If you've been salivating over the 25-50GB capacity of Blu-ray Discs for archival purposes, or simply the opportunity to burn full-length HD home movies that you can play in your set-top Blu-ray player, it may be time to buy a Blu-ray burner. Prices have come down dramatically in the past year, for both drives and media.
Whether you're thinking of buying a new computer or adding on to your existing PC or Mac, a Blu-ray recorder is now an affordable and must-have extra for digital media mavens, especially HD camcorder owners.
The added capacity can go a long way. Blu-Ray Discs can make short work of backing up your hard disk, and dual-layer recorders let you back up your valuable movie discs without compromising video quality. Roxio's Creator 2010 and Toast 10 support both types of discs, and provide all the software you need to take full advantage of the latest burning hardware.
But not all Blu-ray drives are alike. And you may need to make sure your other PC hardware is up to snuff in order to watch Blu-ray videos as well as burn them. There are considerable differences in media as well, with varying capacities, speeds and rewriteability.
So what should you look for when choosing a BD burner? Recording technology has been advancing rapidly, and the myriad formats and speeds can be bewildering. Media types alone comprise an alphabet soup: BD-ROM (read-only), BD-R (recordable) and BD-RE (rewriteable), plus single-layer (25GB) and dual-layer (50GB) variations. The brand-new BDXL, a triple-layer format with 33.33GB per layer, for a total of 100GB, just started to ship last month in Japan, and should hit stateside later this year. Quad-layer 128GB discs are coming too. BDXL is currently only available in set-top recorders, though, not computer drives. There are also mini 3-inch Blu-ray discs with a capacity of 7.5GB designed for compact camcorders.
Then of course Blu-ray burners can also play and record DVDs and CDs in all their many variations as well. (For more technical details, we highly recommend "The Authoritative Blu-ray FAQ."Blu-ray State of the Art
Blu-rays hold a lot of data, which means it can take quite a long time to burn a disc -- literally hours for a 50GB disc on a first-generation BD recorder. But things have gotten much faster since then. The key spec you want to look at when choosing a drive is the BD-R burn speed. The current top recording speed for Blu-ray burners is 12X, which means you can write a 25GB BD-R disc in about 11 minutes, and a 50GB disc in about 22 minutes, assuming your computer and burning software are capable as well.
When buying a new computer, very often the Blu-ray recording speed is not stated up front, and you have to dig down in the specs to discover it. Check it out and upgrade to 12X if possible, since the many hours you will save when burning will be well worth the small cost differential.
If you're adding on to an existing PC or Mac (no Macs come with built-in Blu-ray), then the task is easier. Just search your favorite retailers for 12X drives, either internal or external, depending on your preference. External drives cost a little more, but are handy for moving around and sharing between computers.
Also make sure your system is up to snuff. If you're a PC user, you'll want Vista or Windows 7, in order to be able to play Blu-ray videos. You'll also need a fast computer with hardware support for the copy-protection on commercial Blu-ray movie discs. This includes the computer, graphics card and monitor -- ask your computer vendor if you're not sure of Blu-ray playback support. Finally, you'll also need Blu-ray capable recording and playback software, such as Creator 2010.
Mac users have a simpler task, since they only need to worry about burning capability (the Mac OS does not support playback of Blu-ray video). With Toast 10, Mac users can burn and read Blu-ray data discs and burn Blu-ray video discs for playback in set-top players. Toast 10 requires a PowerPC G5 or Intel Mac for Blu-ray video burning, and System 10.5 or 10.6.
Blu-ray Media Tips
Blu-ray media holds a lot, but is comparatively more expensive than DVD or CD media. A 25GB BD-R disc costs about $1.50, and a 25GB BD-RE disc costs about $5. You'll pay a premium, too for high-speed media. A 6X certified 25GB BD-R disc costs about $7. You can always try writing faster on lower-speed rated media, but results are not guaranteed.
Given the high prices, we recommend buying a few BD-REs to use as test discs. You can keep rewriting them until you have your perfect project, then burn to BD-R. BD-REs are also perfect for backup purposes, since you can overwrite as needed.
Blu-ray Burning Tips
A 50GB BD disc can hold more than 9 hours of HD video, or up to 23 hours of standard definition movies (half those numbers for a 25GB disc). If you want to burn full-length home videos or high-definition movies, Blu-ray is the right choice.
If you're on a PC, check out our guide to burning high-definition movie discs with Creator 2010. Mac users can see our similar guide for Toast 10.
Once you start enjoying your home movies in full HD on the big screen, you won't want to go back!