Pioneer BDR-XD06J-UHD Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray Portakble USB External Drive - Blu-ray Forum

irascian · 11-10-2017, 09:32 PM

Has anybody purchased/got experience of this player?

It's got a ton of 5 star reviews on Amazon UK, albeit with the proviso that it needs a really fast Kelby Lake i7 processor (ie laptop needs to be this year's model) and lots of warnings that the manual is only in Japanese.

Some background: I've got a laptop with a 4K screen, as well as a desktop with a couple of true 4K monitors from Samsung. I've been buying 4K discs in prep for upgrading my home cinema system, and have an Oppo 205 UHD player, but am put off buying new TV at this stage until the dust has settled a bit more. The lack of 3D and Dolby Vision on my preferred 77" Panasonic set is off-putting, so am holding off probably for annother year, but I want to be able to check the discs before then.

This seems a cost-effective (£153) short-term solution, but would like to hear some "real world" stories about it first.

irascian · 12-04-2017, 07:27 PM

In the absence of any feedback I thought I should provide mine in case anybody else comes searching.

The drive is happily plaing 4K UHD discs on my Dell XPS 15 laptop (with a 4K screen) purchased earlier this year, using PowerDVD 17.

The manual is only in Japanese, It comes with a weird lead that has a daisy-chained set of USB-3 plugs. I used the middle one as I don't have enough ports to use both and that seemed to work. However PowerDVD 17 kept telling me there was an error on the disk whenever I tried to play a 4K UHD disc.

On the PowerDVD site there is a free test application for checking if you can play 4K UHD discs on your laptop. This flagged green in all areas except HDR (my laptop doesn't support HDR) so I should have been OK.

There has been a lot of to and fro with Cyberlink (makers of PowerDVD) support requiring screenshots, DxDiag info etc and it seemed to be getting nowhere until they advised using Device Manager to ininstall the USB drive and reboot the PC with it still plugged in. And after the reboot it started playing UHD discs fine.

For £153 I think this is a good buy that will enable me to play discs on my laptop while on the road (laptop has a 4K screen). I have noticed the drive is very slow at ripping CDs compared to my previous external drive (a blu-ray player from Sony) but other than that it's all good, and I'm happy with my purchase.

eddievanhalen · 12-05-2017, 03:19 AM

Is this a reading-only unit or can it also record CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R and BD-R XL?

JohnAV · 12-05-2017, 04:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eddievanhalen

Is this a reading-only unit or can it also record CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R and BD-R XL?

The BDR-XD06J-UHD supports playback of Ultra HD Blu-ray (UHD BD) discs using a special verion of Cyberlink's Power DVD 14 software. Of course, reproduction of 4K video content requires a Windows 10 PC running on an Intel 7th generation Core i7 / i5 processor (KabyLake-S / H) and at least 6GB of RAM. In terms of GPU, your PC should have at least Intel HD Graphics 630, along with a motherboard based on the Intel 200 series chipset with support for Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX), HDCP 2.2 / HDMI 2.0a video output. That's of course in addition to a similarly HDMI2.0a-equipped 4K monitor (optionally with HDR support) to actually output the content on Pioneer has a UHDBD advisory tool, which will check whether your PC is compatible with UHD BD playback.

The compact drive (133 x 133 x 14.8 mm) weighs 230 g. In terms of specs, you get a maximum burning speed with BD-Rs (SL and DL) at 6x (4x with BD-R LTH discs), 4x with BD-R TL/QL and 2x with BD-RE (SL/DL/ TL). DVD+R/R SL discs can be burned at 8x, DVD+R/R DL and DVD-RW at 6x, DVD+RW at 8x, DVD-RAM at 5X and CD-R/RW at 24x.

irascian · 12-09-2017, 03:25 PM

Interesting. Those figures make me wonder why the unit seems so slow at ripping CDs when compared to the external Sony Blu Ray player I was previously using.

Whatever, I'm happy with the unit for the price, but as indicated you really need to have a "top of the range" laptop purchased in the last year or so.

apollo828 · 12-09-2017, 06:45 PM

The requirements are high only if you wish to play the 4K content directly. If you just want to "see" what's on the disc, you can plug the drive into any old computer. You just won't be able to use PowerDVD to play the content.

11-10-2017, 09:32 PM	#1
irascian Active Member Member since:May 2010 Location:Southampton, UK	Pioneer BDR-XD06J-UHD Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray Portakble USB External Drive Has anybody purchased/got experience of this player? It's got a ton of 5 star reviews on Amazon UK, albeit with the proviso that it needs a really fast Kelby Lake i7 processor (ie laptop needs to be this year's model) and lots of warnings that the manual is only in Japanese. Some background: I've got a laptop with a 4K screen, as well as a desktop with a couple of true 4K monitors from Samsung. I've been buying 4K discs in prep for upgrading my home cinema system, and have an Oppo 205 UHD player, but am put off buying new TV at this stage until the dust has settled a bit more. The lack of 3D and Dolby Vision on my preferred 77" Panasonic set is off-putting, so am holding off probably for annother year, but I want to be able to check the discs before then. This seems a cost-effective (£153) short-term solution, but would like to hear some "real world" stories about it first. Last edited by irascian; 11-10-2017 at 09:33 PM. Reason: Added fact I've got an Oppo 205

12-04-2017, 07:27 PM	#2
irascian Active Member Member since:May 2010 Location:Southampton, UK	In the absence of any feedback I thought I should provide mine in case anybody else comes searching. The drive is happily plaing 4K UHD discs on my Dell XPS 15 laptop (with a 4K screen) purchased earlier this year, using PowerDVD 17. The manual is only in Japanese, It comes with a weird lead that has a daisy-chained set of USB-3 plugs. I used the middle one as I don't have enough ports to use both and that seemed to work. However PowerDVD 17 kept telling me there was an error on the disk whenever I tried to play a 4K UHD disc. On the PowerDVD site there is a free test application for checking if you can play 4K UHD discs on your laptop. This flagged green in all areas except HDR (my laptop doesn't support HDR) so I should have been OK. There has been a lot of to and fro with Cyberlink (makers of PowerDVD) support requiring screenshots, DxDiag info etc and it seemed to be getting nowhere until they advised using Device Manager to ininstall the USB drive and reboot the PC with it still plugged in. And after the reboot it started playing UHD discs fine. For £153 I think this is a good buy that will enable me to play discs on my laptop while on the road (laptop has a 4K screen). I have noticed the drive is very slow at ripping CDs compared to my previous external drive (a blu-ray player from Sony) but other than that it's all good, and I'm happy with my purchase.

12-05-2017, 03:19 AM	#3
eddievanhalen Blu-ray Guru Member since:Mar 2008 Blu-ray reviews:1 Trading Score:9	Is this a reading-only unit or can it also record CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R and BD-R XL?

12-09-2017, 03:25 PM	#5
irascian Active Member Member since:May 2010 Location:Southampton, UK	Interesting. Those figures make me wonder why the unit seems so slow at ripping CDs when compared to the external Sony Blu Ray player I was previously using. Whatever, I'm happy with the unit for the price, but as indicated you really need to have a "top of the range" laptop purchased in the last year or so.

12-09-2017, 06:45 PM	#6
apollo828 Power Member Top contributor Member since:Nov 2007 Blu-ray reviews:1	The requirements are high only if you wish to play the 4K content directly. If you just want to "see" what's on the disc, you can plug the drive into any old computer. You just won't be able to use PowerDVD to play the content.

Best 4K Blu-ray Deals