Recomendations for a Blu Ray burner
 

I've been looking at New Egg and Tiger Direct for a Blu Ray burner. Reading the customer reviews I'm left in quite a quandary. I'm not that concerned about price, but I'd like to get about the best one. I'd like it to basically burn Blu Ray disks without being too picky about the media. And I'd like it if it included software where I could watch a Blu Ray movies on my computer. It most definitely needs to play on stand alone Blu Ray players. If it would play on Sony PS3 that would be a nice bonus as well.

Right now I have XP 64bit with Sony Vegas Pro 8. I just bought a copy of Win 7 64 bit which I plan on upgrading to soon.

Thanks ahead for any recommendations.

The Videoguys recommend the Pioneer BD205. I just bought one for my new system. In my older machine I've been using an LG which works fine... the only caveat is that many (including myself) have had issues with the LG and Win7. For me the issues were solved by making sure the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (latest version) was installed.

Thanks Adam, I just checked out http://www.google.com/products/catal...d=0CCAQ8wIwAg#

And it's seems that everyone is giving it a very good rating. Just what I was looking for.

Hi Dan,

Just to second Adam's suggestion, I also have the Pioneer BD205. I've used it with Adobe's Encore CS5 fairly recently and it turned out good (played on a PS3 and on a 52" flat screen). I've never burned a blu ray movie disc before and I was surprised how easy it was (editing from Premiere CS5 and burning with Encore CS5)

But I did read some reviews that the blu ray software that comes bundled with the burner wasn't very good; so I didn't install it.

Best,

I have used two LG burners. Very reliable. Now using it with Win 7 and I don't need Intel matrix driver. Basically it works just out of the box. Price is good.

I probably should have specified that is it the LG H20L that has a problem with Win7, and LG flat out says it won't work with that OS. It does, but it took me a week of troubleshooting to make it seen by the OS. I'm sure newer LGs don't have this problem.

I've been using a Pioneer BD-205 with Win 7 since last year and also have a BD-205 in an external enclosure that I run with a Vista 64/8gb laptop. I mostly author DVDs in Encore, but I've also made CDs with Sound Forge/CD Architect. When I'm making multiple copies for distribution, I usually burn to an image file and use Nero to burn the copies (although 16x burns work on most players, it can still be a problem for some of my customers and I so usually burn at 12x.) I've mostly worked with Sony 16x printable DVD-R and Taiyo Yuden 16x printable DVD-R. Have also used several brands of dual-layer DVDs including Memorex. I've burned Blu-Ray disks using Sony, Memorex and Verbatim brands of disks. No coasters, yet.

Hey guys...
Thank you very much for the recommendation and I'm probably going to go with pioneer, However I'm getting a little confused.. There seems to be two models? BDR-205BK VS BDR-205BKRP?
Look at ]Search for Computer Hardware & Computer Software @ MEGABUY.COM.AU
Besides including software, is there any other difference between the two?

Also is there a need for us to buy it with software since we use our own DVD authoring software?

Thanks in advance

I think the software package is the only difference.

While my drives came with the software (that being how videoguys.com sold them) I've never used the software. I mainly use Adobe Encore to author disks and occasionally use it for burning when I only need to make a single copy. For multiple copies, I use Encore to make an image file and use Nero to burn the image files to disk.

I threw away Nero long time ago. It's just getting bloated and bloated. Now I use ImgBurn. It's a great free software to use. I use it to burn DVD folder generated by Encore or ISO for bluRay.

Thanks for this info guys. Just ordered the Pioneer as an upgrade to my 2+ year old 2x burner. Should make things go a LOT faster!

Thank you indeed for your prompt reply guys!

I'm placing an order for BDR-205BK (without Software) and a NexStar NST-530SU casing...

Ok guys, that worked great and I haven't had any problems yet.

However, I'm not in need of a second external BD burner but the NST-530SU are out of stock EVERYWHERE and ETA is about 2 months the least...

What's a good alternative to this external case (hopefully within the same price range)

Thanks in advance!