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Can I hook say a Samsung BD-P4600 to my computer & read even data discs on the computer? or is a Blu-ray player different from a Blu-ray drive?

As guidelines prohibit asking for a shopping recommendation, merely a Blu-ray player versus a Blu-ray drive versus any other devices' general price efficiencies' differences would be ok.

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We also take software "shopping" questions as off topic. Read here for more info. If you have any specific complaints please go to Meta Super User. Rollbacks and edit messages are not visible to everyone. – slhck Jan 29 at 12:54
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A Blu-ray player is definitely different from a computer Blu-ray drive. The Blu-ray player (or for that matter any Optical Disc player) is essentially designed for reading predefined patterns of content off an optical media. In this case, only video.

The software to make sense of whatever is read is actually a firmware ("kind of" permanent software specifically made for a purpose and hardware configuration).

A computer disc drive (BD/DVD/CD) on the other hand just reads the data in chunks, does error correction as needed. It's up to the software and/or hardware on the PC to derive meaning out of the content being read.

So essentially you'd need a BD ROM (cheapest PC mechanism) to read a Blu-ray disc.

The cheapest one I could find on amazon is an LG UH12LS series BD ROM/DVD Writer

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thanks, what I was wondering. would it be possible to buy a cheap blu-ray player & (easily-enough) change the firmware? – joe Jan 28 at 22:11
No, it won't be possible. – IUnknown Jan 28 at 22:19
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A Blu-ray player contains such a drive … so in theory, yes, but in practice, most probably not. A standard computer drive might be cheaper after all. @joe – slhck Jan 28 at 22:34
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