Ask Engadget HD: Best Blu-ray optical drive for my PC?
by Darren Murph 
posted Jan 14th 2009 at 12:23PM
"I'm looking to upgrade the optical drive in my HTPC with a Blu-ray drive. My hardware is new enough to support the demands of BD, but I want to make sure I get the best value in a Blu-ray burner. Obviously, speedier drives would be nice, but I'm okay with the next quickest thing to save a few bucks. Which drives have readers had success with?"
So, there you have it. What BD drive is currently packed tightly within your living room PC? Have you had any playback / compatibility issues? Spill the beans below.
Got a burning question that you'd love to toss out for Engadget HD (or its readers) to take a look at? Tired of Google's blank stares when you ask for real-world experiences? Hit us up at ask at engadgethd dawt com and keep an eye on this space -- your inquiry could be next.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
briaguya @ Jan 14th 2009 12:18PM
I have a sony BD-ROM drive and i have had no problems with it. I don't have a burner, but at $20+ per disc spending a ton on a first generation burner seems silly. Just get a $20 DVD burner and a Blu Ray reader and you should be set (when i bought it the sony was $150, about $20 more than some off brand but i've had good luck in the past with sony drives, and it's held true for this one.
b @ Jan 14th 2009 12:42PM
Luckily prices are dropping rapidly.
$3/disc - http://www.mwave.com/mwave/Skusearch.hmx?scriteria=AA72514
(I don't know how well these work)
abigcityfalcon @ Jan 15th 2009 2:09AM
I use the LG Super-Multi, model GGW-H20L, since it can play Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and I have a bunch of titles I love on HD-DVD. LG has a new one now I think that only does Blu-ray but burns at 8X speeds, model BH08.
I also have a standalone LG Blu-ray player. The video quality on my HTPC (with a ATI 4750 HD) is so much better than the stand-alone Blu-ray player its incomparable! It's really quite a big difference. The ATI video card took a minumum of tweaking to color settings to get it vastly superior to the standalone player. I highly recommend it. I've used PowerDVD 8 and ArcSoft TotalMedia, they both work flawlessly. I like ArcSoft better because it can also do HD-DVD (PowerDVD 8 only Blu), and it is integrated right into Vista Media Center! It also does the latest audio formats like TrueHD over analog. I like analog better, it seems to give much better sound than digital especially in music.
kevon27 @ Jan 14th 2009 12:25PM
BD players on a pc is a waste of time. Recording is expensive and the bluray playback software is garbage.
naikrovek @ Jan 14th 2009 12:31PM
Neither of those complaints will be accurate for very long. My HP laptop has a blu-ray player in it and the playback is flawless.
glenn s @ Jan 14th 2009 12:34PM
He asked what was the best player, not whether you approved of what he was planning to do. It is his time to waste in any case, if that is what you want to call it. I tend to agree with you that a stand alone player will be the easier solution and probably yield a better picture if you have the option, but there are also good reasons to have a PC drive, the most obvious of which is ripping the discs to .mkv files are sharing them on your home network.
DrXym @ Jan 14th 2009 12:42PM
I use Nero 7 and Backitup on a BD with no issue. You need the latest version but it works fine. As for playback, PowerDVD 7 works fine too for me, with the added benefit that since my drive is a hybrid it lets me rip HD DVDs too. Neither of these is even the most recent versions yet they work fine for me.
I don't accept the software is crap at all unless we're talking about Mac OS X.
Brett @ Jan 14th 2009 12:32PM
I had a Lite-On drive crap out on me about 3 months after I got it. Lite-On's support has been terrible and I have yet to send it in for an RMA.
I bought an LG drive at Best Buy on black Friday, and it has been working well so far. But, that's only been a couple months, so I can't speak too soon.
Silvio @ Jan 14th 2009 12:56PM
I got an Optiarc (Sony) BD drive for $89. Added it to my Vista Media Center and works fine. Unfortunately, Blu-Ray playback is not integrated into Vista MCE. Besides that, picture quality is great.
acme @ Jan 14th 2009 1:07PM
you should try some third party solutions like xbmc
glenn s @ Jan 14th 2009 8:58PM
@acme
xbmc is a great media center, but it does not do hardware accelerated video on any platform (yet). So it is only good for 1080 playback if you have a really beefy CPU ( > 3ghz dual core intel or maybe now the phenom 2 overclocked). For 720P you can get away with any mid range CPU. xbmc uses ffmpeg for its decoding and it is all software based at the moment. Oddly, the best shot at hardware accelerated video in xbmc right now is on Linux with Nvidia graphics, which is under development.
usacomp2k3 @ Jan 14th 2009 1:17PM
The software is still too far behind for me to buy a drive for an HTPC. I'm still hoping Windows7 will fix that little problem by integrating playback into Media Center (Or have a pay-for option to do so).
WebDev511 @ Jan 14th 2009 2:31PM
Supposedly Vista SP2 is supposed to support native playback of BD within the Media Center interface. Check the release notes to confirm that.
Fanfoot @ Jan 16th 2009 11:44AM
Sorry, no. Vista SP2 is adding support for burning BD DATA disks, not blu-ray disk playback.
nothing @ Jan 14th 2009 1:25PM
the only reason i have delayed the purchase of the blu-ray drive/burner for the media center is because the majority of sounds cards currently available just dont take advantage of the new codecs. i plan on getting an asus xonar to test it out with hdmi sound and if it works this will definatly be a huge step close to this setup being the norm i believe.
Evinyatar @ Jan 14th 2009 1:31PM
I have an LG GGC-H20L in my system. I works great for bluray playback as well as those few HD DVD's I still have lying around. It's quiet, does what it's supposed to and not too expensive.
Rick Dailey @ Jan 14th 2009 1:42PM
I second that, I have the same drive, as does a coworker, and couldn't be happier with it. Cheap on newegg too. And although it comes bundled with software, I would recommend ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre for playback. It integrates with Media Center, is fast and reliable in my experience.
Ubertrout @ Jan 14th 2009 1:41PM
I don't actually own it (major caveat, I know), but the LG GGW-H20 always seemed like a great buy to me...it can read both HD formats (not essential since HD-DVD died, but still useful especially for picking up HD-DVD on the cheap), and write Blu and regular DVDs. Best of all, it's inability to write HD-DVD discs is now meaningless.
Prey521 @ Jan 14th 2009 2:26PM
I have the LG GGC-H20L connected to my HTPC via USB and it works great. Plays both BluRays and HD-DVD's, though I only use it for BD movies since I already have a Toshiba HD-A2.
L3 @ Jan 14th 2009 2:31PM
I would love a BD drive. I almost bought a SONY at Office Depot for $149, but it would not fit in my laptop.
I would have duct taped it to the underside, but I want to keep the unit level.
No need for burner for me, I am moving data to a hard drive, not creating more physical media.
Jason @ Jan 14th 2009 2:39PM
I'm holding off until Blu-ray burners come down in price. My current hardware would have a hard time playing back Blu-ray video, anyway.
Thunderdome @ Jan 14th 2009 8:36PM
I agree with everyone else in that recording to BR is rediculously cost prohibitive right now. A 500GB HDD on geeks.com will set you back $40...the cost of 2 blu-ray discs. Go that route if you need to back stuff up. If BR ever does really take off, BD-R drives will tumble in price pretty quickly...wait til then to get a burner...for now, just get the LG reader on newegg. It's 6x, burns DVDs, and you can't be the price. I've had no problems with mine in the 2 months or so that I've had it.
madgamer @ Jan 14th 2009 6:44PM
I'll add another vote for the LG drives, as I've had the GGC for over a year and have had 0 issues out of it playing back both formats.
SimbaDogg @ Jan 14th 2009 7:22PM
i like everyone else am waiting for a a bit more of a drop for hardware prices. Once prices hit around $150, i'm sold. And things are looking good w/ the $3 per disc that was posted above...hell of a lot better than the $12.99+ i remember seeing before
Mark @ Jan 15th 2009 4:45AM
You can buy BD drives for less than $150 for PCs right now. Most ship with playback and burning software too.
subs @ Jan 14th 2009 7:59PM
I have an LG BD drive that I purchased on Black Friday from bestbuy.com for $99. Works great, I use it with the "My Movies" plugin on VistaMCE and Cyberlink PowerDVD
knome @ Jan 14th 2009 7:55PM
I have a liteon drive i got for 99 bucks. Works perfectly fine.
Dave @ Jan 15th 2009 5:06AM
I would say that Lite-On writers are pretty good too.
Sean @ Jan 15th 2009 12:47PM
I have a Gateway P-7811 FX laptop, it seems to be a pretty strong gaming machine, but has no Blu-Ray drive. Is a USB Blu-Ray drive a viable option?
Kurgan @ Jan 15th 2009 1:20PM
I picked up a Buffalo Technology USB combo drive (HD-DVD read/Blu-ray write/DVD write) at Circuit City (about to shut its doors) for $99. I couldn't pass it up for the price.
Fanfoot @ Jan 16th 2009 11:58AM
Looking around a bit, the cheapest NAME BRAND BD-R 25GB disks I can find are still in the $7 to $8 per disk range for singles, though it looks like spindles of 15 can get them down to $5 or so.
Still too expensive really. And that's for the single layer. The DL 50GB disks are still in the stratosphere around $24.
I'm not sure what I need these for anyway. Sending photos? CDR is fine. Sending DivX movies? DVD-R is fine. Unless you're burning your own HD movies for distribution to relatives, and you just might want to use DVD-Rs for that too, I'm not clear why we need these burners that bad right now.
As others have said, buy a cheap external USB drive for backup.