[SOLVED] ISO Blu-Ray Burner

[Appletax]

I need a blu ray burner for my gaming PC build, but am having issues finding one. There's barely any choices and most of them have a lot of cons/bad reviews. The LGs seem to have a bad rep, some are riplocked, some don't come with the software to play Blu Rays.

I'm very interested in the Pioneer BDR 2209 burner. It's the top-of-the-line burner made by Pioneer and seems to have a very good rep & it comes with blu ray playback software. One user notes that the burner cannot do blu ray quality scans. I don't know what that means. The main reason for buying this is to burn blu ray movies to my hard drive to make a movie server.

Pioneer BDR 2209
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827129076

Edit: bought the model above and it is fantastic

 

[kisk]

Not for certain, but I would probably blame bad reviews on burn quality/playback ability on the media, not the drive. LG is a solid manufacturer, and looking at the other positive reviews of the LG burners on Newegg this seems to verify that. The pioneer you listed only has one review. If it were me, I'd go with a higher reviewed item and buy decent media. GL!

As far as software, I wouldn't depend on the drive manufacturer to supply playback software.. that isn't their job and there are plenty of freeware solutions to view what you need.

Edit: Regardless, you're wanting the BR burner to rip so any device will do. Every single BR player will copy the data you need. Sure, some might give you slightly better burns, but again this is negligible compared to the quality of media.

 

[brandonkick]

As of right now there are no softwares out there that do a simple job of making a backup copy of a Blu-Ray movie.

Sly-Soft has a great solution for doing DVDs, in AnyDVD and CloneDVD and they are nearly one or two button clicks to make movie backups. They are regularly updated as protections are updated.

However, Sly-Soft's software to do Blu-Ray discs is still in the making and has been for over two years now. I wouldn't hold my breath on it.

Until a better and easier solution comes around there is no reason to go for a burner. I pulled the trigger on an LG unit back in 2010 when I rebuilt my gaming computer. I have to date burned 5 Blu-Ray movies on it, all of which were such a lengthy process that I wouldn't bother to do it on a regular basis. I think that was a 4X burner and now for the same money or cheaper you can get a 12X burner.

 

[SAG]

I have one of the LGs in my HTPC.
While I've never burned a BD (no reason to, I put all my movies on the datastore and watch them in XBMC), I've ripped quite a few with it (BD and DVD), burned many a DVD for take-a-long on road trips for the kids, and used it extensively for watching movies.
In those aspects, it has never failed me.

 

[TechPJC]

+1 for the LG products!

 

[Appletax]

I went with the Pioneer BDR-2209 BluRay writer because the company has a good rep, its aesthetically pleasing, 16x speed, it's the top of the line model, and Newegg took off $10 with a promo. I got it for $76.98.