Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Excellent product. Copies movies (decode to write)in 14 minutes and makes perfect copies. Works very well with Blu-ray and DVD media. Quite impresssed with this unit. Would recommend it to everyone in the market for a Blu-ray burner. On the pricey side, but worth it.

Aside from writing data Editing software does not handle AVCHD files at all. Pinnacle studio 11 just freezes and goes away. Maybe Sony's Vega would work better, but at that price $1000 and more!!!

Bought this player a couple weeks ago online on back says may not be able to play mainstream movies. Why? Thats why I bought it:( using Power DVD wont play blu-rays on computer. It says on back to visit a webpage and guess what page doesnt exsist. Im opionion its just another example of how this current government is letting imports from corporation pass into this country without any restrictions. It burns blu-ray media fine but BD-R doent play on all players isnt that great:(Sony BWU200S DVD+/-RW Blu-ray Disc Serial ATA (SATA) Drive