DVD/1080p BD movies via JRiver on Z Book Laptop Fee

[callahan75]

I need to decide on an external BD burner drive to clone a very rare and OOP DVD movie. But I will also want that drive for sharing DVD/BD movie play duties with my Oppo 95 BD player, where the Oppo feeds the s-video input of my 32” Toshiba CRT TV in my bedroom with a pair of nice DIYed floor standing speakers with 15” woofers.

LOL, but I like the CRT’s high contrast ratio and much more that its 4:3 screen lets me view my vintage 1.33:1 aspect ratio content without vertical black bars or the content cropping needed with a 16:9 TV.

Presently, my Pioneer LX500 BD player feeds the HDMI input of this Black Box video converter.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... sMQAvD_BwE

But I want to swap out the Pioneer player with that external BD drive and my HP Z book G8 15” laptop. https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/c07607106.pdf

The laptop has these integrated graphics.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-RT ... 536.0.html

With the external BD drive USB 3.1 Gen 1 connected, the laptop’s screen will be turned off while its HDMI output feeds the Black Box converter.

My questions are when playing DVD or 1080p BD movies via JRiver on the external BD drive and with the laptop’s Nvidia RTX A2000 graphics feeding that HDMI converter:

Will picture quality look as good as on the 32” CRT fed from my $1K Pioneer player?
https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA ... /UDP-LX500

Will the Nvidia graphics power consumption increase enough to generate noticeable fan noise while playing a 2 hour + BD movie?

Or how likely would I have to reduce the graphics resolution setting to avoid fan noise, even though the Black Box HDMI converter is outputting a low quality composite video signal?

How likely would this BD drive become noticeably noisy while playing 2 hour + 1080p BD movies?
https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA ... BDR-X13U-S

Would that Pioneer model be as least as quiet as most other popular external BD drives (ASUS, LG, OWC, et al)?

And burn a copy of a DVD-R movie on the drive in my desktop pc to another DVD as reliably?

[Ian]

My questions are when playing DVD or 1080p BD movies via JRiver on the external BD drive and with the laptop’s Nvidia RTX A2000 graphics feeding that HDMI converter:

Will picture quality look as good as on the 32” CRT fed from my $1K Pioneer player?
https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA ... /UDP-LX500

It will probably be pretty close. You're losing a lot by converting it down to a resolution your CRT TV supports anyway.

Will the Nvidia graphics power consumption increase enough to generate noticeable fan noise while playing a 2 hour + BD movie?

It will probably be fine. Just make sure that the playback software you're using is optimized for Nvidia graphics cards. If not, it will use the CPU.

As it is, playing back Blu-ray movies isn't as intensive as it was 10 years ago. The only thing that might stress your laptop is when playing back 3D titles.

How likely would this BD drive become noticeably noisy while playing 2 hour + 1080p BD movies?
https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA ... BDR-X13U-S

Would that Pioneer model be as least as quiet as most other popular external BD drives (ASUS, LG, OWC, et al)?

And burn a copy of a DVD-R movie on the drive in my desktop pc to another DVD as reliably?

When playing BD movies, drives spin at 2x (or about 1620 RPM). You may hear some seeking noises but probably not when spinning. Burning reliably varies a lot depending on the drive, media, burn speed, etc. LG and Pioneer make good portable BD drives. As long as you use good quality media, you shouldn't have any problems.