Cheap UHD player with possible quality loss

[Sciencio]

Hello, I was wondering is it possible if unbranded UHD drives I am planning to get from china, would result in quality loss and the better option is to get the ones listed in the Reccomended drives for flashing post? I recently come across a lisitng in taobao that is UHD 4K player and the review says it works, but it have pioneer logo and never say the model name, is it possible a UHD player can be fake?

[Woodstock]

If it did, it wouldn't be a very good drive, would it? MakeMKV is asking for a COPY of what is on a disk, so getting a "lower resolution" would mean the drive is not rendering the contents of the disk properly.

[Sciencio]

Ah... So there will be risk that if I get a cheap player, that can happen?

[Woodstock]

Going by your message, where you speculated about "quality loss" from the drive. What would be the source of that quality loss?

"Unbranded" drives may be a quality product, or they may be trash. The lack of branding could be to keep who is being copied secret for a few months. Most brand name drives are manufactured in China, so these unbranded drives could be a copy of a Pioneer, LG or Asus drive with the label changed.

You cannot know this without examining and testing the product. Without experience, most people would be unable to say much about it. We do not know who the manufacturer is, or what their reputation for quality is.

[dcoke22]

MakeMKV uses the hash table included on the disc to verify the data read by the optical drive was correct. Generally speaking, if MakeMKV's attempt to rip a disc succeeds and a file is written, then it is a faithful copy of the data from the disc.

Regarding your 'unbranded' drive from China, if it works at all and if the rip succeeds, it'll be a faithful copy of what's on the disc. My expectation however, is that it might be unsuccessful a higher percentage of the time than one of drives from the list. Since the drive has a logo on it, it could be a drive that failed the quality acceptance test and should've been destroyed. If the unbranded drive is your only drive, that could make for a frustrating experience.

This is a classic time vs. money tradeoff.

[Sciencio]

I understand! Thank you guys so much for the explanation. I was afraid that if the optical drive missed out some data, but it is the software that verifies that! I checked the review and people say it was working.



This is how the optical external drive looks like, I never seen any model of pioneer that looks like this. It looks like a fake drive with pioneer logo

[Woodstock]

What looks improbable about the drive?

Searching for "pioneer uhd drive external 4K white" on google comes up with a lot of light-colored 4KUHD Pioneer drives. Without the "white", I get links to places selling just the black ones.

Pioneer wants money from more than just us who expect black...

[Coopervid]

I understand! Thank you guys so much for the explanation. I was afraid that if the optical drive missed out some data, but it is the software that verifies that! I checked the review and people say it was working.



This is how the optical external drive looks like, I never seen any model of pioneer that looks like this. It looks like a fake drive with pioneer logo

What's your country of residence? Based on that I could give some advice.