Blu-Ray Rewriter Optical Drives

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I am looking to purchase a Blu-Ray rewriter drive for my Windows PC. The purpose is to copy video content from a Panasonic DMR-BWT700 HDD Blu-Ray recorder (under our TV in the living room), onto Blu-Ray BD-RE dual layer discs and backup the contents onto our PC.

I am not at all familiar with Blu-Ray optical drive specifications but have seen what appears to be a good Pioneer drive on Amazon (model BDR-209EBK). https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00JFVDMJ6/?coliid=I18IKLJSGQQ463&colid=255QT3LY9GXQT&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I read somewhere on the Internet that I need to make sure the drive will “read Blu-Ray discs at the modern standard of 16x, and it has a 4MB cache”. The Pioneer model above has the following read/write speeds but notably no read speed of 16x:

Maximum Write Speed

16x CAV at BD-R

14x CAV at BD-R DL

8x PCAV at BD-R LTH

8x ZCLV at BD-R TL

6x ZCLV at BD-R QL

2x CLV at BD-RE /-RE DL /-RE TL

Maximum Read

12x CAV at BD-ROM, BD-R

10x CAV at BD-RE

8x CAV at BD-ROM DL, BD-R DL

6x CAV at BD-RE DL

6x CLV at BD-R TL, BD-R QL

4x CLV at BD-RE TL

8x CAV at BD-R LTH

Buffer Memory Size – 4Mbyte

Are these read/write speeds ok? Or should I be looking for something better/faster?

Any help or guidance on what to look out for with Blu-Ray PC drives, would be much appreciated.

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I think this one should be okay, did the internet say why there must be a need to read a Blu-ray at 16x speed?

Also:
Does this player/recorder unit allow you to copy the hard drive recordings to Blu-ray discs?

Are those recordings encrypted?; You could also try to clone the player/recorders hard drive to another drive.

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anonymous wrote:

I think this one should be okay, did the internet say why there must be a need to read a Blu-ray at 16x speed?

Also:
Does this player/recorder unit allow you to copy the hard drive recordings to Blu-ray discs?

Are those recordings encrypted?; You could also try to clone the player/recorders hard drive to another drive.

The article went on to say “The market is full of players with slower speeds and a smaller cache, which will translate into slower reads and failed attempts to burn discs.” Not that helpful really!

Yes, the Panasonic unit does allow HDD recordings to be copied to Blu-Ray discs albeit there are some copy protection restrictions on HD content.

It is not possible to remove the HDD without the Panasonic unit wiping all the contents of the drive when it is reinserted back into the unit.

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I found this article.  All the internal half-height drives I been able to find so far do not read Blu-ray discs 16x, unless they have changed them since that article was written.

“The market is full of players with slower speeds and a smaller cache, which will translate into slower reads and failed attempts to burn discs.”

What a loaded statement…

The writer is correct about slower external drives and those can write and read Blu-ray media at 6x. According to Pioneer’s web site their external drive have the 4 megabyte cache buffer. Firmware, optical media quality, and other factors are equally important for getting a good burn.

If you have multiple Blu-ray players, you may have to try burning one program to media using the Panasonic to know if the incompatibility result exists as described in The Register review that RockE found.

It is not possible to remove the HDD without the Panasonic unit wiping all the contents of the drive when it is reinserted back into the unit.

If the Panasonic Blu-ray writer creates some expensive coasters then you might have to proceed with a different plan or watch all of your recordings.

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anonymous wrote:

Panasonic DMR-BWT700 HDD Blu-Ray recorder

A review of the unit mentioned by the OP appears here in case that helps.

Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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