Which Blu ray drive is best for price/preformance?

[liquidsnake718]

Which one is the best value for money, I think TOms should be doing an article on more BD drives as they come out, anyway Im also going to replace my BD burner, will the GPU be an issue? I currently have an EVGA 9800GTX but its just 2xDVI, is it better to get a new GPU with a direct HDMI instead of using the converter? and Which drive is best to get?

 

[evongugg]

Install the latest drivers first. Either DVI or HDMI are fine.

Test that your PC is ready to play Blu-ray Discs

http://www.cyberlink.com/english/support/blu-ray_support/diagnosis.jsp

 

[zozmus]

I bought a Light On 4x burner in august of 08 @ $250.00.
It seemed to work well but I was not willing to load a commercial BD disc or DVD into the drive because of all of the nastiness that gets loaded into your system once the disc sees a computer. I found that once you have to do a reinstall of the OS... you have to use a IDE drive to do the install (a base level of control) SATA wont work for the install.
The BD burner has a wonderful amount of capacity but I now feel burned because of the drive failing two months out from the warranty... one minute siting there idling fine the next making bizarre noises.
I'm not going to buy another BD burner until I can get a reliable one for less than $100.00... I hope that this helps you make an informed decision.

 

[Viper187]

I'm wanting to know which drive is most reliable too. Half the reviews on NewEgg are by complete idiots that either talk about Win7 or say that it plays movies great but they haven't actually tried to burn anything yet. I'm also pissed that these things don't read HD-DVDs anymore. The LG ones used to. As I understand it, both BD and HD-DVD are blue laser, so shouldn't it just be a simple firmware issue? Why drop read support?

 

[ruffrob]

Got the Pioneer BDR 205 yesterday for $199 from RunTechMedia.Placed it in the same type enclosure (Vantec NexStar DX) as my LG GGW H20L,the Pioneer BDR 205 works just great. It burned a free in the box Optical Quantum 4x BR disc @10 X. I burned a backup of WALL-E and the backup was just as vbrant as the original. Those discs can be found at $2 of $3 a piece,sometimes including a Blu-Ray case It was what I expected and fortunately,it's what I got. NewEgg now has it for $199... As for the issue with reading HD DVD ,you need to get a specific HD DVD drive like the one I mentioned above (LG GGW H20L) in order to play HD DVDs. No firmware upgrade to a Blu Ray drive will allow you to play HD DVD discs. If you need this capability ,get the same drive seen here: http://cgi.ebay.com/LG-Blu-ray-Burn...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item2a04855c00

This was the lowest price I found, all other places attempt to sell it high ,because the drive was recently discontinued, and no drive since has had it's versatility. Good Luck ,this drive won't be available for long

 

[liquidsnake718]

Got the Pioneer BDR 205 yesterday for $199 from RunTechMedia.Placed it in the same type enclosure (Vantec NexStar DX) as my LG GGW H20L,the Pioneer BDR 205 works just great. It burned a free in the box Optical Quantum 4x BR disc @10 X. I burned a backup of WALL-E and the backup was just as vbrant as the original. Those discs can be found at $2 of $3 a piece,sometimes including a Blu-Ray case It was what I expected and fortunately,it's what I got. NewEgg now has it for $199... As for the issue with reading HD DVD ,you need to get a specific HD DVD drive like the one I mentioned above (LG GGW H20L) in order to play HD DVDs. No firmware upgrade to a Blu Ray drive will allow you to play HD DVD discs. If you need this capability ,get the same drive seen here: http://cgi.ebay.com/LG-Blu-ray-Burn...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item2a04855c00

This was the lowest price I found, all other places attempt to sell it high ,because the drive was recently discontinued, and no drive since has had it's versatility. Good Luck ,this drive won't be available for long

how long did it take to burn Wall E? How many Gigs was it? 25? I cant wait till the tech gets cheaper and more BDRW come out, Imaging burning such high quality movies in full HD.... Thus far I only have 4 BD movies for my PS3 and the prices are still not justified

 

[ruffrob]

WALL - E is/was a little over 8G and took about 12 minutes,and is 1080p. Playing the file prior to burning in VLC Player can tell you the file's inherent resolution by going to Tools/Codec Information. It will tell you the resolution and the channels of sounds the file possesses. I'm currently looking to get two BDMV files on one disc,but am unsure how it's done.. Those Optical Quantum discs are pretty good at the 2 to 3 bucks I pay for them,although here's some sound advice. Buy a BD-RE disc to test your burns,I have a Sony 25G and a 50G and when a burn fails after a test in the Sony BDP-300 or Panasonic BD 35 players I have ,I just start again. But I got it down. Use MultiAVCHD and/or TSMuxer for BD authoring and ImgBurn (all free) ,and you'll be good.

 

[Viper187]

I'm not so much interested in copying BD discs as merging annoying multi DVD releases onto BD-R. I hate disc swapping. I was also considering it for data backup purposes, but I think I'm going to pick up some spare HDDs to just hot swap. Then maybe use a few BD-Rs for redundancy on more important stuff once I pick out a drive. It just sucks there seem to be so few reviews on these things it's hard to know who really makes good drives anymore. Is the Plextor one on NewEgg really just a rebranded Pioneer? I've heard it mentioned. I can't believe anyone would actually pay the extra $100 just for a retail box over getting one of the OEM drives available.

 

[ruffrob]

I believe the Plextor IS a rebadged Pioneer,I've heard this too many times to think otherwise, I've had Plextor before and they were nothing but pleasure ,matter of fact I still have one,and refuse to get rid of it,because it works so well. But this news is making me wonder if their long reliable history has come to an end?? Can't see myself paying another C note for a Plextor bezel...

 

[liquidsnake718]

is plexor better thanthe basic samsung model?

 

[ruffrob]

I have a Samsung SH182 DVD burner for some time now. It's reliable,never had any issues,seems to burn Memorex blanks at the rated 16x,when I had my XP box,and now that I have Win 7 Ultimate. I've never really considered a comparison of Plextor vs.Samsung because I haven't had a problem with either one. Maybe someone else can chime it with their preference...