Warm? $119 External Slim Blu-Ray / DVDR Drive

J

Jakalwarrior

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damn these things are going down in price, they were like $1,000 + just a few months ago. Might as well wait for the $25 durabrand version.
 
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?in...tml-_-31mar09_eomts30mar09-_-eomts30mar09main

Same drive, just without the external casing. I've tried to find more info or reviews of that Panasonic drive and simply never been able to find a damned thing, not at CDReview or CDFreaks either. It's kinda strange considering it is a Blu-ray BD-ROM drive, and an 8x dual layer burner too... it's like nobody has one in a laptop, or even in an external case and offered up their opinions.

Been thinking about getting one from Geeks.com for months now but I keep putting it off. Sooner or later the NEC drive I have in this laptop will choke and die and I won't have a choice anymore...

Now if Blu-ray discs would come down to under $20 each, that would mean something. :)
 
I bit. Got ~$15.50 off with life cashback, and $2.37 off with ebay bucks. Makes a total of around 101 shipped. Not bad.
Considering the external dvd players on newegg start at 60 and only go up. Not bad at all. I will let yall know how it performs.
 
I'm still hesitant to buy one of these (meaning the drive from Geeks.com) because there seems to be a massive glut of 'em on the market from different retailers and I can't find out why. I know the cost of the drives in a laptop tends to raise the price, but Geeks.com has sold like 2,500+ of these since January 1st of this year (and I've been keeping track of it).

Either there's something wrong (could be a firmware issue, or Panasonic/Matsushita isn't providing the necessary updates to stay current with the Blu-ray licensing crap) or whatever... I wish I could get more info as these are the only Blu-ray laptop drives I've seen online available in quantity at this kind of price.

There's a reason why they're so low in cost... unfortunately I'm thinking it's a bad thing and not a good one. At some point I'll just have to bite on one myself and see if it's a foul taste in my mouth or not... ;)
 
These drives are HP OEM drives, I think that HP has upgraded to a faster version of the drive, so all of the "old" ones are getting offloaded. I have one of these in my machine right now, I bought it from fastmac.com for $99 (with the external case in the auction), but stripped it out of the case.
 
I have one of these BluRay drives in my laptop and it works great. I really don't have any complaints about it.
 
I bought one from Geeks when the deal first hit. It was a perfect match for my HP laptop and works flawlessly. It also raises the resale value of the laptop many times it's $85 price.

Primet
 
is it an SATA or IDE drive inside? (cheap enough I could buy and disassemble to install in my laptop.)
 
Its 50pin IDE. However, if you are looking for just the bare drive, get it from geeks.com for $85.. Its the exact same drive.
 
you can buy the drive that is in it for 85 bucks elsewhere. It is IDE. Go up and click the geeks link on joes post.
 
primet said:
I bought one from Geeks when the deal first hit. It was a perfect match for my HP laptop and works flawlessly. It also raises the resale value of the laptop many times it's $85 price.
Click to expand...

Resale value of a PC, that's a good one! I highly doubt you're going to find a sucker who is willing to pay "many times" $85 just to have a bluray player... unless you and I have a great variance on what the word "many" means. 2x = $170 I could see that, 3x = $255 possibly, 4x = $340 unlikely, 5x = $425 highly improbable, 6x = $510 not a chance.
 
Now that I have the thing coming I did a bit of research on blu-ray player software since it doesn't come with any. All of the crap costs 90 dollars!!!!! Only alternative is media player classic with a bunch of select filters and playing the actual files off the CD. I'm sort of sorry I chose to deal with blu-ray. Its all a bunch of consumer rape. Massive liscensing fees on the cds, players, drives, etc... With a fat helping of DRM on top. You would think they are trying to strangle their own product.
 
Got mine yesterday, it does indeed play blu-ray movies just fine. Just make sure you plug it in to a USB with enough juice. I had it using the front panel ones and it wouldn't read some DVDs or any Blu-Rays. Moved to back plug and works 100% sofar.
 
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