Dear Lifehacker My laptop came with a Blu-ray drive, but I can't seem to play Blu-rays with it, and everyone says I need to buy extra expensive soft ...

OK, today my rant - copy protection mechanisms used on game CDs and DVDs which mean that you have to have the game in the CD/DVD drive in order to be able to play it.

The same principle works for installing software from a DVD disc on a computer without a drive, and for playing audio CDs – although ripping the music from the disc to the hard drive or a USB ...

Optical drives let your computer read and interact with discs like CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. However, they're quickly becoming outdated.

The CD was the first kind of optical disc, initially designed without regard for computer storage. The first prototype arrived in 1979 to play back music but was adapted into the CD-ROM format in 1985 ...

Unfortunately, Blu-ray discs aren't supported by default in our favorite media center application, XBMC. Sure, you can rip Blu-rays, but that takes forever, and you want to watch it now. Here's ...

The music video is the "Enhanced" part, but the way they structure the CD's makes them a royal PITA to play on a computer. IIRC, one way to get around it is to use a CD-ripping program like CDex ...