Need New Optical Drive: DVD or Blu Ray?

[SaurusX]

My old DVD burner is seemingly burnt out. It can successfully turn any disc into a coaster with 100% efficiency. Now the question is should I buy a new DVD burner or step up to a Blu Ray/DVD burner? Granted, my use for a Blu Ray burner would probably be quite limited, but I don't know what the future trends look like and whether things are really moving to Blu Ray or just sticking with DVD. Do games even come on Blu Ray? Opinions anyone?

 

[kleinkinstein]

This is the future. Go pick up a $15 drive and just ride DVD until it's death.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Since prices have fallen go for the bd-rw.

 

[SaurusX]

Well, I went with the ASUS BD-R drive that has the rebate on Amazon and Newegg. With my $50 'zon gift card from xmas the drive will be ~$16 AR. With so few $$$ out of my wallet I felt like it was a deal I couldn't pass up. 🙂

 

[bigrash]

Might as well go with bluray these days.

 

[Kerry56]

Pioneer and LG are still making blu ray drives that are good quality. I'm not a fan of Lite-on and their clones.

You need good quality blank media, and that is getting more scarce. Verbatim AZO (not their Life Series) and Taiyo Yuden are still making good dvds. FTI under the Smart Blu brand and Panasonic make the best blu ray. Verbatim blu ray is ok.

 

[FAUguy]

I'm thinking of buying the new Pioneer BDR-2208 even though my Plextor PX-716 DVD burner is going strong after 7 years.

 

[SaurusX]

I went through a lot of experimentation before finally settling on Verbatim as the best brand for DVD's. I can't tell you the number of times I gambled on Memorex or Imation and got burned.

 

[bononos]

I went through a lot of experimentation before finally settling on Verbatim as the best brand for DVD's. I can't tell you the number of times I gambled on Memorex or Imation and got burned.

Memorax is terrible. 2 yr old disks look very bad on quality scans, much much worse then the 6 yr old TDk/Verbatims I tested. TDKs are out of the business after selling their brand name to Imation. Verbatims use Mitsubishi disks which are very high quality. Since TY bought the JVC brand name, JVC should be top quality.

 

[FAUguy]

I went through a lot of experimentation before finally settling on Verbatim as the best brand for DVD's. I can't tell you the number of times I gambled on Memorex or Imation and got burned.

Two weeks ago, NewEgg had the Pioneer BDR-2208 on sale, so I purchased it along with this BD-R media.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817132085
At the time it was $47+6 shipping. Since then I've burned about 20 BD discs using this drive and media, and all play just fine. Since the media is on sale for $35 with free shipping this weekend, I picked up a couple more. Even though this media says it can record at 6x, the Pioneer scan shows that it can record at 10x. So I've done few burns at 6, 8, and 10x, and all were fine. The Pioneer specs show that it can burn up to 15x if the media supports it, but I guess 10x is the most this particular media can do. If I try to force a faster burn, it scans the disc again and forces it down to 10x.

 

[svenge]

PC games will never be released on Blu-ray, there's just not enough market penetration in the desktop market to justify it. That, and pressing DVDs is dirt-cheap in comparison.

I say just get a decent $20-$25 DVD burner and call it a day. You'll get much better Blu-ray playback from a proper stand-alone machine anyhow.

 

[KingFatty]

Get the Blu-ray drive. It's really nice to rip your Blu-ray collection onto a Home Theater PC (HTPC) and play them using XBMC or other media center application. You don't need to worry about scratching your physical disc collection.

 

[Anteaus]

Blu-ray drives are cheap. Even if you never really need it the price difference is small and then you at least have options down the road.