Customer Reviews

Blu-Ray Player Laptop External USB DVD RW Burner Drive

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought one of these Blu-Ray slimline external writers from someone in China on eBay. The drive is basically a Panasonic UJ-230A slimline sata laptop drive in an external usb 2.0 casing. I have tested my drive under Windows 7 and it works with only 1 USB cable connected (although it comes with 2 usb cables in case you need more power).

It plays back Blu-Ray perfectly on both the Windows 7 machines I tried it on, one was a 2.66ghz iMac (running Windows 7) the other was an Acer 1810tz notebook. The only issue with this drive from my testing so far is that it cannot recognise some 4 year old -R or -RW DVD discs (which work in another drive).

If you use +R +RW or +R DL DVD discs it recognises them fine and they work, I have yet to burn a Blu-Ray as I have no discs yet but I am confident there will be no problems there, the drive does recognise all pressed DVDs no problem its just the -R or -RW discs it does not like.

My drive is running firmware version 1.0 and there is a 1.20 update I believe which may improve things a bit but overall I am satisfied with the drive.

First, it should be understood that this is not a Blu-ray player. This is an external optical drive that reads Blu-ray discs and can read and write DVD discs. It will NOT play Blu-ray movies unless you have a Blu-ray player software installed on your computer.

These being said, what my computer believes it's a "MATSHITA BD-CMB UJ141AL 1001 10091400" turned out to be quite a decent external drive. The plastic enclosure is reasonably sturdy but the disc tray needs to be treated gently when opened - it's probably easy to break but it's no worse than the disc trays that are part of any brand-name laptop internal DVD drive.

The drive is powered through one or 2 USB 2.0 ports and the 2 cables are included. I was able to operate the drive while powered through one USB port only.

I am not using the drive to play Blu-ray movies but, given that it was able to read Blu-ray discs reliably, I assume that it should play movies with the proper software.

On a Windows 7 machine the drive was recognized and could be used immediately and I suspect that all Windows XP or later machines should have no problems. There drive comes with a CD to install the drive on Windows 98 computers.

As for the manual, I don't understand why they didn't use Google's free auto-translate service. The output would have been a lot better than "damager caused by unauthorized repairs are not included within the guarantee period and they are subject to be charged" or "please do not place the driver under easy pressure to guarantee the proper operation of the drive." By the way, the reference to 'guarantee' above does not mean that a warranty is actually provided because I couldn't find any warranty statement.

To conclude: good external drive, doesn't play Blu-ray movies unless you have the software, no documentation, no explicit warranty, no tech support. Me, I'm happy with what I got and reading the 12 (short) paragraphs 'manual' was fun so it's 3 stars meaning "it's Okay".

My advice: if the tray doesn't open, the case is cracked or the drive is not quickly recognized by your XP or later Windows computer, return it immediately. If it actually works - and mine did - chances are it will continue to work for a long time if treated with care.

The claim that this device works on ALL APPLE COMPUTERS is wrong and missleading. It does not, unless you convert your Mac into a PC by using BootCamp and install the Windows OS which needs partitioning your HD and costs extra $$$ to buy.

I bought this specifically to play blu ray DVDs on my laptops. In a nutshell, it does not play blu ray DVDs. Also, the connector to the player is very temperamental. It will not recognize or play anything I put in it unless I keep jiggling the cord to get it to connect. If I don't have the magic trick of getting it to play blu ray or if I need something else to add, please let me know. I have a Sony computer, and it will not play DVDs on it either. It will play any other DVD or CD if I make sure the plug is jiggled to get it in the right position.

The setup of this Blu-Ray disc drive was not as easy as I hoped it would be, and in fact, I had just about convinced myself that it did not work on a Mac. When I plugged everything in, my Mac did not immediately recognize it. The product did not come with a manual of any kind and the untitled DVD that came with it was only for a Windows computer. Then I put in a regular DVD and that worked fine with both USB cables hooked up. After I put in the DVD, the computer file system showed that it was there even though it did not show that the disc drive was there when it was empty. I started thinking that maybe it can't play a Blu-Ray because the DVD player software can't handle Blu-Ray. So I downloaded a Blu-Ray player software (I used MacGo's MacBluRayPlayer available at[...]). Then the BluRay DVD played perfectly. I did have to have both cables hooked up for that one also. If I had been born a normal person instead of a computer geek, I don't think I could have ever gotten this product to work with Blu-Ray on a Mac. If there had been a manual and software, this would be usable by the average person. If this stays posted, you can probably get by without a manual if you are buying it to use with a Mac.

I bought this on eBay last month, it worked fine for 20 days (reading, burning, ejecting) but now it only reads DVD dics instead of BD discs and burns only to DVD dics and won't eject