Just using a Playstation sounds like it won't work or will be a huge time sink.
Blu ray optical drives are way more expensive than I thought
The copy protections on Blu rays are exceptionally annoying, to the extent where there is really only one closed source software -- MakeMKV -- that can work around them. This post goes into some interesting details.
Finding a drive that is known to work with MakeMKV is a pain. There's a brand called Pioneer that seems promising but they have stopped producing bluray drives ~~went out of business last year~~. I have no idea which model works, and it's common that secondhand sellers will swap enclosures and pass it off as a different model.
Sometimes you need to flash the firmware on the drive to make it work with 4K UHD discs.

I was going to try ripping a Blu-ray that I bought recently, since I couldn't find a quality rip anywhere, but I'm pretty turned off from the whole prospect at this point.

Anyway I'm not really asking for a specific reply, I just thought this topic was interesting and I'm curious what people think about Blu rays and optical media in general. Does the future seem bleak? Are we going to be stuck with shitty WebDLs for most new content? Or is physical media here to stay?

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[–] flamiera@kbin.melroy.org 6 points 1 week ago

Best Buy is trying to make it a trend for retailers to stop selling physical media, with Target only selling them online. A lot of tech companies now have basically exited from optical media, with fewer weighing their options.

Physical media still has a place but it's on slow-burn right now, where we're seeing major players dropping out from bothering with them, so in the oncoming years, we're going to have to rely on grabbing them out in the wild or hope third party manufacturers keep it alive.