Blu-Ray Drives

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Phuzzy4242
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Blu-Ray Drives

Post by Phuzzy4242 »   0 likes

I'm splitting this thread off from the "Movie Catalogs" thread.
Phuzzy4242 wrote:I'm getting a blu-ray burner to ease the pain. They're cheap enough that making two copies each (for safety) on 50GB DL disks are well worth it.
I got an internal LG dual-layer blu-ray burner for $99 at Best Buy but was wrong about it being cheap enough to make two copies each - single-layer BD-R discs were $23US for ten ($2.30 each) and dual-layer were $35US for three ($11.67 each). OUCH! I saw an ad for a 50-pack spindle of high-quality dual layer BD-R disks for $1300US ($2.60 each). DOUBLE OUCH!

I moved 100 GB to BD-R in about two hours (with verify ON which doubles the burn time, and spot testing each file to make sure it played OK) but burned two coasters because I tried to copy the almost-8GB [REL] Léon (1994) [Directors Cut] and it choked, so you're still limited in Windows to 4GB max. file size.

The LG drive is OK - it burns at 12X (but only reads at 10X - I wonder why), it's quiet, and its packaged burning software is similar to Nero. It comes with one blank BD-R, sata cable, standard-to-sata power cable adapter, and mounting screws. The software installer doesn't require you to install every app, which is something I like because a lot of bundled apps turn out to be crap. I installed everything anyway but haven't had a chance to look at anything but the burn app, which was similar to Nero. It also has an authoring app, label maker, photo/film collection app, backup app, etc.

People should be aware there are hardware prerequisites needed before you can play Blu-ray movies on the PC, mainly video card, memory, and video output (VGA isn't good enough). There's a bundled app that will test your system and let you know if it's compatible for watching blu-ray movies.

So, what are your experiences with blu-ray drives?
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ptguardian
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Re: Blu-Ray Drives

Post by ptguardian »   0 likes

I don't have one that burns blu-ray but I too have an LG. The biggest compliment to it is getting a powerful video card. No sense in going blu ray if you can't enjoy the HD picture. My card also has 3D playback and 2D to 3D conversion so I can watch all my FLM movies in 3D if wanted. If you don't have a 3D monitor or TV it does have capabilities for the red blue conversion for regular monitors. The software that came with the drive was limited so I paid for the full version of Cyberlink Power dvd. This software made all the difference in better playback.

I have not gone to burning on blu ray yet because the discs are way too expensive. Backing up to dvd is very cheap and the movies I have that I don't want to lose are on more than one hard drive. Hard drives do not have the failure rate that they used to and chances of having two hard drives fail is extremely small. I have had over 20 external hard drives in the past 12 years and have only had one that has failed and that one I was able to take the drive out of the case and put it in an external slave drive unit and still access the files on it. :D

If the blank discs ever come down on price I might consider getting a burner but with external hard drives getting cheaper every year it doesn't make sense. I bought a 3TB for a hundred bucks at Christmas and can get a small portable 500GB for $50 at anytime. Plus with external drives you can use them with external media players and watch your files on your TV where as most blu-ray players have very limited file codecs that they will read. ;)
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Phuzzy4242
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Re: Blu-Ray Drives

Post by Phuzzy4242 »   0 likes

I'm running an Asus Crosshair II mobo, AMD Athlon X2 64-bit processor, and 8 GB RAM, with NVIDIA nForce®780a SLI video - perfectly capable for blu-ray 2D and 3D. I just wanted to point out to people that vanilla VGA, even hi-res, can't drive blu-ray video output but you can still use it for data storage.

I deal with - literally - thousands of hard drives, from cheap portables to RAIDed servers, SANs and NAS. I guarantee if you have something valuable on a hard drive, the sucker will die on you, even new out-of-the-box. ;)

HDD prices have come down, and I expect BR to also eventually but I still see the need for 'permanent' mass storage. BTW, you can get a USB interface cable for SATA and IDE drives, both normal and laptop size - saves the hassle of putting the drives in a box.
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starfish21
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Re: Blu-Ray Drives

Post by starfish21 »   0 likes

That's what i do, phuzz,i've got about 6 or 7 internal Ide and Sata drives i use as external storage,i tend to keep buying bigger drives(latest was 3tb) so rather than throw the older ones away,i got an adapter from ebay,and just use them as external drives.
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