# Would you buy a BluRay burner... Today?



## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

Along with my HD-Video Camera purchase consideration...

I need to figure out how to get that HD back to the screen.

Right now, I am thinking of just letting the Media Share on the HR20 take care of it.... 

Until the format war is over, or the prices of the BluRay/HD-DVD PC Burners drop below $800.

I was looking at the Plextor... I've always liked there stuff.
But $800 is a big pill to swallow.... 

Since I would then need to go ahead with my PS3 purchase to get the BluRay playback.


I also know another option, is to render the DVD outputs in SD (Which is fine, but I will then need to bulk up on the hard drives in the PC's to keep the HD video files so that when burners do drop in place, I can re-create them).

Decisions... Decisions....


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Today? 

No I would not. It's still a "boutique" piece of equipment and prices for the burners and media are too high. If you buy today you'll be kicking yourself when they're much cheaper. 

(Do I hear the voice of experience? What shadowy character bought a $650 1x external CD burner and paid $25 a pop for discs. Yep that was me.)

If you're shooting HD natively, dump it to the hard drive and archive it until prices make more sense.


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## ccr1958 (Aug 29, 2007)

no...i shall wait till i need to upgrade one
of my PC's


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

Wait and stream until then. If you saw the video of the iLife 08 roll out (no iDVD HD), Jobs made it sound like DVD for home video was dead and everyone is streaming from their Apple TV.


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

machavez00 said:


> Wait and stream until then. If you saw the video of the iLife 08 roll out (no iDVD HD), Jobs made it sound like DVD for home video was dead and everyone is streaming from their Apple TV.


Doesn't help a whole lot when I want to take it to a family/friends house...


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## dharrismco (Aug 22, 2006)

I have an Sony HD Camcorder and an PS3.. The Sony records HD video with the AVCHD format to mini-DVD(1.4gb) and the PS3 plays that back (I think all BluRay players play AVCHD, but figured might as well go the PS3 route). With the Nero 8 software on my PC I'm able to burn 40-60 minutes of AVCHD HD Video to a normal DVD+/-R.

It's fairly well compressed and such, but it looks pretty good.

Edit: So to answer the question, I would not today as I am happy with the results I am currently getting.


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## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

I would wait a while, Earl. The early reviews of Blu-ray burners haven't been all that good, and software needs to mature a bit. Give it another 3 to 6 months, and things might be better.


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## elaclair (Jun 18, 2004)

I've always been one to jump on the bandwagon, buy early and buy often, but I think I would hold off for a bit on this one as well. When the time comes it'll definitely be a Blu-Ray, but there are two good reasons to wait....current cost, and an upcoming upgrade on the data side.....the 100Gig BluRay recorder/burner and media.

Even if you don't go with the 100Gig unit, it's introduction will most certainly drive down the prices on the "standard" 50Gig BluRay units.

And besides Earl, don't you always take an HR20 with you wherever you go visiting?


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## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

I have looked at Blu-Ray burners and decided not to get one. It seems cheeper just to load videos to an external hard drive and feed the video to a TV. 

Besides, I've already decided that burning anything will become obsolete. Right now I can take my laptop and access my video library from any hotspot in the world. That would pretty much takes care of the "taking stuff to a friends house" problem.


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## fwlogue (Dec 6, 2006)

Stuart Sweet said:


> Today?
> 
> (Do I hear the voice of experience? What shadowy character bought a $650 1x external CD burner and paid $25 a pop for discs. Yep that was me.)


This sounds like someone else I know.

I usually jump on everything in the early stages and pay dearly for current technology. Bought one of the first CD burners also I remember paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 TO $600 (don't remember exactly) for it and some where around $20 for each disc. I will have to admit that I have looked at the Blue Ray burners but I have decided to wait a little while and see what happens with pricing on them.


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## Snoofie (May 29, 2003)

I wouldn't buy one right now because of the ability to stream movies straight to my XBOX 360. If the media and burner prices dropped quite a bit I would be tempted, but right now it just isn't any option for me.


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## phat78boy (Sep 12, 2007)

Using popular video producing software, you can burn a regular DVD to play 1080i HD-DVD. This has worked in every HD-DVD player I've tried so far and looks extremely good. 

I've also tried to burn a regular DVD with Blu-Ray 1080i encoding, it would not play. Picking up a HD-DVD player might be a cheaper option then a Blu-Ray burner. Atleast for now.


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## ccr1958 (Aug 29, 2007)

phat78boy said:


> Using popular video producing software, you can burn a regular DVD to play 1080i HD-DVD. This has worked in every HD-DVD player I've tried so far and looks extremely good.
> 
> I've also tried to burn a regular DVD with Blu-Ray 1080i encoding, it would not play. Picking up a HD-DVD player might be a cheaper option then a Blu-Ray burner. Atleast for now.


doesn't that take hours to render...i tried just a 5 min clip & 
it was going to be several hours to complete....i must be doing 
something wrong


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## phat78boy (Sep 12, 2007)

ccr1958 said:


> doesn't that take hours to render...i tried just a 5 min clip &
> it was going to be several hours to complete....i must be doing
> something wrong


No, because my recording is already in 1080i. There is no conversion for the actual video, but there is some encoding being done. 45 minute video did take between 30-45 minutes.


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## ccr1958 (Aug 29, 2007)

ok...i thought you meant you had ripped a regular(non copyright) DVD then converted...


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## phat78boy (Sep 12, 2007)

ccr1958 said:


> ok...i thought you meant you had ripped a regular(non copyright) DVD then converted...


No, I'm only talking about taking HD video from a personal camcorder and then burning it to media you can use.


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

Earl Bonovich said:


> Doesn't help a whole lot when I want to take it to a family/friends house...


That was the next shoe. The new iMovie uploads directly to YouTube! So you send them the URL and they watch it on the net, no more need to send grandma a DVD yada yada. Jobs is a pretty smart guy, but he blew on this one. I bought the new iLife, then downloaded the stand alone iMovie HD. Most Mac old timers did not like the new iMovie and complained about the removed features, so Apple made iMovie HD available to them.


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

phat78boy said:


> No, I'm only talking about taking HD video from a personal camcorder and then burning it to media you can use.


You can put up to 85 minutes of HD on a standard DVD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#3x_DVD

From our sister site
The Official AVS Guide to HD DVD Authoring
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=705146


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

With the lack of maturity and stability in the Blu Ray firmware standards (v1.1 comes out next month) and older Blu Ray hardware will not support a number of the new standard capabilities, I personally would not even think about buying a Blu Ray burner.

The Sony platform (Blu Ray) needs to demonstrate more design stability and more market acceptance before I would consider that as an option. Along with some other new technologies coming in the next year for HD device media storage, I'm on hold to invest in anything at this time.


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## kevinwmsn (Aug 19, 2006)

I wouldn't buy one yet. Take the footage and put it on external hard drive or try machavez00's suggestion and burn the HD on several DVDs. Years ago when DVD burners were new, I would split the DVD and burn them on several CD and put them in SVCD format. It was a lot cheaper considering the price of media and the initial price of the burner.


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## nsw (Apr 20, 2007)

I've got a Canon HV20 that uses miniDV tapes. I keep those tapes for archive/backup purposes after I transfer the video to the hard drive. Right now I use Vista's WMC and a remote to playback the video from my (relatively beefy) computer to my HDTV. I considered getting a BluRay burner now, but for me they are too expensive still and not enough folks I know have players to make sharing burned BDs useful. I'd just get an external harddrive to transport the video around for now, and pretty soon BD burners will be much cheaper.


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

There are quite a few video converters out there so that you can put it on your HDD and then convert it for whatever viewing device you'd like. I'm currently converting some stuff to Zune for those long trips all over the country. That is until the price of the burners come down. The last time I looked at the LG multi drive (BluRay, HD DVD, DVD [all], CD) it was $999.00 if the format concerns you. You can also get an HP computer with dual HD formats as well, but that will cost you a few pennies too.

The question is, when will they be sub $100? That will likely be when most folks buy them.


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## DCSholtis (Aug 7, 2002)

I'll wait till Jobs throws one in the next Mac.


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## tomcrown1 (Jan 16, 2006)

smiddy said:


> There are quite a few video converters out there so that you can put it on your HDD and then convert it for whatever viewing device you'd like. I'm currently converting some stuff to Zune for those long trips all over the country. That is until the price of the burners come down. The last time I looked at the LG multi drive (BluRay, HD DVD, DVD [all], CD) it was $999.00 if the format concerns you. You can also get an HP computer with dual HD formats as well, but that will cost you a few pennies too.
> 
> The question is, when will they be sub $100? That will likely be when most folks buy them.


?? are you talking about Multi DVD rom players --Samsung has an HDDVD BDRAY player for $599.0

Samsung also makes an internal BD burner for $299.00


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

Not today, but I'll have a BD burner in hopefully two months once I have the $3K put away for my new PC. A BD drive is only a $250 upgrade on an HP, a burner only adds another $150. So that only a $400 upgrade going from a DVD burner to BD. The only bad thing is this is a Blu Ray/HD DVD combo drive. I'd prefer not to support a useless and dying format like HD DVD, but oh well.


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## SteveHas (Feb 7, 2007)

wait
I can stream mpeg4 to my HR20 with media share?
I haven't been able to get that to work
how do I do that

I am waitiong for BR burners to come down in price, and they will

http://www.psu.com/Sony-reduces-BD-lasers-and-cost-effectiveness-News--a0002538-p0.php


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## PTravel (Oct 5, 2007)

Earl Bonovich said:


> Along with my HD-Video Camera purchase consideration...
> 
> I need to figure out how to get that HD back to the screen.
> 
> ...





machavez00 said:


> You can put up to 85 minutes of HD on a standard DVD.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#3x_DVD
> 
> From our sister site
> ...


I would love a BluRay burner, but I won't buy one until the price drops to around $400 or less.

However . . .

There are a number of ways to get HD on to a standard DVD without having to go to either BluRay or HD-DVD burning.

With respect to BluRay, virtually all BluRay players will play an HDV-format mpeg2 file as a media file. You can simply copy the file to a standard DVD, place it in the BluRay player and you'll be able to play it in high definition. As Machavez00 noted, you're limited to around 85 minutes and, of course, you won't have menus.

Another option is to produce a BluRay-format standard DVD and play it in a BluRay player that will play BR-E and BR-RE disks (not all of them will -- some will only play BDROM). I haven't, yet, found software that will let me author a BluRay disk to a standard DVD, however.

However, you can also do this with an HD-DVD player, which are now available for $100 or so. There are a number of programs that will author an HD-DVD-format disk to a standard DVD. I use Movie Factory for this purpose, but there are others that will do this as well. I edit in Premier Pro CS3, then export to mpeg2, import the mpeg2 into Movie Factory and add my menus and other material. Movie Factory supports dual-layer DVD burning, so I can easily get around 165 minutes of high-definition video on a standard dual-layer DVD -- more if I want to kick up the compression rates. The resulting DVD plays perfectly on my HD-DVD player and looks fantastic on my HDTV.

Note that transcoding to mpeg2 from HDV source takes a gawdawful long time. When I'm in a hurry, I just play the video directly from one of my computers through a DVI-to-HDMI cable and a USB-to-TOSlink audio adapter. It works great and has the advantage of giving me an uncompressed video signal -- the picture looks as good as the original and, of course, even better than a high-def DVD.


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