Best place to get Blu-Ray blank discs

[Chris Blount]

OK so I finally got a Blu-Ray burner. Who has the best prices for Blu-Ray blank discs (either 25GB or 50GB).

Amazon has a spindle of 15 Memorex BD-R's (25GB) for $75 which doesn't seem too bad.

[Greg Alsobrook]

Looks like buy.com has a 10pk for $27.99...

http://www.buy.com/prod/blu-ray-4x-25gb-recordable-bd-r-disc-10-piece-spindle/q/loc/101/211057512.html

[bobukcat]

OK so I finally got a Blu-Ray burner. Who has the best prices for Blu-Ray blank discs (either 25GB or 50GB).

Amazon has a spindle of 15 Memorex BD-R's (25GB) for $75 which doesn't seem too bad.

I thought about this the other day but didn't take the time to research it, how fast are burners these days (8X, 16X,??) and how long does it take to burn a 25 or 50 GB disk?

[Chris Blount]

I thought about this the other day but didn't take the time to research it, how fast are burners these days (8X, 16X,??) and how long does it take to burn a 25 or 50 GB disk?I got this burner for my Mac:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Pioneer/BDR203BKMP/

It burns at 8X. I haven't tried burning a Blu-Ray yet but it's supposed to burn 2GB per minute.

[Stewart Vernon]

I still haven't tested my Blu ray burner on my iMac. I bought one of the external USB models when Circuit City was going out of business... am hoping the next Mac OS will finally have native support for it. Right now you can't play Blu rays but you can burn them if you have software like Toast.

I haven't bought any blanks as yet, though... so if a good deal pops up I might bite.

[Chris Blount]

I still haven't tested my Blu ray burner on my iMac. I bought one of the external USB models when Circuit City was going out of business... am hoping the next Mac OS will finally have native support for it. Right now you can't play Blu rays but you can burn them if you have software like Toast.

I haven't bought any blanks as yet, though... so if a good deal pops up I might bite.What's funny about that is that I have no interest in playing them on my Mac. I just wanted a method to burn my HD Home Movies that I've been taping for the last 3 years onto Blu-Ray to play them in my living room. Playing them on my Mac is a side benefit but not really the goal.

I will say that Toast 10 works nicely and seems to do everything as advertised as far as Blu-Ray authoring.

[Stewart Vernon]

I do have Toast 10, and have seen the features that should burn Blu ray... I just need to actually get a blank and try it sometime.

Playing Blu ray on my mac was not a priority either... but I really haven't even used the drive for what I bought it for yet!

I had thought about compiling several clips and webisodes that I've downloaded in HD to play on the big TV too though.

[Chris Blount]

I do have Toast 10, and have seen the features that should burn Blu ray... I just need to actually get a blank and try it sometime.

Playing Blu ray on my mac was not a priority either... but I really haven't even used the drive for what I bought it for yet!

I had thought about compiling several clips and webisodes that I've downloaded in HD to play on the big TV too though.I experimented a bit before getting the Blu-Ray burner since it's possible to burn Blu-Ray formatted discs on regular DVD's. I manager to get about 40 minutes of HD video on a dual layer DVD-R. Played back great on my PS3 in full HD.

[Stewart Vernon]

I experimented a bit before getting the Blu-Ray burner since it's possible to burn Blu-Ray formatted discs on regular DVD's. I manager to get about 40 minutes of HD video on a dual layer DVD-R. Played back great on my PS3 in full HD.

I did something similar with the HD DVD format... Before I bought my Samsung combo player for Blu & HD... I had burned a test DVD with about a half hour of HD DVD format to play in my HD DVD player.

That could actually work really well for single episodes of many regular TV shows in HD.

[ibglowin]

So Chris,

Not to hijack the thread but I have the same setup as you. HDV camcorder and Toast 10 and about 4 hours of HD Home video on tape stacking up......

Are you using the old iMovie HD to capture and edit?

Is it as simple as drag and drop the iMovie project into Toast 10 and burn the HD project onto a regular DL DVD?

How long did it take to crunch and burn your 40 min movie?

I just retired my old Power Mac G5 and picked up a new 2.66 24" iMac :)

[Chris Blount]

So Chris,

Not to hijack the thread but I have the same setup as you. HDV camcorder and Toast 10 and about 4 hours of HD Home video on tape stacking up......

Are you using the old iMovie HD to capture and edit?

Is it as simple as drag and drop the iMovie project into Toast 10 and burn the HD project onto a regular DL DVD?

How long did it take to crunch and burn your 40 min movie?

I just retired my old Power Mac G5 and picked up a new 2.66 24" iMac :)

I stayed away from iMovie. I wanted to keep all my HDV video in raw format so I use a program called "DVHSCap". It captures HDV in native format (m2t - basically MPEG). The raw format also uses much less disk space and is good for archiving. Like you, I have several hours of HD video stacked up. It's all stored on an external hard drive. I also throw it over on to the PS3 for playback. The PS3 does a wonderful job playing back m2t files at full resolution.

With that said though, capturing in iMovie is probably better since editing is easier. Converting m2t back to an editable format is kind of a pain so you are probably doing the right thing. iMovie converts the video on the fly during import.

When transferring to disc, I am able to drag and drop the m2t files over into Toast 10 with no issue. Toast does all the conversion necessary. How long it takes to do the conversion depends on your computer. Yours is much faster than mine so it shouldn't take as long (I have the mid 2007 iMac at 2.0 GHZ). I think it needed over an hour to convert the video.

In any case, Toast 10 can handle just about anything your throw at it. It's a great program.

[ibglowin]

Cool, Thanks!

[Chris Blount]

OK, I did some experimenting today and burned an actual Blu-Ray disc (the blank came with the burner).

The blank disc is single layer and can hold 25 GB. I placed my 1080i MPEG 2 raw files into Toast 10. I was able to fit about 2 hours and 10 minutes of HD video on the Blu-Ray blank.

Toast 10 did very limited processing. The resulting video looks fantastic and Toast converted the audio to Dolby Digital 2.0.

To convert and process the 24 GB worth of HD video, it took my computer about 7 hours plus another 20 minutes to actually burn the disc.

I'm must say I'm very impressed. The resulting Blu-Ray looks virtually indistinguishable from the original video files. Maybe a slight contrast difference but the resolution is all there and the video looks sharp and clean.

If you have a Mac, Toast 10 is definitely the way to go. It's basically drag and drop with some ability to manually modify the menu system.

[ibglowin]

Good to know,

Thanks Chris!

[Stewart Vernon]

Cool. I keep being tempted to get a new HD camcorder to replace my very old SD camcorder... Good to know it's a fairly easy process to get something good onto disc.