Need blu-ray burner/media recommendations

smhontz wrote on 9/17/2012, 7:17 PM
I want to try burning blu-rays from the videos I've edited in Vegas, outputting thru DVD-A. I'm looking to purchase an internal blu-ray burner to fit in a drive slot in an HP Pavilion computer (Win7, 64bit).

From doing a little poking around in NewEgg, I see a wide variety of "This burner is great!" to "This burner is junk!", even on the same burner. I also understand that you have to purchase separate software if you want to play blu-rays on your PC.

Do any of you have burner, playback software, and BD media recommendations?

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 9/17/2012, 7:28 PM
In the current market Sept 2012 USA - stick with the Pioneer BD Burner series - very reasonable prices - will perform very well. If you are interested in being to quality check burned Blu-ray discs after the burn -Pioneer lacks the firmware to do it -otherwise this company is a good choice.

Setting up Blu-ray video playback on the PC can be tricky and is usually not productive. Better for you to invest in a test-bed of stand alone Blu-ray players ( I recommend 2 or 3 at least that are different) for your playback control and quality testing.
PeterDuke wrote on 9/17/2012, 8:10 PM
"If you are interested in being to quality check burned Blu-ray discs after the burn -Pioneer lacks the firmware to do it "

I have a Pioneer and quite happy with it. However, I wanted to check the burn quality, so I also bought a Lite-On iHBS312. I burn with the Pioneer and check the quality with the Lite-On and Nero DiscSpeed (free). I haven't done any checks yet to see which actually burns better. I'll wait until I need two copies of a BD since the blanks are still a bit too expensive to waste on experimentation.

I like Cyberlink PowerDVD for playback of DVDs and BDs. I tested several other players some time ago but don't know whether I kept my test results. Anyway, later versions may have fixed the problems I found.