How is Linux Blu-ray burner support these days?

[schtufbox]

I don't care a fig about movies etc  

My DVD rewriter has just died and I figured I might replace it with a Blu-ray burner instead as I can get one for a decent ish price.
Am I going to be able to burn blu ray data disks with k3b? or will I need Nero for Linux?
Will it read Blu-ray data disks okay?

Silly questions perhaps but a forum search only yielded old answers relating to old versions of PCLOS.

Thanks for any info

[menotu]

K3b supports blu-ray and I believe VLC will play them back if the correct libraries are installed

k3b
http://www.k3b.org/

vlc
http://www.videolan.org/news.html

[schtufbox]

Thank you.  Data is all I need it for, that way i can farm off some of my backups to Blu-ray instead of/as well as an external hard drive.

[menotu]

I just had a look at the price of Blu-ray media and they've really come down in price from the last time I looked.

[dixonpete]

On a different but related note I just purchased a http://en.nboxplayer.com/ for my parents instead of a DVD player. Load up a flash drive with movies and plug it into this device and away it goes. Just attach it to your TV's AVI input. DVD players are still huge for some reason. This thing is tiny and plays almost everything. Looks fine on a 26" LCD TV.

[Was_Just19]

Just attach it to your TV's AVI input.

What kind of cable is used please ......  I have no idea what is an AVI input 

Scart mayeb?

What filesystem formats of the attached drives does it work with?   I could find no info through the link which specified this.

Thanks for any info you can supply.

regards.

[Dragynn]

Just attach it to your TV's AVI input.

What kind of cable is used please ......  I have no idea what is an AVI input  

Scart mayeb?

What filesystem formats of the attached drives does it work with?   I could find no info through the link which specified this.

Thanks for any info you can supply.

regards.

AVI=audio-video cable, the old-school 3-rca connect, we used to call it AV or "composite", red and white for audio, yellow for video.

[dixonpete]

The cables come with it. You know for those yellow/red/white holes in the back/side of your modern TV. Once hooked up you just change the input on your TV's remote to change to AVI.

This link has more info: http://www.nboxplayer.com/nbox_english/index.php

I didn't know there was a version 3. I've tried about 25 movies - avi/mp4/mpg/divx/mov - and they all played but one, and that movie wouldn't play on SMPlayer either, though it did work with VLC. The remote has pause/advance etc and also a handy button the cycles through screen sizes. You can choose subtitles as well.

I paid $45. Only trick was when you change the files on the flash stick I found I had to unplug the NBox before it would see the new files. Presumably version 3 doesn't have this rather obvious flaw.

Just attach it to your TV's AVI input.

What kind of cable is used please ......  I have no idea what is an AVI input  

Scart mayeb?

What filesystem formats of the attached drives does it work with?   I could find no info through the link which specified this.

Thanks for any info you can supply.

regards.

[T6]

Just attach it to your TV's AVI input.

What kind of cable is used please ......  I have no idea what is an AVI input  

ROFL!  it is AV inputs lol, now more known as rca

about the files required to play bluray, those are available on synaptic right now but read the comments on the files

to burn bluray k3b can handle it, also nero for linux supports

[Was_Just19]

Thanks for the clarification about the connections

I have been searching about on the net and I found only one references to the filesystem of the externam drive which said .....  FAT 61 or FAT32. ......  are there size limitations on the video files or the partition size?

I have found nothing to indicate if the unit might see more than one partition on the plugged in drive.

Seems to be difficult to get solid info about it.

Lots of them being sold on ebay .....  but none seem to mention whether they are the HD version of not!

Lots more searching to do, as it seems an ideal way to carry a few movies about for viewing almost anywahere with a TV.

regards.

[dixonpete]

I've been impressed with it and probably will buy an NBox 3 for myself eventually. HDMI is just a neater cable format and my TV supports it.

From what I've heard these devices work well enough with the default file system set up on flash drives ( FAT?) and it can see my 2TB NTFS backup USB drive. I'm not sure it's fair to expect much more than that. I don't have the means to test Ext4 for example but I doubt it would work. You can navigate through sub-directories fine. I think it's best suited for USB sticks though. I've only heard 16GB sticks working though there's supposed to be no limit. I wonder about FAT doing more than that. Some of my videos were over 1GB.

And the previous poster was right, the inputs are AV1, AV2, HDMI1, HDMI2 etc for my TV. I guess after all these years seeing AVI files I just had AVI on the brain..

[nerdful1]

The yellow cable is nicknamed 'pond scum' in video quality references.
At the very least s-video will give a bit of improvement by removing some color squiggles, etc.

[Was_Just19]

it can see my 2TB NTFS backup USB drive

Thank you!

If it can play files from an NTFS partition then any file limitations of FAT are excluded from my worries.  

Although I would indeed prefer if it could read from ext2,3, or 4, I am happy enough that it is not limited to FAT.

regards.


EDIT
           Been having a look at the V3 and if I can find one here that would be my preference .....  it seems very capable ....  and looks a bit more solidly built ..... 

[coffeetime]

Did anyone actually try to play with BR in Linux? Which BR player/burner did you use? External/LG/Sony...?