Sony BWU200S DVD+/-RW Blu-ray Disc Serial ATA (SATA) Drive

by Sony

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 10.6 x 5.2 inches ; 3.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000XB0R4U
• Item model number: BWU200S
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 18, 2007

Product Description

Sony’s second generation Blu-ray Disc rewritable drive takes a giant leap forward in recording speed, now capable of 4X BD-R recording. BD-R/RW discs can store up to 50GB of video, music, or data on a single-sided disc and can be played back on Blu-ray Disc compatible players and drives. Also markedly improved is DVD recording speeds, now up to 16X for DVD+R discs. The BWU-200S supports virtually all BD/DVD/CD formats, so it eliminates the need to have multiple drives in a system. The internal drive sports a Serial ATA interface (SATA) for easy installation and includes a complete software bundle from CyberLink for recording and playing Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, and CDs too. Truly a Blu-ray Disc burner like.no.other

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 2nd generation Blu-ray burner, March 28, 2008

By 

A. Lefebvre (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sony BWU200S DVD+/-RW Blu-ray Disc Serial ATA (SATA) Drive (Personal Computers)

I traded a good working Lite-On Blu-ray burner for this one because it can record 4x (with the right media) and can burn dual layer (with the right media). I archive video clips to Blu-ray disc and this burner is the hub of my archive workflow, so speed and capacity are important. So far the Sony 200S works great. The only annoying thing was having to download an updated software file from Sony in order to play commercial Blu-ray discs. Why didn't Sony just include that software on the driver disc in the first place, like Lite-On did? My first attempt at the download didn't work until I contacted Sony for help (at least they have help). After the second attempt, the download worked fine and now plays commercial Blu-rays.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wouldn't work at First ... All is Well Now ... See Specifics, November 27, 2007

By 

Super Video (Southfield, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sony BWU200S DVD+/-RW Blu-ray Disc Serial ATA (SATA) Drive (Personal Computers)

Maybe I just had bad luck, but after I installed this my computer behaved badly ... Freezing up, not booting at all. I have a fairly recent Abit AM2 motherboard running XP Pro. Anyway, I could never get a disc to burn.
Both Adobe Encore & the Cyberlink program that came with the drive, froze while trying to burn.

Also, due to the design, this drive may not fit in a lot of cases.
Make sure there are no restrictions on your knockout hole, otherwise you
may have to modify your case. (For my case, the front faceplate would not fit back on.)

UPDATE ... A friend just tried one and also had a Blue Screen of death, and other freezing issues. Turns out this may be a media problem. This drive does not seem to like the 25gb BD-RE disc from Verbatim. With the Sony 25gb BD-R it works fine. But it stinks cause we wasted two discs in experimenting, since we couldn't use the RE disc.

I just ordered the Sony 25gb RE, so we'll see what happens. That wasn't available when I purchased the drive, but I assume we'll have better luck with this media.

Lastly, after we burned our disc, it didn't play in the computer with PowerDVD. However it did play in the Panasonic DMP-BD30. So off to Cyberlink's site. An update to PowerDVD fixed that issue as well.

So obviously there are still some issues with Blu-ray home burning, one of course that the media is REALLY expensive. But it's bound to get better as more people adopt it.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Major Upgrade to Blu-Ray Recording Options, November 28, 2007

By 

D. Avery (Washington DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sony BWU200S DVD+/-RW Blu-ray Disc Serial ATA (SATA) Drive (Personal Computers)

I purchased this item earlier this month and installed it in an external SATA case (which I had to jerry-rig because 5.25" eSATA enclosures aren't generally available yet). I have been VERY pleased with its performance! I've used it with both my PC (4G RAM, Athlon processor, Gigabyte motherboard) running XP Pro (SP2)and with my dual-G5 PowerMac. So far I haven't burned any BD disks (that will come when I get material that requires it), but the drive has performed flawlessly in burning (and reading) DVD's and CD's.

I'm not sure why Sony decided to make this a SATA drive instead of a standard ATA/IDE drive, as other DVD and BD recorders have been. Perhaps it was necessary to improve its speed on BD recording over 1st generation burners, but in the short run it limits the machines that can accommodate it. Be that as it may, the competitive price and improved performance (especially on DVD and CD recording) compared to other BD recorders makes this a great investment.

I did notice that I cannot simply "hotswap" the drive without freezing the computer; rather, I have to reboot and plug it in before the BIOS scans the SATA channels in order to have it accepted by the system. This is a relatively minor hassle, though, so I still give the drive 5 stars.