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Based on 1455 ratings

Sony BWU-100A detail information

Posted by agent009
Posted on 26/06/07 06:17
Number of views 20666
Manufacturer Sony
Product Sony BWU-100A
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Overview, specifications, retail package

Drive overview

Sony BWU-100A is a Blu-ray burner capable of reading and writing BD-R/RE, DVD+R/RW/DL, DVD-R/RW/DL, DVD-RAM, and CD-R/RW formats.

The drive comes 'equipped' with the right amount of front-panel logos that do not look overbearing:


Retail drive

Drive specifications

Sony BWU-100A specifications on Sony website list the following:

Sony BWU-100A uses the 66.7 MB/s ATAPI-5 ATA Packet Interface, also known as Ultra ATA/66 or Ultra DMA Mode 4.

Retail package

The drive we are reviewing is a retail package. It includes the following:

  • Internal 5.25" Sony BWU-100A drive
  • Sony Software Disc for BD (Rev. 7.00W)
  • Optical Storage Product Warranty card in seven European languages
  • 48-page Blu-ray Disc Drive Operating Instructions booklet in English
  • 12-page Blu-ray Disc Drive Product Information booklet in traditional and simplified Chinese
  • 8-page Blu-ray Disc Drive HDV to Blu-ray Direct Recording Guide in five European languages
  • United States Product Warranty Registration Card
  • Four mounting screws


Retail box and its contents

Sony BWU-100A is made in Japan and comes in an attractive, sturdy box:


Front of the box


Back of the box


Top of the box


Sides of the box

Sony BWU-100A is longer than a typical DVD drive, which is not surprising as it includes a larger Optical Pickup Unit (OPU) that accommodates laser LEDs and optics for three different formats (CD, DVD, and Blu-ray). Including the front panel, Sony BWU-100A is 198 mm (7.8") long, exactly as long as BenQ DW1620:


The drive

The front panel of the drive is black, with a dark-grey, translucent tray cover. The tray cover is easily the largest of all drives we have seen and occupies the upper two thirds of the front.

Sony BWU-100A is equipped with a blue LED activity light that illuminates during disc recognition and data transfers.

A small white Sony logo is pushed to the upper left corner of the tray. Grey-colored DVD+, DVD- and CD logos are relegated to the lower left corner to give prominence to the light-blue Blu-ray logo shrewdly located in the center.


Front panel


Top view

The sticker lists the drive model (BWU-100A), manufacturing date (October 2006) and country (Japan), and power ratings (1.4A of 5V DC and 1.5A of 12V DC):


Drive sticker

Left, right, and bottom sides of the drive provide standard mounting holes for case or rail screws:


Bottom view


Left-side view


Right-side view

The rear side houses a 4-pin DC power connector, a 40-pin EIDE/ATA connector, jumper pins that set the drive to IDE master, slave, or cable-select mode, and a four-pin analog audio connector:


Rear view

Inside the drive a larger than usual PCB (printed circuit board) accommodates a big DSP chip:


Inside view

The drive's electronics is based on a Panasonic chipset:


Panasonic MN103S98HBA chip

This chipset consists of the digital signal processor MN103S98H (or MN103SA8H in Serial ATA drives) and the analog signal processor AN22141A. The chipset was first announced in late 2005, went into production in early 2006, and has been used in Panasonic, Sony, IODATA and Plextor Blu-ray drives:


Panasonic MN103S98HBA and AN22141A chips

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Reactions on this item
"handles all optical media"

except HDDVD perhaps :S
Good point!

Unfortunately, 1x HD-DVD burners are just beginning to appear this summer [in notebooks], so HD-DVD burning has been no more than a theoretical possibility even though HD-DVD-R and -RW media has been out for months.

Toshiba's SD-H903A 1x HD-DVD burner is awfully late for a product launched/unveiled six months ago. They better hurry. You know: train... leaving the station... :)
why even bother, over a year has gone by and blu-ray has been pumping out 2x burners and now 4x, later 6x, and hd-dvd will finally have 1x and barely be able to store 15GB.... why?? 15GB?? come on, seems so last-gen, 50GB's where its at.
Hey Agent009, I like your review. Good to see some opinions here and there about the burns, which I agree with more than I usually do.

Just wondering if that benQ you used for scanning is a rebadged liteon? If it's genuine benQ, I wonder why you didn't use cdspeed for scanning + jitter, it would be nice to see how good the jitter was on some of those discs that had ridiculously low error levels (MCC003 in particular) :)
"Just wondering if that benQ you used for scanning is a rebadged liteon? If it's genuine benQ, I wonder why you didn't use cdspeed for scanning + jitter, it would be nice to see how good the jitter was on some of those discs that had ridiculously low error levels (MCC003 in particular)"

DW1680 is a MediaTek/Lite-On design [otherwise KProbe wouldn't have worked with it], equivalent to LH-16A1P.

We use KProbe for quality testing to keep reviews consistent, but you are right, CD-DVD Speed does provide more quality data.

In BWU-100A DVD+R burns, jitter is pretty low. It usually averages 9% +-0.4% when measured by either BenQ or Lite-On drives.
BD-R discs are 24.2GB unlike BD-RE which are 25GB? Why's that?
"BD-R discs are 24.2GB unlike BD-RE which are 25GB? Why's that?"

I believe this is the way CD-DVD Speed reports capacities.

25,025,xxx,xxx bytes is the so-called 'gross' BD-RE capacity before 12,288 clusters are allocated for the inner spare area (ISA0).

The same number of 64 KB clusters is lost with BD-R as well, but the 24,220,xxx,xxx number reported for BD-R is the 'net' capacity.

In both cases, usable space ends up being the same 24,220,xxx,xxx bytes.
Whoah only 15GB?? - i didn't know that.
Havent payed much attention yet as its still sorta early to consider using anything newer than DVD as a cost effective measure..
But yeah, absolutely too small for next gen, which is sad because I hate sony and everything they are about.

btw nice writeup 009
Hi,

thanks for the review, I appreciate it, I was wondering if anybody here, maybe able to help me with a question, I am thinking of fitting one of these into a custom HTPC case. Is this the same same size dimensions as current DVD drives and also, does the front bezel remove easily as current drives, I need to remove to be able to fit the drive into my custom case, as long as it is standard sizeand the bezel comes off, I will be fine.

thanks for any feedback.
"Is this the same same size dimensions as current DVD drives and also, does the front bezel remove easily as current drives, I need to remove to be able to fit the drive into my custom case, as long as it is standard sizeand the bezel comes off, I will be fine."

Yes, the bezel is removable. It is held in place by plastic tabs, as with any other drive.

BWU-100A is a standard 5.25 inch drive that is 190 mm long. This is longer than usual and about the maximum length that 5.25 inch bays are designed for. It may be a tight fit in very small cases like Shuttle. I don't think you will have trouble fitting it in an HTPC case, but to be sure, measure the length of the drive bay.
I bought an oem bwu-100A on ebay a few months ago for under $500. It can only write BD-R and BD-RW at 1x. Several people in cyberspace mentioned that because of the "write verify" turned on at the hardware level and Nero doesn't have an option to turn it off. Though Imgburn has the option, it doesn't support the INCD UDF format Nero is using. It seems that new drives like that in this review doen't have the problem. I just wish Sony can release a firmware update to solve this problem.
"I bought an oem bwu-100A on ebay a few months ago for under $500. It can only write BD-R and BD-RW at 1x. Several people in cyberspace mentioned that because of the "write verify" turned on at the hardware level and Nero doesn't have an option to turn it off. Though Imgburn has the option, it doesn't support the INCD UDF format Nero is using. It seems that new drives like that in this review doen't have the problem. I just wish Sony can release a firmware update to solve this problem."

...is this true? BD-R at 1x? Is this only on the OEM version? I am also looking at a (retail) version from ebay and wondering if anyone else had same experiences... thx
It seems that there are two different versions on the market. According to the CNET review, "Burning a BD-R with 23GB of mixed data files took 1 hour, 40 minutes, 11 seconds.". NOT 45 minutes in the review here.

http://reviews.cnet.com/dvd-drives/sony-bwu-100a-blu/4505-3212_7-31899197.html
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