Best Blu Ray DVD Burner Guide

What are the advantages of Blu-ray Burners?

The main advantage is that you can just pack so much information onto a Blu-ray disc (BD). They will hold six times as much data as a normal DVD.

If you store information of any kind on disc (data, software, music, video, photos etc) it will cut your data storage space by a huge amount.

You can make your own copies of Sony Play Station 3 games.

Since the HD DVD format was abandoned by manufacturers, a couple of years ago, Blu-ray has no rivals for high density disc storage and will be supported for many years to come. All HD movies on disc are sold as Blu-ray alone.

The Disadvantages

The prices are still high for both burners and discs, though they are falling all the time.

You need to look out for compatibility issues. If you are planning on storing high definition home movies, for example, be aware that some HD video cameras were made for the old HD DVD standard. File conversion is possible but time consuming. Check for PC and Mac compatibility. It is also worth checking connectivity- firewire or USB- and making sure it is suitable for your needs.

Speed Issues When Burning Blu-ray

The speed of writing to a disc is limited by the USB connection. USB 2 is the standard right now. The best you can get from USB 2 is 6x burning.

USB 3 will increase burning speed for Blu-ray to 12x. If you see a faster burning speed than 6x being advertised you should be wary- the machine might be able to write fast but the data can usually only be transferred quickly enough to allow 6x.

Of course, if you have swapped out current standard motherboards for newer ones with USB 3 support you can benefit from the faster burners right now. There are also PCI-e cards just hitting the market that will provide USB 3 connectivity for older motherboards without too much trouble.

Tried and Tested Blu-ray Burners

For a while the Sony BWU-200s was the first choice for usability and reliability. More appealing on price and speed was the LG GGW-H20L. These 2 models dominated the market for a long while after their launch in 2007. They can both still be found so are worth mentioning.

The Sony BWU-200S can record BD-R (blu-ray discs, writable) at up to 4X speed, delivering a full 50BG disc in about 45 minutes. It offers 16X max recording of standard DVD±discs. The BWU-200S is fully compatible with all versions of Microsoft’s Vista and XP operating system.

In reviews, it was criticized on price grounds after hitting the market at around $600, two years ago. Recently prices have dropped to around $300 dollars in some stores but the unit is no longer manufactured and it is getting harder to find.

The Sony’s main rival was the LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray Drive/HD DVD Reader.

The GGW-H20L was the first Blu-ray Disc burner to support 6X speed for writing to BD-R. It can read but not write to HD DVD but then HD DVD is a dead technology now.

It is available at around $200- $250 on Ebay and, from time to time, on Amazon

LaCie 301856U d2 Blu-ray Professional BD-R, BD-RE Drive - USB 2.0 Firewire

This is a professional piece of hardware retailing at around $400. It is aimed primarily at professional video authoring houses and is a sturdily made stand alone external drive. With old style USB 2 it will write at 6x. With USB 3 it can give 8x

You can buy online here

http://www.jr.com/lacie/pe/LAC_301856U/

Pioneer 5x Internal Blu-ray/DVD/CD Combo Drive (Black)

A quality internal drive with plenty of Corel software included.

• Serial ATA Interface
• Reads up to 2x speed
• Writes up to 12x speed

The Buffalo Burner

This is the future happening now (in Japan at least). This burner from buffalo gives a 12x burning speed with a USB 3 port and 7x burning with USB 2, the present standard. At the moment it is only available in Japan at around $500 but it will soon be coming your way.

Reviews of Buffalo's blu-ray dvd burner and Buffalo’s super fast hard drives and data transfer.

http://www.engadget.com/tag/Buffalo/

If you want to copy Blu-ray DVD's with the least trouble, duplicators are available.Prices start at around $600

Just to prove that a quality Blu-ray DVD player need not be expensive, Amazon are offering this LG model at just over a hundred dollars.

Software is worth thinking about if you are planning on buying a blu-ray burner. Some burners come with a good range of applications for file conversions, others do not.

If you need additional conversion software these two companies offer good solutions.

AVCHD Video Converter Software

If you have a HD DVD camcorder you can convert the format to write on Blu-ray dics with this software: http://www.avchdconverter.org/

Blu-ray Rippers

Blu Ray Ripper is probably the most advanced solution to file conversion issues around blu-ray right now for windows operating systems. The AVCware blue-ray ripper converts blu-ray videos to High-Definition as well as Standard-Definition video files. http://www.avcware.com/

It allows you to rip blu ray discs for playing on apple TV, X box, and mobile media. Formats supported: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, AVCHD (*.m2ts, *.mts), MKV, AVI, HD WMV, MPEG2/MPEG-4 TS HD, WMV, DivX, MPEG,