Plextor’s $99 USB Powered External Blu-ray Drive

Ahh...Plextor...I have many memories of my first 1x CD burner from you...the warm toasty feeling after many hours of burning. I remember your SCSI interface and specialized controller I needed to buy. Thank you....
 
Trepidati0n said:
Ahh...Plextor...I have many memories of my first 1x CD burner from you...the warm toasty feeling after many hours of burning. I remember your SCSI interface and specialized controller I needed to buy. Thank you....
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Yeah, back then Plextor = Pure Wallet Rapage. Now that I think about it, it always has until now. This particular unit is UGLY!
 
I haven't heard the Plextor name in years.
Seems like a pretty nifty device that you can share among several PC's and laptops without having to worry about lugging an AC adapter around with you...and that price is great, too. Seems like there has to be a catch somewhere. If not, this is really cool.
 
Doesn't burn them, though? Waste of $$$. Only thing this would apply to is laptops (as desktops are cheaper than this to acquire a BR reader), and I don't know anyone willing to tote something like that around.

BoogerBomb said:
Why are there no portable Blu-Ray players yet?
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So, let me get this straight... You want a portable BR player wit ha little 5" screen to watch HD BR movies on?? What's the point?? Might as well just use a DVD as your eyes couldn't tell the difference anyway.
 
Is a USB 2.0 connection good enough to play a BR movie without stuttering?

Also note: Website mentions there is a battery built into the unit itself:
Power to the unit is provided through a convenient single USB port and battery combination, eliminating the need for an external AC adapter.
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That's a head scratcher. Since you don't get an AC adapter or any additional cables outside of a USB cable, the drive's battery must charge off of USB, right? So does that mean it's continuously vamping power from your laptop to the point where you have a dead laptop, but a charged (and useless) portable drive?
 
TexUs said:
So, let me get this straight... You want a portable BR player wit ha little 5" screen to watch HD BR movies on?? What's the point?? Might as well just use a DVD as your eyes couldn't tell the difference anyway.
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Because, as people start to get new movies in blu-ray, they want to be able to still watch them on a portable player. It's not about getting the extra blu-ray quality, it's the fact that you can't watch your blu-ray movies on the road at-all unless you have a laptop. Some come with DVD copies, presumably for that purpose, but many don't.
 
I haven't seen any reviews. Given Plextor's 'fine reputation,' I guess I'll wait to see if it actually does what they say it does.
 
TexUs said:
Doesn't burn them, though? Waste of $$$. Only thing this would apply to is laptops (as desktops are cheaper than this to acquire a BR reader), and I don't know anyone willing to tote something like that around.
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Road warrior brings laptop and BR drive to hotel room with HDMI TV.
 
rzrshrp said:
Because, as people start to get new movies in blu-ray, they want to be able to still watch them on a portable player. It's not about getting the extra blu-ray quality, it's the fact that you can't watch your blu-ray movies on the road at-all unless you have a laptop. Some come with DVD copies, presumably for that purpose, but many don't.
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Possibly... Other than me and a select couple other tech-savvy buddies of mine, nobody has any idea what BR means to them. When the masses don't care about something, you'll have a hard time selling them on it.

srangara said:
Road warrior brings laptop and BR drive to hotel room with HDMI TV.
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Road warrior would more than likely own a laptop with a BR drive internally to start with.
 
zolointo said:
Also note: Website mentions there is a battery built into the unit itself:

That's a head scratcher. Since you don't get an AC adapter or any additional cables outside of a USB cable, the drive's battery must charge off of USB, right? So does that mean it's continuously vamping power from your laptop to the point where you have a dead laptop, but a charged (and useless) portable drive?
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That's a good question. I would expect the goal there is to pre-charge the device so that you end up using less laptop power during playback than with an internal drive. For that to work, the device would need to disable charging when the laptop is running off batteries itself.

tesfaye said:
This particular unit is UGLY!
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You don't like the classy ripple pattern? :D
 
srangara said:
Can anyone point out an internal laptop BR drive with CD/DVD burning capability of comparable pricing? My Google foo is weak this morning.
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They show up on Woot and such for $400 on occasion. Not hard to find a reasonably priced one.
 
TexUs said:
Doesn't burn them, though? Waste of $$$. Only thing this would apply to is laptops (as desktops are cheaper than this to acquire a BR reader), and I don't know anyone willing to tote something like that around.


So, let me get this straight... You want a portable BR player wit ha little 5" screen to watch HD BR movies on?? What's the point?? Might as well just use a DVD as your eyes couldn't tell the difference anyway.
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Because everyone who buys Blu-ray for their media collection at home also buys the DVD version too. :rolleyes:

Hey how's them 8-tracks and Amiga computer going for you?
 
Since Plextor doesn't manufacture anything I'll wait for the cheaper, non-branded version. :p

It would be nice if cheap, portable LCD BD players start showing up around xmas.
 
Oh and one of the first things I did when I got this notebook was buy a blu-ray drive from ebay for $100 bucks and put it in my, otherwise this nice 1920x1200 display would be going to waste.
 
Reminds me of those old record players that our parents bought for us in the 70's.
 
RangerXML said:
Oh and one of the first things I did when I got this notebook was buy a blu-ray drive from ebay for $100 bucks and put it in my, otherwise this nice 1920x1200 display would be going to waste.
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Depends on the screen size if you can actually benefit from BluRay on that or not??? If it's 24" I'd agree ;)
 
TexUs said:
Depends on the screen size if you can actually benefit from BluRay on that or not??? If it's 24" I'd agree ;)
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I'm pretty sure the visual benefits of Blu-Ray are resolution dependent, not screen-size dependent. :p
 
^ On RangerXML's screen, for example, DVD playback would be clearly inferior next to Blu-Ray.
 
Should we take this as a sign that internal variants of this drive will retail for 50 or so? If so, that is wonderful news, b/c my plextor 716a finally died....
 
Steve said:
Whoa, check out Plextor’s PX-B120U USB powered external Blu-ray drive. The drive runs on USB power (no external power cord needed), burns CDs, DVDs and cost only $99.
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This is a read only drive. It can't write CDs or DVDs. What really makes this drive cool is that it can plug into Plextor's upcoming PlexMedia network media player and turn it into a standalone Blu-ray player.
 
My Plextor External USB/Firewire DVD-RW has been doing it's job for years.
 
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