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Sony BWU-100A detail information

Posted by agent009
Posted on 26/06/07 06:17
Number of views 20667
Manufacturer Sony
Product Sony BWU-100A
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Conclusion

Conclusion

Sony BWU-100A is one of the first commercially available Blu-ray burners, and the first to offer support for all common optical discs in one device. Its capabilities cover the entire spectrum of formats, from 700 MB CD-R to 50 GB BD-RE DL, with DVD-RAM support included as well.

As an early, first-generation design, Sony BWU-100A is very impressive. We have played (and enjoyed) about a dozen Blu-ray movies, single- and double-layer, encoded with everything from MPEG-2 to VC-1. We have burned about 50 pieces of recordable and rewritable BD media, and there was not a single error, reading slowdown or glitch with any of them. In our multiple CD and DVD burns the drive proved to be very reliable too; particularly good with DVD+R media.

CD and DVD reading and writing speeds are far from the fastest on the market, usually only about half of maximum speeds available with dedicated CD or DVD burners. Although we do not consider 24x CD and 8x DVD burning slow, Blu-ray disc speeds could use some extra speed. We can live with 5-minute CD burns and 9-minute DVD burns, but 45 minutes to read or write a single-layer Blu-ray disc requires a good dose of patience.

Sony BWU-100A includes all software necessary for playing DVD and BD media, video editing and CD, DVD, and BD burning and copying.

While early Blu-ray burners are quite expensive, HD video enthusiasts and computer users who want to archive or backup large amounts of data will welcome an all-in-one, cutting edge drive like Sony BWU-100A.

Here is a list of important positive and negative points about Sony BWU-100A:

Positive

  • Sony BWU-100A reads and writes all CD, DVD+, DVD- and BD media types
  • Very reliable reading and burning of BD media
  • Reliable Blu-ray movie playback
  • Writing quality on CD and DVD media ranges from very good to excellent
  • Included software is very extensive and covers all aspects of drive use
  • Clean look
  • Bitsetting for DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD+R DL and BD-R/BD-R DL media
  • Regular firmware and software updates from Sony

Negative

  • Large size: the drive is 190 mm long
  • 2x Blu-ray reading and writing requires patience

Final thoughts

We like Sony BWU-100A. This drive can handle any media from five-cent CD-Rs up to the newest, still rare 50 GB Blu-ray media. If we were allowed only one drive in a computer, it would be our first choice.

Given the reliability Sony BWU-100A has shown in our tests, we would not hesitate to trust it with even the most expensive, $35-50 double-layer Blu-ray recordable and rewritable media.

This is how we sum it up: "Sony BWU-100A is a comprehensive, cutting-edge drive that handles all optical media; a consistently reliable device with the largest storage capacity on the market. We recommend it."

Where to buy

At the time of this review (June 2007), Sony BWU-100A costs between $599 and $799 in the United States. It can be purchased directly from Sony for $699.

European prices range from €710 to €914 ($940-1215).

In Japan, a similar IODATA BRD-AM2SB drive can be found for ¥65,800-67,700 ($535-550).

Have a comment?

You are welcome to discuss this review or the drive in the comments below or in our forum thread: CDFreaks presents: Sony BWU-100A Blu-ray Burner Review.

Acknowledgements

We thank the following companies for providing media used in this review:

Maxell USA - For providing Maxell DVD media used in this review.

Memorex USA - For providing Memorex CD, DVD and Blu-ray media used in this review.

Rima.com - For providing Taiyo Yuden DVD media used in this review.

Ritek USA | Advanced Media, Inc. - For providing Ridata DVD media used in this review.

Sony Electronics Inc. - For providing Sony Blu-ray media used in this review.

Verbatim USA - For providing Verbatim CD, DVD and Blu-ray media used in this review.

 
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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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