View Full Version : BluRay Burner now available


John Kang
July 1st, 2006, 08:52 PM
I just saw the first available Bluray burner out.

I'm drooling! With the anouncements that HD-DVD burners will be over 3000, I couldn't believe what I get for much less!!!

Here's the deal, it's $2249. Pretty expensive right? Well, compared to a standard HD-DVD burner over $3000 and this burner, it's still cheap in comparsion. Like close to a $1000 dollars cheaper.

The next thing, it's a dual-core p4 chip with 2 gigs of ram, 5.1 surround sound through logistics speakers, and keyboard and mice comes free. It's got your latest connection ports like av in/out and firewire, and usb 2.0.

It's a Sony Vaio, available at Fry's. The worst thing after you fork over the bucks, is the purchase of the BluRay disc for $21.00! It's also availabe at Fry's.

I saw the Blu-Ray discs so I asked the clerk if he had Blu-Ray burners out already, sure enough, he was telling me about the new Sony Vaio desktop which they just got in.

The system looks awsome! They were showing a Blu-Ray disc of "The Fifth Element" on a Samsung 23 inch widescreen. I just wished they showed the quality of the system with a larger screen.

I think I'll have to go back to Fry's tomorrow to take another look.

Edward Slonaker
July 2nd, 2006, 06:51 AM
Heh, reminds me of the days when DVD-ROM and CD-ROM burners first came out. At one time it was cheaper to go BUY the DVD movie than it was to copy it (not that I condoned that, mind you...) when blank DVDs were more than $20 a piece.

One system I bought many, MANY moons ago, had a $2000 "multimedia package" option which included a sound card, speakers, and a CD-ROM PLAYER. Go figure, huh? Oh yeah, I bought it, but I laugh now at how cheap they all are today.

As with all this, BluRay will come down in price, too. They don't call it the "bleeding edge of technology" for nothin'.......

Emre Safak
July 2nd, 2006, 08:28 AM
All this stuff happened much sooner that I expected. Not along ago there talks of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD merging or something.

Four years to go before I can afford these babies.

Mark Donnell
July 3rd, 2006, 10:25 PM
A key item to remember is, what burning software comes with the package ? You will probably want to be encoding video in either AVC (H.264) or VC-1, and there is very little available software out there for these formats. Most of the new blu-ray drives are intended primarily for data storage.

John C. Chu
July 4th, 2006, 05:04 PM
All this stuff happened much sooner that I expected. Not along ago there talks of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD merging or something.

Four years to go before I can afford these babies.


Yep...it's tough to be a "trailblazer" especially since we won't know which format will prevail in the end.

Still, being able to author HD onto red-laser DVD-R's that can play on either player is a pretty good option.

But which one? :-)

Thomas Smet
July 5th, 2006, 09:18 AM
Um there is a Pioneer IDE Blu-ray burner for around $1,000.00 that you can now buy. This can be added to any desktop computer or added to an external IDE to USB2 box to make external to use with any laptop. This is much cheaper than buying a whole new computer just to burn Blu-ray disks.

John Kang
July 5th, 2006, 12:04 PM
I havn't seen a Pioneer based system, out yet, but it figures they would be one of the first to do so. I think they were one of the first few companies to release the dvd burners early on...

However, I think Sony offering a computer system at that price is pretty compatible with the 1000 mark. If I was looking into a new system, I definately would purchase it.

Anyways, here's an interesting link to an article on Blu-Ray used. It's burned on to Blue Laser for archiving and storage. The format used was 720P on three screens for a Tony Hawk presentation.

Link: http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/news.html?d=100748

Neil Fisher
July 5th, 2006, 12:56 PM
any one know of software to burn BlueRay Dsics, Encore 3.0 ??

Jesper Andersson
July 5th, 2006, 01:59 PM
Where can i read more about this new formats, Blueray and HD-DVD?

1. Is it still .vob and .ts that is used as a standard on these formats?
2. Maximum bitrate?
3. CBR or VBR?

John Kang
July 6th, 2006, 05:10 AM
Ulead, Cyberlink, and Apple have programs available for burning HD-DVD content.

Ulead and Cyberlink also supports Blu-Ray.

The format used in Hd-DVD is the same as a standard DVD but with a new folder for HD-DVD added. Do a search on Dvinfo or google.

AVSforum also has a long thread on burning hd-dvd with Ulead at: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=667462

Now, I read about 720P burn on Blu-Ray not being possible. I believe it was from a Pioneer Rep. Anyone know if this is true, as the Post I have up regarding Tony Hawk using 720P combining three screens to show the video clips was using a Blue Laser disc for storage...

Josh Becker
July 20th, 2006, 11:20 PM
Personally, I'm not willing to pump that much money into a burner for a format that we're not sure is even going to be around in a few years. (Why hello, Betamax!)

Emre Safak
July 21st, 2006, 01:17 AM
I don't think banking on the loser is as big a deal as it was before. These days everyone expects to migrate their files once a decade or so anyway. Either the disc develops errors or the file format becomes obsolete.