Buffalo MediaStation 8X External Blu-ray Drive (BR-818SU2)

[ajtrek]

The Buffalo MediaStation 8X External Blu-ray Drive (BR-818SU2) is a very capable read/write device. I have found it to work on every disc type I have thrown at it including Blu-Ray (commercial movies and blank read/write media). If you want to achieve the highest rated speed for burning at 8X your PC must accept the eSATA connection. I purchased a SIIG eSATA II ExpressCard/54 RAID (SC-SAE612-S1) to make the connection to my Dell XPS M1330 w/Vista Ultimate.

You should know that the 8X speed of the Buffalo drive is dependent upon the rated speed of the blank media used. At this time most Blu-Ray blank media is rated at 1x-2X write speed. Panasonic sells blank 25GB Blu-Ray BD-R discs rated at 6X. I have backed-up several Blu-Ray movies using this device with excellent results (you must have the appropriate free or extra cost “rip/burn/authoring” software installed on your computer). All burns have been playable in my Sony stand-alone Blu-ray player as well as my Sony PS3 and on my Dell XPS M1330.

The construction of the unit is solid and feels very well built. It can be setup vertically or horizontally. A nice feature is that it has dual controls to open/close the drive bay configured to accommodate either a vertical or horizontal setup. There are LED lights to indicate power, disc loaded and drive in use. This may be a little picky but I found the green LED’s to be a bit old-school. I would have rather seen cool blue LED’s instead…hey…it’s a Blu-ray drive!

The Buffalo MediaStation 8X External Blu-Ray Drive (BR-818SU2) also comes with the requisite cables for USB or eSata connection (the eSata cable was a surprise.) Other features of note are a dedicated Power on/off switch (most drives are always on by default), Auto on/off or Manual on/off setting, Mounting point for a lock, Installation CD with CyberLink BD Solution, 1 - Panasonic 6x 25GB Blu-Ray blank disc (the Panasonic disc may be a limited-time promotional item) and User Guide (which is cheap in design and looks like a copy one would make themselves). The CyberLink BD Solution to play Blu-Ray discs on your computer did not perform that well for me. I found Corel WinDVD 9 plus Blu-ray to be a much better solution.

Overall, I would recommend the Buffalo MediaStation 8X External Blu-ray Drive (BR-818SU2) to anyone looking for an external option for Blu-ray functionally.

[Ian@CDRLabs]

My only issue with the Panasonic SW-5584 based drives is that they will only write to Panasonic's 6x BD-R and BD-R DL media at 8x. This is fine if you live in Japan, but that stuff is next to impossible to find in the US.