Customer Reviews

Internal Serial ATA Blu-ray BD-ROM Drive

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

While building myself a computer recently, I decided to install a Blu-Ray drive. I decided to go with Sony because of the amazing Blu-Ray output quality I have seen from my PS3. The BDU-X10S is a fantastic player; the biggest turn-on for me was the reasonable cost of the player. It does everything upscale home theater Blu-Ray players can do, but for much less. I am running this player on Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, and as with all Vistas, the media player does not read Blu-Ray. You will have to download software in order to view Blu-Ray discs; I am using WinDVD 9 ($99), and the setup has turned out to be phenomenal. If you are looking for a Blu-Ray player for your PC, the Sony BDU-X10S is the way to go.

Pros: awesome 1080p resolution we have come to expect from Sony, easy installation, reasonably priced, good warranty.
Cons: software required in order to view Blu-Ray movies.

This is an excellent Blu-ray drive - it installs easily, and the video is spectacular. Obviously your system needs to meet the minimum requirements, which you can view by zooming into the image of the box provided by Amazon (right side of image). When you're using the included CyberLink PowerDVD BD software, make sure that you have "Use SPDIF" selected (in the audio tab in the configuration window) to get full digital audio through an SPDIF connection. If you select the number of speakers you have (e.g. 6 speakers for a 5.1 setup), you'll get 2-channel audio output to your speakers.

The Bluray player installs great and works right away. Plays OLD Bluray discs just fine - beautiful HD and sound!

The critical problem is the software which is required to play discs - it simply will not play many NEW Bluray discs! Out of 3 Bluray discs, it could only play 1 of them! This is a notorious problem that makes your player practically useless without a manual workaround:
[..]
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Ironically, this software problem even exists for the HD DVD version of this software too. The issue is with any disc that contains web-enhanced content (common among NEW Bluray discs).

Cyberlink, which makes the PowerDVD software, programmed it so poorly that it actually CRASHES when most certain Bluray discs are inserted. Heroes, Dawn of the Dead, Spiderman, and countless others ran into this problem back in early 2007 because they included new web-enhanced content. When PowerDVD tries to retrieve this content, it simply crashes. You cannot watch any of the movie other than navigate the title menu.

PowerDVD also has an automatic update feature for patches. This also fails. Cyberlink simply pretends this problem doesn't exist, so you have to email their support to get a patch - they actually make you promise not to share it!

Update: After a lot of pressure, they've finally made the patch public.
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You'll need Internet Explorer to access this.

In summary, the hardware player is excellent. However, it requires you to use PowerDVD to decode Bluray, and that software simply fails. I've been able to play 1 out of 3 Bluray discs so far before complaining to Cyberlink. Sony needs to provide a different Bluray software, or stop locking Bluray discs so only Cyberlink can play them.

I've watched five Blu-ray movies using this drive so far. Everything works fine. I also used it to watch a couple of DVDs. Those work fine too. The PowerDVD software that comes with the drive is pretty good. It does what it supposed to do without crashing in the middle of movies, so I'm happy with it. My Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad processor (5.9 subscore for processor on the Windows Experience Index) stays at about 25% utilization while playing Blu-ray movies. The video quality is totally satisfactory with my Gigabyte GeForce 8600GT graphics card (5.9 subscore for graphics and 5.6 subscore for gaming graphics). I was expecting the improved video quality over DVD, but I was not expecting the improved audio quality. Blu-ray sounds really good. The drive comes with a sample disc with a bunch of Blu-ray content on it for testing your drive. It is rare for me to be totally satisfied with a product, but with this one, I am. It does what it is supposed to do well. If you want to watch Blu-ray movies on your PC, this is an excellent drive for it.

Installing the drive was a snap, SONY includes all needed cables and even an replacement faceplate which I had to use in order to get this player in my Gateway desktop case.

The bundled software is Cyberlink PowerDVD BR Edition. This was a bit disappointing. I was expecting SONY branded software to supply the Blu-Ray playback (their menu system found on the PS3 on their stand alone Blu-Ray disc players is very intuitive). The PowerDVD software cost me about 3 hours troubleshooting. On launch the software detected and downloaded the latest patch, but even after it was installed I would try to play a Blu-Ray movie and I would get an error message "Fail to enable HDPC" right after the FBI warning.

This problem turned out to be Blu-Ray copy protection preventing the disc from playing with my hardware. Blu-Ray copy protection is picky about the output source (i.e. video card) and if you have a dual display card or if you're connecting your monitor over DVI (even DVI-I & DVI-D) instead of HDMI the drivers may trigger the Blu-Ray copy protection to block the playback. The solution is to download the latest video drivers for your card, firmware and make sure the PowerDVD application is updated. If you're connecting to your monitor through DVI, make sure your DVI cable is DVI-D or DVI-I and not analog only DVI.

After updating to the latest ATI Catalysis drivers everything began working great. Make sure your video card and CPU meet/exceed the minimum requirements before buying.

If you're looking to get into the whole HD movies scene, and you're at least a novice with building computers then this is the drive for you. I picked this drive up a few weeks ago and threw it in my new Intel Q6600/4GB OCZ DDR2/EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX/1 TB rig and was up and running in less than 10 minutes. Considering I only spent about $600 dollars in total to build the entire computer and not only have a blu-ray capable media center, but a power house gaming rig, you can't beat it. You're gonna pay at least $400 for a stand alone blu ray home theatre component that wont let you do all things you can do with a PC. I have slysoft AnyDvd and am able to rip blu-ray movies to my hard drive in about 30 minutes. Yeah each rip is approximately 20 - 40 gigs in size, it doesn't bother me none considering you can compress them into H.264/MPEG-4 AVC compressed MKV files that are between 5 - 10 gigs in size and are almost indistinguishable with the originals. Yes its true that the bundled software that comes with it only supports 2 channel audio unless you upgrade for a fee. I simply filed that cd in the garbage and found a full version of PowerDVD on the net and it works flawlessly. Now that NetFlix provides Blu-Ray, the cost of buying Blu-Ray discs doesn't act as a deterrent anymore. You can get into the Blu-Ray scene even if you're on a budget. The 1080p picture is absolutely breathtaking. You get the high resolution of 1080i, but absolutely no pixel de-interlacing since its a progressive scanned image rather than an interlaced one. I watched 2 episodes of Planet Earth the first night i had it set up, and No Country for Old Men the second night. Not only is the picture outstanding, but the audio is even better than what you get on a standard DVD. Due to the fact that a blu ray disc has such a greater capacity than standard DVD's, there is no longer the need to compress the audio to fit it on the disc. This means that the audio you hear, whether its encoded in Dolby Digital 5.1 or 7.1 is encoded in a "Lossless" format rather than "Lossy" format. Without getting too technical this basically means that none of the sound data is lost when your computer decodes the audio data back into a bit stream before transmitting it to your stereo reciever via a digital interface connection (Optical cable or Digital Coaxial). All in all this is a great buy, and I highly recommend anyone looking for a PC Blu-Ray player. I would advise installing it in a system that is at least as powerful as the system i spec'd out. I originally installed this drive in my AMD X2 4000+/2 Gig DDR/EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX/500GB system and could only get the sata controller to recognize the drive after a bios firmware update on the motherboard. Even after the PC was up and running, it just wasn't powerful enough to decode the data in a bit rate fast enough for smooth playback. Anyways, if you do pick this drive up, i guarantee you won't be disappointed.

Is not a bad product, works good but i just got a problem with the software...Its only a 2 channel audio so if you are planning on using this with some kind of surround sound (like me) you better be ready to pay an extra $100 for a 5.1 surround software upgrade...This is something that they should tell the customer...

I recently bought this drive along with Casino Royale, Terminator 2 and No Country for Old Men and I gotta say, this is an awesome drive! Installation was easy, and the software (Cyberlink PowerDVD BD Edition) is FLAWLESS. As long as you have an optical SPDIF cable hooked up to your receiver (mine is a Logitech Z-5500), you can have full on 5.1, just be sure to set it in the Configuration menu and under audio, select SPDIF in the Listening Environment drop down.

The video quality is just amazing as everything is so clear and vivid; a definite improvement over DVD. The sound is jaw dropping as well. The DTS track in T2 is spell binding! You're missing out if you haven't experienced Blu-ray yet :) Just be sure to meet the requirements and you're good. All in all, GREAT drive!

Ok to start off, the blu-ray drive is a quality product that works flawlessly and is great for the price now. I have a 22" widescreen monitor that can support and display HD quality as well as a decent quality graphics card (Nvidia 9400GT 1GB). I try to make my computer as much as a media center as I possibly can so it is no surprise that I wanted a blu-ray player for it.

To all those who bought this product and gave it a lower rating than usual due to its inability to play blu-ray DVDs especially the newer ones: this is not as much as a hardware problem as it is software. YES, it has a HORRIBLE software and drivers for it and YES the updates are completely useless. For this problem I recommend getting Cyberlink Power DVD 9 Ultra Edition. The one that is given to people I think is PowerDvd 6 which is a horrible version with a lot of bugs and no real helpful updates. To actually buy the Cyberlink Power DVD 9 would cost you maybe $80 or more. Instead, and I am not advocating for this in any way and not responsible for any repercussions that come from it but...*cough* torrents *cough**cough*. With it, you can download the entire Power Dvd 9 Ultra Edition in maybe 2-3 hours or less depending on your connection and have you watching movies afterward in a few minutes.


Bottom line is that if you want to purchase this blu-ray drive, you WILL HAVE to get better software....legally or illegally or it will cost you another $70-$80 easily. Hope this review helped.

just like everything that is pc related, check the requirements to see if your pc is compatable. that being said...

im basically a pc newbie so i dont know much about the inards of a pc, but this was a breeze to install. i had pirates of the caribbean playing within 30 minutes. i couldnt ask for a better player at this price for my pc. loading and skipping tracks are fast. im very impressed.

you do not need hdmi to enjoy this drive. i myself have a nvidia 8500 graphics card that costs less than 100 bucks and has a dvi out. dvi supports hd resolutions and hdcp.