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.
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.
“That iconic Klipsch sound is here in full force, with crisp highs, delicate mids (which can easily have a bit more meat added with an EQ tweak) and tight, booming bass.”
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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.
Luckily prices are dropping rapidly.
$3/disc - http://www.mwave.com/mwave/Skusearch.hmx?scriteria=AA72514
(I don't know how well these work)
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.