http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/ Engadget Comments for http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
I really enjoy HD - it does make a HUGE difference in the way you watch movies. ]]>Jul 21st 2010 8:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Can't wait until HandBrake releases an update so I can start ripping my bluray movies onto my hard drive with this! Considering the file size though.. I may need to purchase a very large external HD for storing them..]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:12AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Here is the detailed specifications, since the link is missing from the article
http://www.plextor-digital.com/index.php/External-Blu-ray/px-b120u/Specifications.html]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/we dont need a wealth of features thats great for $99
it even looks like the blu-ray is a pearl in a clam shell]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
Eww, why not go the whole hog and just convert them blurays to SD 480p, the whole point of Bluray is 1080P HD at 40-50mbps.]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/I get your point, but you're slightly overdoing it, these are close to the maximum BD bitrates. In fact bitrates over 25 Mbit/s aren't all that common except for really complex scenes like the famous birds scene.

Of course you're not going to make the video quality any better by transcoding it, but just check out one of the many ~8GB BluRay rips that have been available from the usual sources for quite a while. You really need a damn good TV set and a really good pair of eyes to see a lot of difference between those and the original.]]>Jul 21st 2010 10:06AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 10:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
So, my recommendation is that if you're going to be ripping your blu-rays - plan on at least 8GB if you want something that's noticeably better than DVDs. ]]>Jul 21st 2010 12:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Have you not checked the torrent sites lately? You can get stunning 720p bluray rips that are only about 1.5gb. Good luck telling the difference between that and the original, they look amazing. ]]>Jul 21st 2010 1:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Perhaps you're connecting to your flatscreen with analog HD (component) cables. This could explain why you don't see a difference. For example, when I connect my HD DVR to a Sony 46" LCD with analog (component) cables an HD channel still looks similar to broadcast SD. Not great. When connected with an HDMI cable the same HD channel looks much, much sharper.

I agree with @Sheppard about compression ratios too. A Blu-Ray disc compressed down to 720p and around 1GB/hr still looks vastly superior to a full 8GB DVD --> all when transmitted over a 100% digital, hdmi, connection. ]]>Jul 21st 2010 2:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 2:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/You and I both. Perfect device to release those bits from the physical media prison and put them on hard disks.]]>Jul 21st 2010 8:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:04AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
I also like it because It looks like a 1992 Diskman... ]]>Jul 21st 2010 10:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
That is EXACTLY what I was thinking.

One a related topic what is the chance of Apple introducing bluray sometime soon.

And also How about WMP and Quicktime supporting the format? Tired of dealing with Power DVD]]>Jul 21st 2010 11:10AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/A similar functioning, much thinner drive can be found on ebay with generic enclosures.
Basically laptop drive+ $10 enclosure

They too only need usb for power. It does need two though (1 power+ 1 data I think)]]>Jul 21st 2010 8:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
Branded unit, driver support, warranty, all in one, single USB and decent price point. Most people dislike cheap knockoffs.]]>Jul 21st 2010 8:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
Are we the kind that'd rather pay significantly more for hdd in enclosures rather than putting it together ourselves as well?
The said ebay items contain decent sony drives.. Driver won't be an issue

Warranty is fair enough, unless you can find something similar locally
The thing is I got this 3 months ago for $80 total

Point is, I can't see myself lugging around something that big with my V13 (or any other laptop that is small enough to exclude an optical drive in the first place)]]>Jul 21st 2010 10:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Agree for Hard Drives, generally disagree for Optical Drives.
They are not updated often enough and the enclosure market is not big enough to make the small saving worth the hassle.]]>Jul 21st 2010 7:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:24AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
And yes I Do know some usb don't have lots if juice to them. But come on 1000ma should be enough in this day and age, when a power hungry hd can run off 500ma]]>Jul 21st 2010 8:48AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:48AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/soon there will be no optical storage.]]>Jul 21st 2010 8:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/While true for those such as myself that have FiOS, for the vast majority of people, their internet connections are not fast enough to stream HD. ]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:13AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/you will get it soon ;)
in a couple of years almost everywhere will have it.]]>Jul 23rd 2010 2:21AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 8:55AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:09AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:02AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135207
]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:04AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
Personally I'd be in the market for something like this but I use a Mac and inexplicably, Apple still doesn't support blu-ray playback (and less inexplicably, nobody's yet cracked it for use in open-source software like VLC), so, yeah, no.]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/I've got one sat next to me, and Engadget covered it a year ago:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/29/asus-unleashes-usb-2-0-blu-ray-player-government-denies-knowl/

While the article doesn't say the Plextor drive is the first, they're still making a portable bus-powered blu-ray drive sound like something novel.

The Plextor site also seems to suggest that DVDs are read-only:
"BD Media (Read Only)...
DVD Media (Read Only)...
CD Media (Read/Write)..."]]>Jul 21st 2010 5:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
Cody
]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:08AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
Just a driver thing, right?]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:10AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/
software thing. I got a bluray drive and even some bluray discs.. never been able to watch them, powerdvd doesn't want to work on my machine. I suppose I should just get some bluray ripping software, as torrented hd media works so easily. a bit ridiculous, really. sony should just release some playing software, but I suppose they got a better deal going on selling ps3's.

I hope vlc gets bluray support soonish, some way.]]>Jul 21st 2010 9:31AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:13AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/plextor-ships-px-b120u-usb-powered-blu-ray-drive-for-100/Jul 21st 2010 9:22AM