorm party trick" kind of way. The problem was the codecs [or something, idk, perhaps someone on the /tech/ board can tell us] were proprietary back then and I believe that retarded any momentum Blu-Ray drives might have had.

>>105597675
Could you burn Blu-Ray discs?

>>105597603 (OP)
Parasonic laptop with those funky ass round touchpad has it but it's Japan only.

>>105597675
What’s a codec?

>>105597603 (OP)
Lenovo sold Blu Ray drives for their thinkpads. I have one for my t430s and you can get them for the xx10-xx40 and xx20s -xx30s of models as well.

>>105598235
Yes, you just need to buy blank disks of ebay, amazon, etc.

It's just that no one cared much about blu-ray on PCs. Mostly because it's always been a massive hassle to use, with drives costing 80/100$ typically, and requiring a software, which usually was a massive piece of shit (no matter which one, PowerDVD, WinDVD) to play the discs which had DRMs.
The only software that enables good blu-ray playback were MakeMKV (but require you to copy the entire thing in the first place, which is annoying), AnyDVD HD (but wasn't free), DVDFab Passkey (wasn't free either) or Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre (the only player which wasn't shit, but it also was expensive).

Nowadays, there are DLLs and key files that are available to circumvent the DRM with VLC or other, so most discs are easily playable (I have a few that aren't, somehow), or disc space isn't so expensive that MakeMKV is a completely viable option.

>>105598920
and let's be honest, most people will just pirate an mkv of a movie on a pc anyway

>>105597603 (OP)

Blu-ray drives came with a lot of DRM that required paid software like PowerDVD to get around. Windows didn’t support watching Blu-Rays on its own either. I have a Blu-Ray drive in my 2011 PC that works fine for burning 25GB discs via Adobe Encore or data outright but I seldom used it.

It wasn’t until late 2023 that I finally got a proper Sony Ultra HD Blu Ray player in the house. It’s pretty cool because it can play burned video files (no transcoding required) and also has a USB port for additional video watching.

All that DRM shit completely killed Blurays as a format if online distribution hadn't done it already. It's the reason we still have new DVD releases.