Customer Reviews

Pioneer BDC-2202B 5x Blu-ray/DVD/CD Combo Drive (Black)

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

 

 

Pioneer BDC-2202 this is currently the cheapest Blu-ray drive, but it does not burn Blu-ray discs. It burns DVDs and CDs only, and reads Blu-ray discs, DVDs, and CDs. For some people that may be enough, since Blu-ray burning is still impractically slow and expensive.

The drive requires serial ATA (SATA) interface, but does not come with a SATA cable, which you need to connect the drive to your motherboard.

Pioneer's web site has a list of compatible motherboards for this drive, which you may want to see before buying the drive. Mine is on the list, but I still had to update its SATA drivers before I can burn successfully.

Bundled software includes WinDVD 8 LE (which plays Blu-ray movie discs), Ulead VideoStudio 11 SE, and Ulead Burn.Now SE.

I tested with seven Blu-ray movie discs -- "Flightplan," "Memento," "Apocalypto," "Descent," "Basic Instincts," "The Untouchables," and "Dog Day Afternoon" -- and this drive played them all successfully on PowerDVD Ultra.

To play Blu-ray movies (and HD DVDs, for that matter), your PC needs to be fast enough and equipped with HDCP-compliant graphic card and monitor.

I can burn CDs and single layer DVDs with no problem. But I cannot burn dual layer DVD+R ("Matrix" brand bought from shop4tech), not even with Nero Buring Rom. I'll have to try other brands of media.

EDIT 8/11/09:
Last year I found 2 brands of dual-layer discs that I could burn with this drive:

Verbatim 95310 8.5 GB 2.4X Dual-Layer DVD+R, bought at Amazon, and
Matrix DVD+R Media 8.5G 8X Dual Layer Bulk (Item SKU: MATDL+R8X/B), bought at [...].

Blu-Ray playback on the PC is not yet mature. Before you burn your hard-earned cash on this product, make sure you meet ALL of the hardware requirements. And even if you do, like myself, it still may not work!! The software that comes with this product, WinDVD 8 LE is at best still-born. It will work on one of my older PCs, but incredibly not on my fastest machine. It will not even load on my Q6600 Asus P5Q Pro 3GB RAM setup. Go figure. Ultimately, you will need to buy WinDVD 9 Plus or some other application. I cannot understand why you even have to buy this kind of software. It is only just to play a movie.

The drive does not work with computers with SB600 southbridge. You may have to flash the BIOS or get a external SATA controller (Ex.PROMISE SATA300 TX4) The list of supported motherboards provided by the Pioneer documentation is useless because they are so old that you will not be able to find them in the market. The WinDVD software has hardware detection code. You can only install into a computer with the Pioneer drive installed.

I bought this because of the price. And I paid it in other ways. An exercise in dealing with frustration. Even though this device doesn't come with drivers for XP (and they are not available), it does install on that OS and in the process messes up the OS. Nasty software. I also attempted to install the reader/player in a Vista machine. I was never able to get it to operate, but at least Vista will read the HD-DVD's. Again, nasty software.
Can I rate it 1/4 star???

The product itself is a solid dvd / blu-ray player. No complaints. On Vista home premium however it didn't play movies out of the box. Corel Windvd demo didn't work... Cyberlink free demo didn't include Bluray playback. I needed to first buy ($99) Cyberlink PowerDvd Ultra.

Make sure this device is compatible with your computer BIOS before you buy it. The Serial ATA connection is fast but required a tweak to a setting or two to be recognized.

I have used a "Home Theater PC" for a few years, and avoided buying a standalone HD-DVD player or blu-ray disc player because I expected the HTPC to perform those duties with a suitable drive. The Pioneer BDC-2202 is that drive, for blu-ray playback. It does everything the specs claim, and that's all I hoped for. If you have an HTPC hooked up to a high-def television monitor, this is a great way to get blu-ray playback.

Lack of support for product from both Pioneer and Corel. Corel persistently states no support for OEM'ed product that comes with Pioneers DVD player. Installed WinDVD on Vista64-bit, will not playback in full screen. Corel states WinDVD8 or 9 are not supported on Vista 64-bit. Pioneer product documentation for this player only states support for Vista. Corel's website does not state details about Vista 32-bit or 64-bit support. Trial version of PowerDVD Ultra has no playback problems for Bluray. Unfortunately, Pioneer choose to package Corel's WinDVD software with this product.

Drive was easy enough to install, no drivers required. Vista Ultimate SP1 recognized it as a BD-Rom drive. You will need a SATA cable as there isn't one included.

Bundled software (WinDVD 8) only lets me play a movie in half-screen size. I tried and tried to get it to go full screen to no avail. Had to purchase PowerDVD Ultra. Worked like a charm playing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull blu-ray. No issues at all. My AMD X2 5400+ ran between 20-30% load.

Then I tried Dan in Real Life blu-ray. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD would not play it. Both would flash images of the movie on the screen but no sound and no motion, just still images. Updated to latest firmware (1.07) from Pioneer's website and it still did not resolve the problem. Downloaded the update to WinDVD as well from Pioneer's site and that didn't fix it either. I returned the drive. One movie that doesn't play is enough for me. I only had a 15 day return policy where I purchased it (not amazon) so it had to go back. The Dan in Real Life blu-ray was a Blockbuster-by-mail blu-ray. I've read that these blu-rays may have more copy-protection built in than purchased blu-rays. I don't know if that's true or not I just know that a blu-ray drive should play a blu-ray.

Too bad, I was hopeful that it would work out.

Vista Ultimate SP1
AMD X2 5400+
Ati Radeon HD 3850
47" Toshiba LCD

First the negatives:
-No SATA cable included. This is a retail boxed product, not an OEM stripper special. It should include a SATA cable.
-It spins really fast by default to read CD's. It will eventually slow down, but there's no reason to spin at 48X to listen to a music CD.
-Rips DVD's very slowly. 5X is the best I could get. I'll have to experiment more with this.

The positives:
-Reads my Bluray discs just fine. No problems with my limited tests.
-Overall very quiet. DVD and BD playback is very quiet.
-Fits perfectly in my Antec Fusion case.

Caveat:
I didn't try out any of the bundled software; already owned PowerDVD Ultra. Read the system requirements before buying. Most of the 1 star reviews here are from people who didn't RTFM.

Overall:
A solid drive for HTPC use that will read Bluray discs and write DVD's and CD's. Even though Vista MediaCenter does not currently support Bluray discs, this drive is still a great buy. If you setup your autoplay options correctly, you can have PowerDVD launch and play BD titles automatically then switch back to VMC using the green start button on the remote.