http://www.pcworld.com/article/16867...this_year.html
more info here, http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_developers

I was holding out on mass recording media for its format war. Apparantly BluRay is winning. I would like to get into BluRay for its size, 25G vs 4.7 or 50G vs 8.5G for dual layer. I would like to know your experience, regarding player brand/media brand, SL or DL, or, just any info you would like to share, in particular $wise, like how often it makes 'coaster'? Any tip-bit regarding burning speed, software etc,

TIA,

bun

Is there a particular reason you want a BluRay? I just checked one place, and the cheapest blank disk they had was $5.99 for 25GB.

Consider 20 X $5.99 =~ $120 20 X 25GB = 500GB.
500GB hard drive is about $75

Buying a hard disk is cheaper per GB of storage, and HD's are much more flexible, i.e. you can reuse them, much faster.

$3.07 each for a SL 4X BR disk, http://www.meritline.com/memorex-4x-...--p-30856.aspx, that brings to $60 for 500G, it is getting very compatitive with HD. Plus, if you are on the 'bleeding' edge, literally, you are expected to pay a little bit more. Roughly, 1BR = 5DVD, (25G vs 4.7G), currently DVD+ ~0.60 each, or $3 for 25G, other than the player or recorders, for the media, DVD and BR is not much difference.

bun

Don't forget to include the price of the burner to get a real cost estimate. In a year or two, it will probably be a different story, but today HDD is still way, WAY cheaper.

I got myself an IcyBox caddy with 5.25" hot-swap dock for £35, put a 1TB WD Caviar Green in it (£70) and use it to backup whatever I need then remove it to a safe location. I can recover data from the drive using standard USB2 or eSATA with the seperate power supply (provided) as the dock is only there for convenience and connects to the PC motherboard internally using regular SATA.

I find this solution much more cost effective, flexible, reliable and faster than any other backup medium. Having lost a ton of data written to CDRs in the past (due to bit-rot) I tend not to trust optical media these days (except for DVD-RAM, but unfortunately my two DVD-RAM drives are just not practical for back up these days).

At today's reliability - Optical technologies are no longer solution for me.
It's good for cheap an unreliable usage like giving recorded disc to someone etc. Not for data storage - I can't read over 30% of my CDR disc (regarding brand) and I've got a lot of issues with DVD+/-R.
For example - in CDR era "verification after write" was luxury for me - at DVD stage - it's the thing that I can't write disc without.
But that's only my - highly biased personal opinion.

Milhouse, good to hear from you! Welcome back.

bun

Blu-Ray discs aren't as durable as Sony and bunch liked to have advertised when it first game out. But then again as long as your not shipping them around (e.g. Netflix having problems with Blu-Ray discs being damaged in transit) it should hold up to its durability (scratch proof mostly).