Internal Serial ATA Blu-ray BD-ROM Drive
by Sony
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List Price: Category: PC Accessory See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Internal Serial ATA Blu-ray BD-ROM Drive
Customer Review: Sony BDU
Summary: 3 Stars
Alothough its a good product i had an issue with my hard disk. Whenever i connect this drive i was not able to see one of my harddisk in BIOS. Thats the only issue i faced. I updated bios of MB and updated firmware of the drive its fine.Customer Review: Mildly recommending to friends as a best bang for the buck
Summary: 2 Stars
The whole purpose of buying these drives is to watch blu-ray movies. With players now as low as $200, and even $150 when on sale, I would recommend getting a player instead. Here's why:
I got the player for a low $79 on black friday. Even with this deal, it's not quite the steal it seems to be. At that price you get the drive and the bundled software. I popped in Transformers blu-ray. There was so much aliasing when running Cyberlink BD. The text and graphics were not as crisp as expected. The problem was the bundled software. You need to upgrade to Cyberlink ultra to get the full graphics as expected from blu-ray. That's another $100.
So $79+$100=179. Get a player instead if your purpose is to just watch movies (not read data).
Customer Review: Not worth the effort. Needs a powerful PC to work.
Summary: 1 Stars
This drive failed after two hours of use and I RMAed it. If you decide to give this or any Blu-Ray drive a try test your system first to make sure that it is powerful enough and complaint with HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection). The drive comes with Power DVD HD from Cyberlink. Go to the Cyberlink web site and download BD_HD_Advisor.exe and run it to make sure your system will run this drive.
Supposedly even if your computer is not HDCP compliant this drive will still work at a lower video resolution (less than 1080P). However on my computer it didn't work, maybe it was because the drive was near death. I can record and watch 720P video perfectly on my computer but the downgraded playback of this drive was very choppy and unwatchable.
Added 02-21-2008. I want to clarify a couple points:
This drives software will sniff your computer to make sure that you have an HDMI connection to your TV or computer monitor so that the copy protection scheme will work. If you do not have an HDMI connection this drive will not play back at 1080P it will play at a lower resolution. Most people will not notice the difference and assume that they are getting 1080P like they paid for. If you do not have an HDMI connection stick with DVDs because Blu-Ray will be a waste of money for you. A DVI connection can play 1080P and beyond perfectly well the only reason an HDMI connection is needed is for the copy protection. Also, decrypting Blu-Ray copy protection uses a lot of CPU power and adds unnecessarily to CPU overhead.
I bought a Sony Drive figuring that I would get a high quality device. When the drive failed after only 2 hours (or maybe it never worked correctly) I lost some of my confidence in the Sony Brand. I might give this drive another chance after other people try it and like it and the price drops a lot but for now I am sticking with DVDs.
Added 02-26-2008: I have just learned that there are a few HDCP compliant DVI TVs out there but the vast majority of DVI in/outs on TVs and Video cards are not HDCP compliant.
The main reason that I gave this Sony BDUX10S drive a single star is because the downgraded play back is so lame. I knew ahead of time that I didn't have an HDCP compliant PC or TV. My PC has plenty of CPU and Video to playback 1080P but my 61" HDTV does not have HDMI and can only display up to 720P or 1080i. I figured that the downgraded playback would be 720P or 1080i, that's OK my computer displays 1080i to my TV. However the downgraded playback that I received was a very fuzzy 480i on my computer and a black window (with sound) on my TV.
I have an elaborate PC based media center. I own over 300 DVDs but I stopped buying DVDs about a year ago in anticipation that Blu-Ray would be the next format and I didn't want to waste money on DVDs that I would just want to upgrade later. I figured that Sony would win the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray war because of it's experience in the BetaMax vs VHS war (I owned a BetaMax, ouch) and let's face it Blu-Ray is a much better name than HD-DVD.
So the upshot is that in the last year I haven't purchase any new DVD's and I will not purchase any more DVD's since it is a dead format. But it won't do me any good to buy Blu-Ray disks until I upgrade my TV in maybe two years. If Sony wants me to buy their movies they should sell a player that will work with my perfectly good two year old HDTV.
Customer Review: Have fun getting this to work consistently
Summary: 1 Stars
Save yourself the pain. Just buy a normal blu-ray player separate from your computer. Sometimes I could get the blu-ray player to work great. But often I'm re-installing drivers to get it running everytime Vista (64 bit ultimate) has a significant update. Currently I can't get it running after updating my Soundblaster audio card. Sometimes the blu-ray won't recognize a disc (however after a few restarts it might), or sometimes it will play but there will be no sound. Or sometimes, like now, I can't get it to work despite having re-installed and updating the blu-ray driver as well as the Cyber-link blu-ray player program. So I give up - I'm going to buy a normal blu-ray player.Customer Review: Sony BDUX10S very disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars
The Sony BDUX10S Blu-Ray drive was intermittently recognized by my system. Sometimes I would have to boot the PC two or three times before the BIOS would recognize the drive. Sometimes it would cause the PC to hang and not boot into Windows at all.
I tried the drive in a second PC, and had the exact same experience. Was it a defective drive or a design problem? I don't know, but I returned the drive for a refund (no exchanges were permitted). I am going to try a Pioneer BD drive next.