I saw just before Christmas that a store not known for having good prices on technology offer a slim external 6X blu-ray writer. The brand was 'Memorex' (or 'Imation'). I suspected it was actually a rebranded 12.7mm slim sata drive with a clamshell and circuit that converted sata to usb. For $99.99 and tax I picked it up from that store a few days ago It was a bit of a splurge (used xmas money) and I was hoping to finally stop working on my car's exhaust problems and actually do something computer related again.
I got it home and took it apart. I had to remove the little rubber feet to expose the three screws that held the clamshell on. I winced when I heard a cracking sound but that was just the plastic tabs unlocking. Sure enough it was a 12.7mm slim drive. Pioneer BDR-TD03 Firmware 1.20.
After removing the rectangular bezel it slid right into my ThinkPad and was recognized. I installed the bundled software into Windows XP. Watching a Blu-ray movie did *not* work. My videocard failed to pass. Being integrated into the motherboard there wasn't much I could do other than have a docking station with a video card that passes the scan. The error message did suggest upgrading to another operating system.
I vaguely remembered the complaints about HDCP and various copy protection schemes in Vista so maybe it provided some kind of software translation that XP failed to provide. The next day I used a spare disk and installed the Vista Restore DVDs to it. WinDVD 8.0 was bundled in that factory restore...unfortunately the aacs key was out of date and efforts to either patch the program or wait for the webpage to prompt for a download failed. I just grabbed a trial version of WinDVD 11. Once I registered (grumble grumble) I was able to watch and play a demo blu-ray (Donnie Darko). It looked very clear and didn't stutter or go blocky. A coworker had no confidence that Vista would allow this to work. I think he assumed all of this was hardware based. After obsessively searching for individual bezels on pchub.com I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the tabs on the bezel from a GSA-T50N slim DVD writer that came with my R500 actually fit this Pioneer drive. Standards? No way !
So blu-ray movies worked in Windows 6.0.6002... but Vista (32 bit) blows. (Tangled with UAC briefly. GRRR!) I captured it to an image file, erased that hard drive, and took a look at some 64bit Linux builds.
I tried Fedora and now looking at OpenSuse. The ironic thing is that you can get programs to rip or convert blu-rays to files and watch the files but you cannot simply put the disk in the player and press play to watch the content because of all the keys and encryption schemes still being used.
After I was done testing I reassembled the bluray back into the usb clamshell. I found other models online that were now similar in pricepoint with more features and intended to return it. As a last ditch test I tried running it on my main computer and used the bundled media reading/writing software. It wouldn't play on this XP laptop either. (Get better hardware/upgrade your operating system) I tried finding UDF 2.5/2.6 hacks/patches but no luck getting a movie to play.
I saw that the slim Matshita / Pioneer UJ-260 does up to 4 layers (100GB per Quad Layer Blu-ray disk !?!) and Lightscribe I thought that would be the model to buy although it seems like it is a grey market product right now (only one company seems to offer them for sale).
I returned the Memorex (Pioneer) model back to the store. I misplaced two of the corner rubber peds and broke the label on a back panel when I peeled it off but otherwise everything was intact and functioned normally as far as I know. I didn't get any grief. I certainly did not tell the clerks and store manager that I disassembled the thing.
I also needed a better cash buffer until the next paycheck. $120 is better than $20 to last six days.
The point to all of this? Originally it was cheaper to buy an external usb rebranded Blu-Ray than any OEM slim sata drive version. Still mostly true...
DarkHumour
Edits: Grammar, spelling, chopping out parts.
