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[zoom+slomo]

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/1159641-REG/black_box_avsc_hdmi_video_component_composite_signal_to_hdmi.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwzJmlBhBBEiwAEJyLu8K4hjaIQ0Eyjy1C5Gs9x1kXjjcYevkEgIGPSCBBLPm45VD2S_d2NhoCDsMQAvD_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-RTX-A2000-Laptop-GPU-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.532536.0.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/Home/Blu-ray-Disc/Elite-Blu-ray-Disc-Players/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/Computer/Computer+Drives/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?


 
 

[eve]

Not the answer you're looking for but, OLED. The last few gens have been really impressive and easily the closest thing to the good broadcast CRTs I've seen.

It's not just the perfect black bars, the *motion* is insane. My friend who has a bunch of PVMs (and who almost gave me one before I went in this direction) was floored by the way I set up my C2. She stopped buying PVMs and slowly moved her stuff over to OLEDs. According to her, beyond some professional level retro gaming stuff, the OLEDs are a very capable replacement.

Low key like, I don't keep a broadcast / 'professional' monitor running anymore. 95% of stuff I can start and finish on my desk C2. If it's for the web? Easy. For broadcast? You'd be surprised. It took a month or two to like, in my head figure out the limits and be able to take those into account but it's a total game changer.


I output video in a ~120hz container (~100 for the less common 25/50 stuff) and that's seemed to work best for me. BFI is sort of up to you.
For gaming, I use RESHADE to 'fix' blacks in games who either have artistically 'difficult' post processing or just problematic post processing. What I've found is ideal is taking the last 2 not black, black 'levels' and pushing them down to 0 (you can also sort of do something similar on the LG displays, 'black stabilizer' I believe). Most recent games seem to do a good job at their post processing but older ones may need a little more love. I don't consider this a big change, I tend to use RESHADE anyways since I like to handle grain on my own vs in game.

[zoom+slomo]

Not the answer you're looking for but, OLED. The last few gens have been really impressive and easily the closest thing to the good broadcast CRTs I've seen.

It's not just the perfect black bars, the *motion* is insane. My friend who has a bunch of PVMs (and who almost gave me one before I went in this direction) was floored by the way I set up my C2. She stopped buying PVMs and slowly moved her stuff over to OLEDs. According to her, beyond some professional level retro gaming stuff, the OLEDs are a very capable replacement.

Low key like, I don't keep a broadcast / 'professional' monitor running anymore. 95% of stuff I can start and finish on my desk C2. If it's for the web? Easy. For broadcast? You'd be surprised. It took a month or two to like, in my head figure out the limits and be able to take those into account but it's a total game changer.

Yes, not the answer I need for the next year or so, because I don't know if a ~55" OLED is too big for my bedroom. And as I have hundreds of dollars in Sony card points, it would have to be a Sony OLED. But as my bedroom is ~ 12 ft x 16 x 8, what are the considerations of screen size vs. brightness setting vs. room size for heat emissions in a dimly lit room with the windows and drapes usually closed?

Another issue is that I watch a lot of 1.33:1 content; vintage movies and TV shows. And I HATE the vertical bars you get with a widescreen TV. Indeed, this is the primary reason why I've stuck with a 32" CRT for all this time-and also because, however strangely, the horizontal bars I get watching widescreen content on my 4:3 CRT doesn't annoy me half as much.

But please try this: Play a pre-1953 movie or a pre-2000 TV episode on your LG C2 (55"?) OLED. How close do you have to sit to where the screen size overshoots your view of the vertical bars? That might at least solve  that problem I have with OLEDs, since the industry refuses to make a ~ 48" 4:3 OLED.