Toms Hardware Reviews Low-cost 'Combo' Blu-ray Drives

[Andy Dixon]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/blu-ray-dvd,2483.html' target='_blank'>http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...y-dvd,2483.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Once again, we face a situation where having separate drives might make sense to some people because the fastest DVD writers have slightly higher burn speeds than available combo drives. But the practical matter of saving a few seconds on a burn is only really valuable for someone who uses the feature continuously. Rather than devote resources to improving DVD-writing speed, combo-drive manufacturers have focused recent improvements on Blu-ray reads, which, at the now-standard 8x speed, are fast enough to buffer several seconds of video for each second of play time. The added read speed is gratis thanks to competition between manufacturers, so we finally have a selection of combo drives with good enough performance to convince us to take the plunge."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/zt/auto/1260439849.usr11334.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>How many of us with CD/DVD writers&nbsp;haven't bought a Blu-ray drive for our PC's&nbsp;due to cost, not wanting a second&nbsp;drive just&nbsp;to watch&nbsp;Blu-ray, or simply because we perhaps have an HTPC case which only has space for one drive?&nbsp;If you are in the market for a&nbsp;drive that allows you to watch&nbsp;Blu-ray&nbsp;and&nbsp;DVD movies, yet still be able to&nbsp;burn CD/DVD discs, then&nbsp;this review by Toms Hardware of three low-cost 'combo' drives might just help you decide that these combo drives are now a viable and relatively inexpensive&nbsp;option for taking the plunge to Blu-ray.</p>

[Jason Dunn]

I think $100 and below is my trigger-point...so they're not quite there yet in Canada. Probably by 2010 I'd think...

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Why are they all *so* ugly too? I thought we were done with the days of having all the different disc standards emblazoned onto the drive bezel?

[Jason Dunn]

Why are they all *so* ugly too? I thought we were done with the days of having all the different disc standards emblazoned onto the drive bezel?

Indeed...it's like they're trying to make it as ugly as they possibly can. Thankfully all of my computers hide the bezel away, or replace it.

[Andy Dixon]

Thats a fair point, they are ugly. If you were looking to put this in an HTPC under your TV you wouldn't want it showing for sure!

I think the only thing stopping me buying a drive like this is not the cost of the drive itself, which I thought was reasonable, but the costs of the discs. Take the new Harry Potter dvd just released here in the UK. You can get that for £7.98 on amazon.co.uk on DVD, but the blu-ray version is £16.98. At over double the price the cost doesn't justify the quality for me. In time the price will come down, and it certainly has dropped a lot this year for new releases, but it's still not at a level where I personally feel the quality of blu-ray is worth the premium over DVD.

I just wonder if prices will drop enough for blu-ray for me to change from DVD before hi-def downloadable content becomes all the rage and makes blu-ray obsolete.