Pioneer Electronics USA 15x SATA Internal BD/DVD/CD Burner with 4 MB Buffer BDR-208DBK

I've had this drive about a week...so far so good! I bought it to replace a malfunctioning DVD burner in my desktop. The drive came from DIGISTOR/AMAZON very quickly. I run a dual boot UBUNTU/WIN7 machine and I was worried because the drive came with no software or drivers. However, it was immediately recognized and usable in both operating systems, although WIN7 had to load some drivers first. The drive fits nicely in the DELL 8100 case I have, which has one of the doors that flips down when you push a button. The drive is quiet and responsive. So far, I've had no problems playing CDs, DVDs and even the few BLU-RAYs that I own. If you want to play BLU-RAYs, you'll need some software capable of doing it. I used VLC in both WIN7 and UBUNTU and got it to work with some quick tweaks. I've also used the drive to burn files onto some VERBATIM DVD-R media...no issues. The only thing keeping me from giving it 5 stars is the speed. I haven't been able to achieve anything close to 15x yet. The drive seems to hover at 5-6X, then slowly climb...but it's never burned higher than 8-9X. Could be the media I'm using or the system. I'm very pleased so far!

This drive works well but I have 2 complaints, only 1 of which is the company who makes it fault.1- there are no screws that come with it. are you kidding me? this thing is obviously made over seas just like the vast majority of other electronics and you can't put in 2-4 screws that may cost you another 5 cents? I have bought some very bad off brand cheap disk drives before that were less than 20$ brand new that came with screws.2- If you didn't know, since I certainly did not, while this drive has the ability to read a blu-ray disc, you NEED SOFTWARE to play a blu-ray disc on a PC. as in you get to spend money to buy a program that will do it, or use one of the few cheap programs that are free ( and bloated with spamware products ) none of which worked for me. I run windows 7 64bit and could not get any of the free programs to work.so minus these things. it was a great buy for the price and speed of the drive. Even though half of the reason I bought the drive was to burn and half was to run blu-rays on my computer directly....

Seems to be functioning well, burned a 25gb rewritable with a steady flow... First burn went without a hitch. Seems to be if nice quality and I hope it performs like this in the future... Has the ability to burn 120gb disc, but too expensive media for me... Came with cyber suite 10 burning software that is outdated, needed to apply many free updates that annoy you to buy an upgrade in windows 7 but SOFTWARE WILL NOT FUNCTION IN WINDOWS 8, you will have to purchase the FULL upgrade to version 13 and there is no discount... Version 11 and 12 do not work on windows 8 either so be aware. Seller claimed it was an OEM drive without software or box, but I received both... He sold me an open box used product and tried to spin it that I shouldn't have received software (made it sound like a plus). Not impressed with this manipulation... Acudisc is the company (something like that). Beware of amazons side sellers, they pawn off open box broken items at full new retail and try to spin it into a drama deal. New is new, not open or broken.

This unit doesn't come with software for playing BD, hence the loss of a star. As for reading--it's fast. I was ripping my CD collection with this drive, and regularly going over 30x read speeds. Did I mention that it's fast?I bought this for my new computer build, intending to use it as a Blu-ray player, feeding to my HDTV. However, I didn't do enough research: While the Pioneer will do that just fine, you still have to buy software--which requires frequent updates, that usually aren't free (around $70, in fact). So while I think this player is an excellent choice, I wish I'd spent the extra $50 over a straight DVD/CD burner on a standalone BD player.Edited April 8, 2013: Originally, I said this unit doesn't burn BR discs, and repeated that in a comment below. Of course, it DOES burn blu-ray disks. I wasn't looking for a burner when I bought this; just a player. So I totally ignored the obvious, and put it in my review as well. Mea culpa. Thanks to the commenters who pointed out my error

I bought a Memorex BD writer because it was on sale for about $70, and promptly created 5 coasters from two different brands of BD-R, using two different burning softwares. I then bought a $20 Sony rewriteable, which it burned fine, but well...you know. Customer Service could not/would not tell me specifically what the Memorex would burn, but advised me to keep buying different discs until I found one that would work, and then tell them. They did not offer to put me on the payroll, so I said goodbye forever. NOW you know how relieved and thrilled I was to find this brand-new writer from reliable Pioneer - for the same price as the sorry Memorex!!! I won't tell you its' features - you can read those elsewhere - but I want everybody to know that this jewel WORKS! I burned a 53 minute concert, that I had recorded in 1080P, to a JVC-TY BD-R LTH disc, mailed it to the artists, and they were astonished at the video and audio quality. That's the best review I can give. One more thing: I burned it with ImgBurn free software set at automatic burning speed; it was through so quickly, I at first thought it must have aborted!

I ordered this from Amazon on Thursday and it arrived the following Tuesday using super saver delivery. Thanks to Amazon for the quick delivery.My first blue ray burner. Installed and running in about 10 mins. Windows 8 recognizes it without a problem. Loaded up Nero Burning Rom version 9. It detects the drive as a blue ray burner without any problems. Same file size issues apply as with DVD burning, if the files are smaller then 2GB can use ISO file system, if they are bigger then 2GB have to use the UDF file system. I had loads of video files from HD camcorder and was easily able to burn them onto 25GB BD-R disks from Digistor. It takes about 15-16mins to burn a 6x disk. The drive is very quite while burning at 6x. The pioneer actually says that I can burn the Digistor disks at 10x but I found that it struggled to do this successfully, it started at 10x (44950KB/s) and Nero reports it will take about 10 mins to burn the disk but about 25% into burning the remaining time jumped to 20 mins. This may not be the Pioneer's fault as both my hard drives are WD Green drives. So far I haven't had any coasters, 10 disk burnt so far. I have noticed that the drive burns a lot smoother if I first use Nero's image recorder to make an image file when I have to burn lots of small files i.e. photos or lots of very large files bigger than 4GB. So far I haven't tried to play any blue ray movies or 3D movies. I bought it primarily to archive my files

I bought this as I wanted to move up from my existing DVD Re-Writer to using BluRay discs for data back ups. I've always bought Pioneer for disc writers so had no hesitation on the brand. Drive was recognised and installed automatically by Windows Vista.The writer has worked impeccably so far with burning done on DVD-R, DVD-RW, BD-RE and BD-R (LTH type) discs. I can't say one way or the other if it is quick or slow as that it wholly dependent on your system, disk types, program used etc, but it does the job on a par with any other drive I've used.Buying a 'bare' drive might concern some people but, if you are replacing a drive, then you are simply re-using existing cables and mounting screws. In any case, those peripherals are inexpensive if this drive was an addition (rather than a replacement) to a system.In terms of value this is a no-brainer. Yes, you could pay more but why do this when all you get as an extra is a probably old version of a BluRay playing program that you could pick up much cheaper on an auction site.Bare is the way to go....in terms of drives, anyway.

I bought this because of the very competitive price. It arrived on time and it was just a matter of connecting it up (only a SATA cable required for my system) which was very easy, and my pc recognised it immediately. I have Nero 12 Platinum installed and I just had to point it to the correct drive and I was up and running. There have been no problems with the Blu-rays I have played so far. I've not gone as far as recording blu-rays yet but I don't foresee any problems. I bought this drive initially to play blu-ray discs on my pc but for an extra few pounds this drive allows you to record them as well. Great product and price.

Simple packaging, works very well. Included everything I needed to incorporate into self build system.Drive is quite and quick and has given me no problems after 6 months of use.Note - if you want to play blue-ray's you'll need to invest in third party software that can be quite expensive - you might be better with a retail version that includes media playback software.

Was looking for a reasonably priced Blu Ray writer to back my existing Discs up as my young children still haven't grasped the concept that all circular things are not frisbees.bought some single and double layer blanks through amazon and that was that this drive was easy to fit and even easier to use with the right writing software.all together a very good product, I am extremely pleased with it, would recommend purchase to anyone.